SoilVol
No step on snek
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I think the Kick Six is the single greatest college football regular season MOMENT. I think this game was the greatest regular season game.Being the last game of the regular season, that Iron Bowl was able to have unique conference title and national implications that a midseason game cannot have. Everything was on the line in that game, and you knew it was, because it was final regular season game.
It did not have the consistent offensive highlight reel plays our game did, but there was a lot going on before the kick as well. Like our game, one of the teams blew a sizable lead (Alabama in this case) and a big play early in the 4th quarter kind of felt like a dagger at the time (Alabama his Amari Cooper on a 99-yard TD pass early in the 4th quarter to give Alabama the lead).
You can argue that game is the single greatest college football game of all time given the exciting nature of the game, combined with the fact that series is maybe the most heated rivalry in college football, combined with the championship implications it had.
Iron Bowl is a great rivalry game, but not most heated. Egg Bowl has statistics for most fan and team fights iirc. But the Border War between Kansas and Mizzou is bitter. The Jayhawkers were guerilla fighters who would raid and plunder western Missouri in the 1850s-1870s and fight against the Bushwackers of Missouri who were pro-slavery. It was so bad that several counties in Missouri had forced evacuations, and the Bushwackers razed towns in Kansas and burnt down Lawrence, KS in the Lawrence Massacre. University of Kansas kept their nickname. Mizzou adopted the Tigers, which was the name of the militia who defended Columbia from guerilla attacks from Jayhawkers.
The football and baseball rivalries started in the 1880s or 1890s. Basketball in early 1900s. For the first decade or more, the football sidelines would be lined with veterans of the Civil War. Confederates on the Mizzou side, Union on Kansas' side.
It didn't lose any luster through Civil Rights era and had a vitriolic resurgence in the 70s-80s. I think the nastiness was one of tge reasons Mizzou left the Big12 and the teams opted to not play regular season games in any of the 3 sports for a long time. Basketball played recently. Football will resume in 2025.