Eli Drinkwitz hammers Kansas for ‘bizarre’ Civil War hype video

Eli Drinkwitz hammers Kansas for ‘bizarre’ Civil War hype video

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Eli Drinkwitz hammers Kansas for ‘bizarre’ Civil War hype video
Eli Drinkwitz
Credit: Matrix Midwest

Missouri and Kansas renewed one of the fiercest rivalries in college sports on Friday night. And if you weren’t aware that the Border War was one of the most intense in the nation, you certainly got an education in the lead-up to the game.

The Tigers and Jayhawks were longtime rivals in the Big 8, then the Big 12, before Missouri left for the SEC. Last year’s contest in Columbia between the two was the first in football in 14 years.

Ahead of the return match in Kansas, the Jayhawks put out a hype video that didn’t just reference their rivalry in sports, but the very real history going back to the Civil War when Kansas was a free state and Missouri was a slave state. They labeled the video “Heroes vs Villains.”

Unfortunately for the Jayhawks, they didn’t match that same energy on the field. Missouri won 38-21 in a game that really should have never been that close thanks to special teams errors that kept Kansas in the game.

After the game, Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said he was “embarrassed” by the “bizarre” video and bringing up bloodshed from 150 years ago over a football game in his postgame press conference.

“I was disappointed in the turn that it took today. 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 vs 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 come to love 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. And I was embarrassed for them to be honest, and that’s why I tried to embarrass them at the end,” Drinkwitz said.

Missouri scored a late touchdown on 4th down up by ten points in the Jayhawks red zone.

The Tigers coach then said that he doesn’t care if the rivalry is renewed again as long as Kansas is going to be “weird” about it. And he couldn’t resist taking one more jab at his rivals and their attempt to make it about more than football by invoking Bleeding Kansas itself.

“I don’t really care if it 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. So call it good,” he added.

Missouri and Kansas are scheduled to meet once again in 2031 and 2032. It’ll be interesting to see if those games go ahead, if more are added, or if the two schools decide that maybe things are a little too intense between the two sides of the border war and need to cool off.

Maybe Eli Drinkwitz is right and it’s a step too far to bring up Civil War history in relation to a football game in 2026. But where else can you find that kind of rivalry but in college football?

The post Eli Drinkwitz hammers Kansas for ‘bizarre’ Civil War hype video appeared first on Awful Announcing.

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