But I forgot to add, the Border War between MU and KU might have a little more meaning given the backdrop of the civil war:
The intense rivalry between the two universities can be traced to the open violence involving anti-slavery and pro-slavery elements that took place in the Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of Missouri throughout the 1850s. These incidents were attempts by some Missourians (then a slave state) to influence whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state. The era of political turbulence and violence has been termed Bleeding Kansas. When the Civil War broke out, the animosity that developed during the Kansas territorial period erupted in particularly vicious fighting. In the opening year of the war, six Missouri towns (the largest being Osceola) and large swaths of the western Missouri country side were plundered and burned by various forces from Kansas. These attacks led to a retaliatory raid on Lawrence, Kansas two years later (Lawrence Massacre), which in turn led to the infamous General Order No. 11 (1863), the forced depopulation of several western Missouri counties. The raid on Lawrence was led by William Quantrill, a Confederate guerrilla born in Ohio who had formed his bushwhacker group at the end of 1861. At the time the Civil War broke out, Quantrill was a resident of Lawarence, Kansas teaching school. SI.com supervising producer Dan George summed up the rivalry by stating "It's more than the schools -- it's a state thing going back to before the Civil War, when William Quantrill's Confederate guerillas burned Lawrence and murdered nearly 200 people. Neither Missouri nor Kansas folks have forgotten it."[1][2] Those on the Missouri side are quick to point out that the Jayhawkers were guilty of the same things - crossing into Missouri, leading brutal raids and burning towns, and that Quantrill was part of a group that almost burned down Columbia, the home of the University of Missouri, due to it being a Union stronghold.
The early athletic matches between the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri are said to have helped aid both states in the healing process following the civil war. The athletic rivalry started off with a bang when the University of Kansas chose to name their athletic team the Jayhawkers (now Jayhawks), the same term that had been used to describe the unsavory assortment of outlaws, independent military bands, and rogue Union troops that had plundered and burned their way through western Missouri just 30 years earlier.
Over the years, the series has developed into one of the most bitter and hateful rivalries in college sports.
