Man on inflated tiger (courtesy: Dennis Dodd)
By Dennis Dodd
COLUMBIA, Mo. — The priest had a beer.
And while there is nothing wrong with a man of the cloth partaking of the fruits of the hops, that was the first sign there was something different on Saturday.
It was my first tailgate, really, ever. After years of covering college football games I decided to attend a game instead of chronicling one. It was my son Jack’s birthday and this was his biggest present.
We witnessed one of the most underrated rivalries in the country — Kansas-Missouri — so he knew what he was in for.
Well, almost.
Being a Kansas grad, Jack wore his Jayhawk gear which added an, um, interesting dynamic. By that I mean plenty of middle fingers. That and f-bombs. Plenty of f-bombs.
Not a lot of it was good natured. You see, this rivalry goes back to 1863 when a pro-slavery raider named William Quantrill led an assault on abolitionist Lawrence, Kan. killing almost 200 people.
You should know that Lawrence is also the home of the state’s flagship university whose football team renewed a bitter rivalry on Saturday.
That’s why there were T-shirts Saturday sporting pictures of a Lawrence burned to ground accompanied by the word “Scoreboard.”
Yeah, the rivalry is that ugly. But Saturday overall wasn’t that, totally. Apparently this beer thing is a big deal at tailgates. They drink a lot of it. Along with a lot of box wine, bottled vodka and alcohol-infused soda or whatever White Claw is.
Tailgaters come early and stay late. They erect tents in concrete parking lots which seems difficult but apparently isn’t. They somehow connect smart TVs to cable while celebrating out in a farm field. (Shout out Penn State).
For the most part, tailgaters also get along. Saturday was the ultimate test.
Saturday was also an X out for any word that began with a K. (courtesy: Dennis Dodd)
That’s why we didn’t really feel threatened on Saturday. Jack gets props for representing. There was active talk among Kansas fans about dressing in “neutral” colors so as not to be identified in CoMo.
I wasn’t a full-on fan of either side so I tried to dress agnostically. White polo, black shorts and blue distressed denim cap that read “St. Tropez, Week End Vibes.”
Wait, was I a fan or a narc?
Anyway, things worked out. We were invited to meet friends at one of those tents with some of those seltzer drinks. There, we found out our friends weren’t actually going to the game but were hanging out downtown in the bars to watch it with those of a similar age.
Apparently, a lot of people do this. Who needs aluminum metal bleachers when you can sweat and mosh with hundreds of college kids where the game is definitely not the thing?
Well, not me. Not at my age anyway.
Anyway, modern technology has allowed these tailgates to become not only celebrations but corporate meetings, drinking contests and traffic avoidance maneuvers. After all, who wants to deal with game traffic at midnight when you can just wait things out accompanied by a keg and a remote.
I saw one lucky dude at a tailgate honored on his birthday (turning 40) with a 10-foot tall likeness. Hope he saves that one to show his grandkids how young and successful he used to be.
We toured Greek Town because my daughter mandated it. She’s out in California no doubt jonesing about her college days at Mizzou. Yes, we are a house divided in this rivalry.
On Saturday, Missouri fans borrowed from the Ohio State tradition of Xing out everything on campus that begins with the letter M. At Mizzou that meant crossing out every K in existence.
Alpha Kappa Gamma Get Down? Alpha Appa Gamma Get Down.
No Parking signs? “No pairing”, which can cause some confusion among the student body.
Lot K? Gone, in terms of alphabetical listing.
A quick geography lesson in CoMo. (courtesy: Dennis Dodd)
Back to that priest. Again, there should be no problem with mixing of faith and beer. Priests are people too. But it was also a symbol of what our great game is. That is, something more than the contests.
Tailgates are a gathering, a celebration. A Woodstock without Hendrix but with a wave of the wheat, a shake of the pom pom and whatever those Texas A&M yell leaders do.
Some perspective on the experience. You can talk Iron Bowl or Ohio State-Michigan, but Kansas-Missouri is something different. It is historic. It is insidious. It is, at times, full-throat hate.
Remember Quantrill? In 1998, I ventured to Higginsville, Mo. to do a story on the KU-MU rivalry. At the Confederate State Historical Site you will find a cemetery with about 400 head stones.
On the day I visited, only one was decorated with flowers. (Plastic, but still flowers). Yup, Quantrill.
The KU-MU rivalry is not necessarily on the national radar because 1) seldom have both teams been good at the same time and 2) thanks to the vagaries of realignment the schools hadn’t played in 14 years.
That only heightened the experience on Saturday when Kansas came into the belly of the beast. I texted KU coach Lance Leipold last week and sort of “warned” him about what he was wading into.
“It will be a unique experience,” I typed.
“Unique place,” Leipold responded.
I still objectively cover the sport but as a Mizzou alum I know the program intimately having attended my first Tigers game in the 1970s.
So seeing a priest at halftime in the concourse of Memorial Stadium nursing a cold one was not a big thing. But it’s part of the color of the game I’d missed all these years.
Then Carter Arey confirmed it. The Columbia resident lost his right leg at age 4 and is well known around town as wheelchair basketball ace and golfer. On Friday night, the lifelong Mizzou fan was told he’d gotten a chance to kick a 45-yard field goal Saturday at game to win $25,000 according to The Athletic.
When the time came during the first-half two-minute timeout, Arey approached the ball, turned, swung with his left leg and aimed his attempt toward the Kansas bench. The ball bounced in that direction harmlessly but a statement had been made.
Arey then lifted his shirt to reveal a message scrawled on his chest.
“F KU.”
“I just fucking hate Kansas, dude,” Arey later told The Athletic.
Bless me, father, for I have sinned. Now pass me a cold one at the next tailgate. I’m hooked.
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