College Football Means Finding Something To Get Mad About

The truest thing about college football is that there is no such thing as being too small, too petty, or too whiny about being too small or petty. We're not being frivolously critical here despite how good doing that makes us feel; blaming people in the industry for acting out is like blaming a fish for being wet. These are simply the conditions that prevail. You simply have to learn to forget everything you ever learned about the values the sport allegedly respects and take the mess it churns every week for the entertainment value.

Which is why the resumption of the Kansas-Missouri football rivalry has gone so well for everyone involved, including those of us with no meat on the grill. Missouri won Friday’s game, 38-21, but it's the 8 at the end that stuck out because that was Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz directing his team to score a needless late touchdown and in doing so sticking one last finger in the Jayhawks' eye for bringing up the Bleeding Kansas crisis of the 1850s in a pregame hype video called, in a triumph of subtlety, "Heroes and Villains":

Yep, that's how it happened. Rehashing for purposes of revivifying a rivalry by referencing one of the causes of the First American Civil War and the fierce debates over free states and slave states that heralded it—with the video reminding everyone who slept through U.S. History 1-A in school (which of course is all of you) that Missouri was designated a slave state in 1820 and Kansas a free state in 1861, after much violence. All factual, and relevant to Friday's game, just the second between the schools since Missouri left the Big 12 to go to the SEC, and no, we're not going there just for your amusement.

Anyway, Missouri won the football game, it did score a late touchdown it didn't need for emphasis, and Drinkwitz said as much. Or, in case links aren't your thing:

“I was disappointed in the turn that it took today." Drinkwitz said. "I thought that was uncalled for. This is about two teams playing football. And especially on 9/11 when we need more unity now than ever before, to be putting some stuff on your screen celebrating, everybody’s got complicated pasts. And to make that an icon was bizarre to me. I’m just glad that this whole right versus wrong bullcrap that was started just got settled on a football field. Because it’s a football game. It’s a football game. It’s an American football game that people love to come watch and cheer for their teams, it’s not any deeper than that. I get there’s a past to it, but why are we stirring that bullcrap up? It’s 9/11. This country needs unity now more than ever. I was embarrassed for them to be honest, and that’s why I tried to embarrass them at the end,”

He then tossed in this confetti grenade at the end.

“I don’t really care if [the rivalry, which resumes again in 2031 and 2032] continues or not; if they’re going to be weird about it, then what’s the point? If they want to have a football game and play a football game and have a great rivalry on the border, then awesome. Let’s do it. But if we want to make it deeper than that, man, we left Kansas bleeding again.”

Yeah, referring to the actual Border War between 1854 and 1859, which killed hundreds in pro-slavery raids on the Kansas territory by Missiourians, and retaliatory raids by anti-slavery activists including John Brown. Nice work, Eli. That'll calm things down.

Then again, it's early September, when tempers are naturally short because everyone has to prep their teams for late September, October, and November when tempers are naturally short because everyone has to prep themselves for playoffs and bowl games and then December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August, when tempers are naturally short because everyone has to get ready for transfer season and NFL cutdown days. And no, the enemy is not relevant. When you’re a college football coach there just has to be an enemy, and any enemy will do.

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, for example, is getting blistered today after one of the biggest wins of his career in Austin, 24-23 over Ohio State, because he blew off ESPN's Holly Rowe in the postgame interview, allegedly because ESPN had technical difficulties during Sark's attempted halftime interview. The idea that you have to hear from Sark twice in one day is tenuous enough, but it's in the contract. Besides, it's a win-win for Sark. You win, you preen, and the network lends you the equipment to do it. Easy peasy.

Instead, he got shirty for whatever reason was rattling around his brain at the silliest possible time, and he did it to Holly freakin' Rowe. Everyone likes Holly Rowe. Even if for some ridiculous reason you don't like Holly Rowe, she works for the network shamelessly carrying college football's water in the Save College Sports Law fight. You're rude to her, you reap the whirlwind, and not even Arch Manning's ethereal glow will save your disputatious ass. And Sarkisian doesn't even get to use the Texas Revolution (1835–36) as an excuse.

But like we said, these are tense times in college football, and now that we've learned that events from 190 years ago are fair game for grievance, well, make the history come alive, we guess. We can't wait for Alabama-Georgia on October 10, and Kalen DeBoer exhorting the Crimson Tide to right the wrong of the Yazoo Land Fraud scandal of 1794.