Drinkwitz Rips Kansas, Then Leaves the Border War Bleeding

Eli Drinkwitz ripped Kansas for a Civil War hype tape after Missouri’s 38-21 win Friday in Lawrence.

The Tigers coach said he was embarrassed for the Jayhawks, tried to score late, then talked of leaving Kansas “bleeding again,” on a series that does not resume until 2031.

Kansas Dropped a Civil War Hype Tape

Kansas football posted the clip Thursday with a four-word caption: “It is that deep.” The 90-second video, titled “Heroes and Villains,” was narrated by former Jayhawks lineman Gilbert Brown, later named to the Kansas Football Ring of Honor, and the school played it on the video board at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium before kickoff.

Brown’s script did not stay on school colors. It reached for the armed fighting that gave the Border War its name, and it sorted the two states into moral camps.

Love doesn’t exist here. Neither does mercy. This rivalry is different. ‘Cause it’s built on something much deeper than just school pride. It’s fueled by hatred, passed down through generations. Our roots reach back to the Civil War, when blood was spilled over what you believed in, and which side you stood on.

Gilbert Brown, former Kansas defensive lineman, Kansas football hype video

The narration closed the loop. “There are heroes and villains. Only allegiance decides their legacy. There’s right and wrong. There’s Kansas and Missouri.”

It is that deep. pic.twitter.com/4BEcdbLv7S

— Kansas Football (@KU_Football) September 10, 2026

The official Kansas account posted a matching line in the same window: “There’s right and wrong. There’s Kansas and Missouri.” Drinkwitz spent Friday night answering that sentence, on the field and after it.

The Late Throw Was the Point

No. 23 Missouri improved to 2-0. Kansas fell to 1-1 in the 122nd meeting of a series that first kicked off on Oct. 31, 1891, when Kansas won 22-10. The Tigers have now beaten the Jayhawks for the fifth straight time, and Kansas has not won this game since a 40-37 finish on Nov. 29, 2008. It was Missouri’s first trip across the state line since Oct. 29, 2005.

For a half it looked like the tape might have a scoreboard. Kansas blocked a field goal and Austin Alexander returned it 88 yards for the first points. Jamal Roberts answered with a 64-yard touchdown run, the longest of his career, and the teams went to the break tied 14-14 after a scoreless first quarter. Quarters finished 0-14-14-10 for Missouri and 0-14-7-0 for Kansas.

Robert Woodyard Jr. broke the tie after halftime. He fell on a fumble by Kansas quarterback Isaiah Marshall, and Austin Simmons hit Donovan Olugbode for the lead. On the next Kansas snap Woodyard intercepted Marshall, and Xai’Shaun Edwards ran 10 yards for another score. Marshall finished 168 passing yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions, plus 23 yards on 20 carries.

Simmons went 19 of 29 for 292 yards and three scores with no interceptions. Roberts ran for 125 yards. Olugbode caught six balls for 121 yards and a touchdown, and Cayden Lee added six for 120 and a score. With 2:02 left, Simmons threw a 13-yard touchdown to tight end Brett Norfleet that made it 38-21. Backup Matt Zollers then came in and threw incomplete toward the end zone from the Kansas 13 with 34 seconds left, a 0-for-1 night, before Missouri ran out the clock.

Drinkwitz said that late push was not clock management. He said it was the point.

Why Stir That Up on Sept. 11?

Asked about beating Kansas, Drinkwitz did not stay on turnovers. He went at the video, the “right versus wrong” posts, and the choice to put that history on the screen on Sept. 11.

I was disappointed in the rivalry, the turn that it took today. I thought that was uncalled for. 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 an American football game that people love to come watch and cheer for their teams. It’s not even 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.

Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri head coach, postgame news conference

He also said everybody has “complicated pasts,” and that making that past “an icon was bizarre.” Kansas coach Lance Leipold, told that Drinkwitz had tried to embarrass his team at the end, did not take the bait. He said he had not heard the line, and that if Drinkwitz wanted to keep trying to score, that was his job to stop.

The unity pitch did not hold for a full news conference. Drinkwitz was asked whether the rivalry should continue. “I don’t really care if it continues or not,” he said. “If they’re going to be weird about it, then what’s the point?” Then he reached for the same blood language the video had used. “If they want to have a football game and play the football game, a great rivalry on the border, then awesome, let’s do it. But if they want to make it deeper than that, we left Kansas bleeding again and call it good.”

That is the collision. A coach who asked for unity on Sept. 11 closed with Bleeding Kansas as a punch line, and he said it after a win he had already put away.

John Brown on the Video Board

Kansas did not invent the history it put on the board. Figures in the clip included abolitionist John Brown and Confederate guerrilla William Quantrill, names that still split these two states because the fighting was real, and because it was about slavery, not a mascot.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 let settlers vote the territory slave or free. Pro-slavery and free-state groups poured in, elections were stolen, and the border turned into a running raid. National Park Service writing on the era is blunt: murder and “psychological warfare became a code of conduct in Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri.”

THE HISTORY ON THE JUMBOTRON

1. 1854: The Kansas-Nebraska Act opens the territory under popular sovereignty, and armed settlers from both sides move in to fix the vote.
2. May 21, 1856: Pro-slavery fighters from Missouri carry out the Sack of Lawrence in 1856, burning and wrecking a free-state town.
3. May 1856: John Brown and his sons take five pro-slavery men from homes along Pottawatomie Creek and kill them.
4. January 29, 1861: Kansas entered the Union as a free state, after years of territorial violence that ran into the Civil War.
5. October 31, 1891: Kansas and Missouri meet in football for the first time, 22-10, three decades after the shooting stopped.

A football tape can quote that past without lying. What Kansas chose was to hang “heroes and villains” and “right and wrong” on it, then play the clip in the stadium on a national memorial date. Drinkwitz’s “complicated pasts” line treated that choice as branding. The record is uglier than branding. Brown’s raid was a massacre. Missouri’s border ruffians had already sacked Lawrence. Neither side’s dead were extras in a hype package.

Missouri Shot Its Own Pregame Tape

Missouri posted a video of its own, narrated by former Tiger Stryker Sulak. It stayed on the 164 miles between Columbia and Lawrence and on old wins. That was the contrast Drinkwitz wanted the sport to notice: one staff selling a war, the other selling a drive time.

After the whistle he still had to police his own sideline. Mid-interview with Fox’s Josh Sims he stopped, said, “I got to go make sure we don’t have anything stupid happen here,” and walked toward a scuffle. He was heard telling someone to stop planting a Missouri flag on the Kansas field.

WHAT FOLLOWED THE FINAL WHISTLE

• The last throw: Zollers’s incompletion with 34 seconds left, after Norfleet’s 13-yard score had already made it 38-21.
• The press conference: Drinkwitz called the Kansas tape uncalled for, tied it to Sept. 11, and said he tried to embarrass the Jayhawks.
• The field: He left a live interview to break up postgame pushing and a flag planting on Kansas turf.
• The replies: He answered Kansas’s “right and wrong” post, and needled fans who had talked about taking down the goalposts.

On X he replied to the university’s “right and wrong” line with, “Man! Yall are weird….. Winners WIN!!! I know that’s RIGHT!!!!! #MIZ.” He also asked how the hype video had ended, because he had not seen Kansas take a goalpost.

Man! Yall are weird….. Winners WIN!!! I know that’s RIGHT!!!!! #MIZ https://t.co/yeQUs0Dy4V

— Eliah Drinkwitz (@CoachDrinkwitz) September 12, 2026

A coach who asked the country for unity spent the next hour dunking on a rival’s social feed. That is allowed. It is also the opposite of the sermon he had just given.

They Do Not Play Again Until 2031

The shrug about whether the rivalry “continues” lands on a calendar that is already set. Kansas Athletics announced a four-game series beginning in 2025 on May 2, 2020, after Missouri’s 2012 move to the SEC had killed the annual game. The 2020 release listed Missouri ahead 56-55-9 through 2011, when the series ranked among the most played in the division. Missouri has since won in Columbia in 2025 and in Lawrence on Friday, 58-55-9 by that count, with nine ties left untouched.

The 2020 paper listed the Lawrence return for Sept. 12, 2026. The game was played Friday, Sept. 11. The next two dates did not move.

THE FOUR-GAME BORDER SERIES

Roberts’s 64-yarder Friday topped the 63-yard run he used to close last year’s 42-31 win in Columbia. Those are the only two football meetings since 2011. Through 2011 the schools had played 120 times, including 93 straight seasons from 1919 to 2011. Then conference realignment did what the border never could, and the sport waited 14 years for a restart that was always built with a hole in the middle.

Drinkwitz saying he does not care if it continues is cheap in one sense, because 2031 and 2032 are already booked. It is costly in another. The next time these teams share a field, the coaches, the rosters, and the social staffs will have had five seasons to decide whether “heroes and villains” was a one-off, or the new language of a series that used to sell itself with a football.

A Good Rivalry, Even in Defeat

Leipold did not match the temperature. “It’s a good rivalry,” he said. “And obviously we didn’t win either of these two. Disappointing, but I think these are things that help make college football what it is, and it’s a special game.” He also said the stadium had “a lot of juice,” and that Kansas had done “a couple of things you just can’t do if you play ranked teams and want to beat them.”

Special, in his mouth, still meant two teams on a Friday night. Special, in Kansas’s tape, meant a war. Special, in Drinkwitz’s last answer, meant leaving the other state bleeding and calling it good. The Jayhawks put John Brown on a football screen and lost 38-21. The Tigers asked for unity, threw at the end zone anyway, and do not have to see Kansas again until Sept. 6, 2031, in Columbia.