I caught up with Norman Stewart earlier this year on the phone from his winter home in Palm Springs, Calif. I’d called to ask him about his favorite stories from the Border War, and he was worried about time, and rightfully so, because he could talk about those battles for days. He was part of a lot of games against Kansas — six as a player and 64 as a coach.
Advertisement
“We were 30-34,” Stewart says. “Great games.”
Stormin’ Norman, now 84 years young, told old war stories, interrupted only once by his wife, Virginia, hollering from the other room. It was dinnertime, and I’m assuming that’s what the yells were for, but about 20 minutes later, Norm could still not get enough. He was told about some of the crazy motivational tactics his players remember, and he was eager to hear what they had to say, then offered his own spin of what transpired.
UNC-Duke and other college basketball rivalries are great, but they cannot touch the history or the cultural significance of the Border War. “Sadly,” Stewart says of the rivalry, “it’s created not by athletics, but by war.”
The tension between the two states dates to before the Civil War, as pro-slavery advocates on the Missouri side tried to influence Kansas to come into the union as a slave state, a fight that produced years and years of violence.
Athletics, of course, kept the history alive. The football teams met for the first time in 1891. The first basketball meeting was during the 1906-07 season. Then when Missouri left for the SEC in 2012, the rivalry abruptly ended. It was the greatest casualty of conference realignment, until it was announced late Monday that the series will resume starting in 2020 for at least six games: two each in Kansas City, Mo., Lawrence and Columbia.
The rivalry was never quite the same once Norm retired in 1999, but there was still plenty of vitriol in the air. When Kansas won the final one, in February 2012, KU coach Bill Self flung his fist in celebration, a fit of emotional satisfaction I’ve never seen out of him.
That’s the greatest game I’ve ever covered, and I’m nostalgic when it comes to those meetings. Earlier this year, I reached out to players and coaches from both sides to get their best stories from the Border War. They did not disappoint. Emotions run high during any rivalry, as does the passion when participants from each side reflect on how they remember things.
I’ll get out of the way now and let them tell their stories.
Violence and hate
Ted Owens, KU assistant coach (1960-64) and head coach (1964-83): I knew all about the Bleeding Kansas history, but it had been over 100 years ago when I arrived on campus in 1960, so I thought this had all gone by the wayside. (Basketball coach) Dick Harp was also doing the color commentary for KU football. He said, “Why don’t you ride down to the Kansas-Missouri football game with me.” Missouri was undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the country, and Kansas beat them that day and I remember the bitter feelings.
The bitterness only escalated in the wake of KU’s 23-7 victory. The Jayhawks celebrated a Big Eight championship and earned a trip to the Orange Bowl, but they never made that trip. Two weeks later, the Big Eight ruled that KU halfback Burt Coan, who scored two touchdowns that day, had been illegally recruited. Mizzou was awarded the conference title and the Orange Bowl bid but a national champion had already been crowned. Both schools still count the game as a win.
Advertisement
Owens: Later that year we went to Missouri. Back then, there were exclusive games, and the Kansas-Missouri game was the ABC game of the week. We were starting four African-Americans and Missouri was an all-white team. So at halftime, our great center, Bill Bridges, said, “I’ve been called the N-word all my life, and I can handle that. But now they’re starting to spit on me when we line up for a free throw. I’m not going to take that.”
With 14:49 left, Missouri center Charlie Henke scored a bucket over KU’s Wayne Hightower, and Hightower punched Henke after the ball went through the net.
Charlie Henke (to the Columbia Daily Tribune in 2011): Turned around just in time for him to smack me right between the eyes.
Owens: Missouri fans flooded the court. There were hundreds of them on the court, and they started punching our guys out. It was a bitter brawl. Finally, when they were able to get things settled down, they continued the game, but I left Columbia with a full realization that the Border War might have been over a hundred years ago, but the bitter rivalry still existed.
The tension was so high that administrators from both sides considered suspending the series until cooler heads could prevail. Luckily, the series continued, and that was the only violent altercation on the field or court.
Gary Link, MU forward (1971-74): When we went to Allen Fieldhouse, during warmups — and not everyone did it, maybe one or two fans — they would take a penny and a match and get the penny as hot as they possibly could make it, then they’d flip it on the floor. Well, when you’re a basketball player and you see something on the floor, you immediately want to pick it up. It burned your fingers and you’re surprised how hot it is, then they’re all on your case. After a while, you realize what you do when you see a penny at KU, you just kick it to the side, because you know how it got out there.
Advertisement
Aaron Miles, KU guard (2001-05): In 2003, we were pretty bad at football. Missouri came to town, and we won and fans rushed the field. They started to tear down the goalposts and carry them over to Potter Lake. I saw this old man who was a Missouri fan, and he punched one of the students. He punched the student because one of our students was taunting him, and he punched him, man. That’s when I realized it was real.
Kim English, MU guard (2008-12): The fans absolutely hate each other, and you get to hear that hatred in the volume of those games — how loud the reactions are to big stops or big scores and the final horn after great games. You go into it as a freshman, and if you’re not from Missouri or Kansas (and English is from Baltimore), you go into it thinking it’s another game, but you quickly feel the vibration of how important that game is to everyone involved.
The story I tell the most took place my freshman year. Marcus Denmon and I were just about to walk out of the tunnel at Phog Allen, and the fans are standing right outside the rope. We’re standing there and we’re talking, and there was an older white man in overalls, and he had an old, dingy Jayhawks shirt on that was like four logos ago. He walks right over to us, and he’s kind of trembling. I could see he was bothered and upset. And he balled up his fists up and pointed his fists at us, and he said, with this Kansas drawl, “Missouri, you’re gonna burn! Just like you burned down our town (in 1863)!” And I remember looking at him like, What the hell is he talking about?
At that time, I had no clue of the Civil War history. After that, I dug a little deeper and found out more information about the history of the rivalry. I will never forget his face, his voice, his clothes.
Laurence Bowers, MU forward (2008-13): Oh, they hated us. Nothing bad ever happened, but put it like this: I wouldn’t feel comfortable having my family go to a KU game. My girlfriend, who is now my wife, avoided those games during our college time.
Melvin Booker, MU guard (1990-94): Being a kid from Mississippi, I didn’t know about the whole Kansas-Missouri rivalry. One of the first things they told me after I signed with Mizzou was I had to hate Kansas.
Jason Sutherland, MU guard (1993-97): They didn’t care for us and we didn’t care for them, and it was an all-out war — not a Border War, necessarily. We just didn’t like them at all.
Advertisement
Brian Grawer, MU guard (1997-01): The first time you step into Allen Fieldhouse is always memorable, just stepping into such a historic building and the hatred that’s felt. Words don’t even have to be communicated, or I should say shouted between fans and us as we walk out for pregame warmups, you could just feel it.
Ryan Robertson, KU guard (1995-99): Coach (Roy) Williams and Coach Stewart put on a nice face and acted professional, and I think there was respect but there was also animosity. Yeah, they got each other because they had been in the business for so long, but they weren’t going to go to dinner together.
Link: Coach Stewart would always get us together and say, “Fellas, a couple things when we go to KU. I’ll take care of the referees. I’ll take care of the fans. I’ll take care of the coaches. I’ll take care of everything else. You’ve got two things to worry about. You’ve got five guys. I’ll make sure they only have five out there on the floor. Once they throw up the ball, I can’t do anything to help you out there between the lines.”
Then to bring a little bit of the joviality back into it, he says, “I’ll tell you something else too. Hey, there’s been skirmishes out over here, and I don’t expect us to get in one, but if something happens, run to the band, get the biggest instrument you can handle and just start swinging. Because that’s the only way we’re going to get out of here.”
Scot Pollard, KU center (1993-97): Roy used to play up the rivalry as well. He’d always talk about Norm Stewart. “That guy’s bigger than me, but if he challenged me to a fight …” I know those guys played golf together and probably loved telling these stories to each team to get us fired up for the Border War. They were probably really good friends on the side.
The Antlers
Missouri’s unofficial student group, founded in 1976, put a lot of effort into making life miserable before, during and after games for the Jayhawks.
Mark Randall, KU forward (1986-91): The Antlers were a bunch of idiots. When we went to Columbia, I don’t know how they did it, but they were all able to get our phone numbers somehow. So they’d always like to call us a couple days before we came to town, chirping. And most of it was good-natured but they’d like to call us at like 2, 3, 4 in the morning and decide that was when they wanted to chirp us. Didn’t really care for that.
Rex Walters, KU guard (1991-93): They would find out which hotel we were staying in and they’d find our room numbers.
Randall: The year we won the championship in 1988, I took a medical redshirt and had jaw surgery. When we came to Columbia, they came to the door at about 3:30 in the morning and knocked pretty loud and then took off. On the doorstep was a Domino’s pizza with jawbreakers on it. That’s funny. That’s definitely funny. How they delivered it — not so much.
Advertisement
Walters: You get off the bus, and the Antlers are there waiting for you. They’re going off. They’re calling you every name in the book, and it’s not like one or two guys. It’s like 50 guys, waiting for you. And it’s cold. That’s about 15 seconds you’re walking from the bus to the gym, and you’re freezing. They’re out there, like shirts off, antler ears up, complete and total insanity, and it’s on. It’s on tonight.
Pollard: They’d always pick a player on our team and have his jersey on a dummy on a stick. As soon as we got off the bus, they’d light it on fire. That was intimidating. Roy would program us. He’d say, “Boys, they’re here, of course. Just walk in the gym. Don’t make eye contact. You’re just going to make it worse. We’re here to do a job. We’re here to play a game, and we’re not here to interact with some stupid fans.”
Pollard: The Antlers would hurl insults at you during the game. You miss a shot or you miss a free throw, and it wasn’t like, Ohhh, you let the team down. It was, you know, adult language. It was very insulting and it was cool from one standpoint. They’d throw stuff at you. There were batteries and coins on the court sometimes after a game. I’d hear stories of guys getting hit with stuff. They were creative, and they were intimidating and scary, and it was a different level.
Walters: They are going to say whatever they can say and do whatever they can do, and of course, I egged it on. I’d do the fist pump in front of the Antlers. I’d do a little flex action. Next thing you know there are cups of Pepsi being thrown at you during the game, which I asked for. I liked that stuff.
Robertson: I’ve got kids of my own now and we were watching a game somewhere, and a guy got booed. I told my kids the story how for four years, every time I touched the ball in that building, they would boo me. My freshman year I kind of got it, but after that I thought it would wane a little bit. But it intensified. It made me play with a little bit more intensity and focus, and I played pretty well there the four times we were in that building. Besides the fact I had friends and family and my fiancée and now wife was going to school there, all of those things made it a really important game for me.
Norm stories
Owens: We used to go to the Big Eight tournament in Kansas City and all the teams stayed at the Muehlebach Hotel. Then we’d walk underground over to Municipal Auditorium. Norm’s wife, Virginia, and I had always been good friends and their daughter, Laura, was 8 at the time. They’d ride up and down the elevators and she’d punch every number and stop on every floor. So she and I became just great friends riding the elevator.
Years later, we were playing against Missouri at a tournament in Kansas City when I was the coach at Oral Roberts. Norm hated it that his daughter liked me. He didn’t want her to like anything about Kansas. Rich Daly (a Missouri assistant) came over and said, “Coach, I have to tell you something funny.” The night before Norm had all of his family in. Laura is now grown up and married, and he said to her, “Laura, I’m tired of you saying how much you like Ted Owens. If you had heard what he said about me during recruiting time, you wouldn’t think that much of him.” And he described me in a way that you can’t print. Rich and I had a great laugh over that.
Advertisement
Long after I had retired, I took my son, Teddy, to a game against Missouri. I was on my way to sit with all of my Kansas players from previous years, and Rich stopped me and said Norm wants you to come back and say hello. So I introduced Teddy to Coach Stewart and we had a great visit. About that time the Missouri team came in, and Norm said, “You wouldn’t say a few words to the team, would you?” So I was caught in an awkward position of talking to the Missouri team before they played Kansas. I basically told the team what great respect I had for Norm and what a great job he had done.
Kansas leads comfortably until the last three or four minutes, but Missouri makes a run. They’re coming back and it looked like Missouri might win the game at the last minute. I said to Teddy, “I could just see it now. Missouri beats Kansas here and some Missouri players said they were inspired by Ted Owens’ speech.” I said, “Please, God, don’t let Missouri win.” We had a good laugh and fortunately, Kansas held on and won.
Jon Sundvold, MU guard (1979-83): When we played there my junior year, Norm Stewart had the bus stop in front of Allen Fieldhouse. Normally you drive the bus to the back of the arena and walk to the locker room. On this day, the students were lined up out front. Coach Stewart had the bus driver stop the bus out front on Naismith Drive. It’s a long walk, but he wanted to go right by the students. That was Norm Stewart. There was a little message that we had arrived. And I don’t think he had to say a word for pregame just because of all the nice language that was being yelled at us from the Kansas student body as we walked through them.
Grawer: My freshman year, Coach Stewart said, “All right, fellas. We’re doing this differently.” He goes, “I hate these guys so much that I need to focus on the game and not substitutions.” So he paired us up with a KU player and would be like, In the first half, this is how we’re substituting. I ain’t worried about substitution patterns. If you see your guy that you’re paired up with coming off the bench, that’s your responsibility to check yourself into the game.
Stewart: I said, “When that guy comes in, you don’t say hi, bye or anything. Get up and go.”
Grawer: Here I am as a freshman point guard thinking, Boy, I’ve got two options: I’m either going to get paired up with Ryan Robertson, who plays like 39 minutes a game, or C.B. McGrath, who plays one minute in each half. So when I saw my name get paired up with Robertson, I was thrilled, because I knew I was going to get a lot of run. If you were on the bench, you caught yourself staring down at the Kansas bench the whole time just waiting for your guy to get up, and then you sprinted to that table. Or you would be on the court and you see the guy coming in to substitute. Oh great, I’m coming out. It was a unique experience.
Greg Gurley, KU guard (1991-95): When you played against Missouri, you’d almost hear Norm talking more than anybody else — as far as the trash-talking with players, it was more Norm than anybody.
Milt Newton, KU forward (1984-89): We happened to have some pretty crazy guys. Norm said something to Calvin Thompson, who was a major trash-talker, and Calvin responded by saying something about one of his family members. I was like, I can’t believe he just said that.
Legendary performances
You could often throw out the records when KU and Missouri played. In 1972, the Tigers (19-3 at the time) visited Allen Fieldhouse for Senior Day. The Jayhawks had one of their few losing seasons and finished 7-7 in the Big Eight, but senior Bud Stallworth was a bright spot, winning Big Eight Player of the Year and setting a single-game scoring record in the rivalry that day.
Advertisement
Link: Coach Stewart said, “Not one player can beat this team.” And I mean to tell you, Bud put 50 on us.
Stewart: I want to be careful. I have great feelings about all the coaches and players we played against, so I want it to sound right. But I had a player named Al Eberhard, and Al had two quick fouls, so I took him off and I didn’t think about putting him on Stallworth. He could guard Stallworth. In fact, I don’t think Bud liked Al. I don’t think he liked his style of play. We’ll put it that way.
Link: I’m not going to say I guarded him, but I was assigned to him. The way Bud remembers it, I was the only guy who gave him 50; we had four guys who guarded him. We were all assigned to him, but none of us guarded him. He was as good as any college player I’ve ever seen on one particular day.
Bud Stallworth, KU forward (1969-72): Scoring 50 against MU happened at the end of my senior year and will always be one of my fondest memories as a Jayhawk. I still feel honored when fans stop to tell me that they were there that day and then share their special memories with me of that game. Some were children attending with their parents almost 47 years ago.
In 1988, everyone remembers KU winning the national title, but the season was at a crossroads when the calendar flipped to January. Archie Marshall, who tore his right ACL in the Final Four against Duke in 1986, returned after missing the 1986-87 season. He had earned a starting spot that year, but on Dec. 29 against St. John’s at Madison Square Garden, Marshall tore the ACL in his other knee and his college career was finished. Eleven days later, KU hosted Missouri and redshirt junior Milt Newton was now a starter.
Newton: They had Derrick Chievous and that group. They always had pretty good teams ranked in the top 20; they had a lot of players who came from Detroit schools. But it really didn’t matter most of the time who they had, because we were going to end up winning the game anyway. I scored 21 points and had my career high at the time, so it was a good coming-out party for me.
KU won, 78-74. Newton later sent me this video with the caption, “What we thought about Missouri Basketball.”
Speaking of dunks, the greatest dunk in the history of the rivalry arguably is one that didn’t count. On March 5, 2000, Missouri’s Keyon Dooling basically jumped over KU’s Ashante Johnson only to be shockingly called for a charge.
Kareem Rush, MU guard (1999-02): I was right behind him when he took off. I had the best view of it. It wasn’t a charge. His facial reaction afterward was what was priceless. I couldn’t believe it either. That was a great moment.
Advertisement
Walters: The game I will never forget was the one in Lawrence in 1992 when Anthony Peeler went for 43. I just remember Coach Williams saying, “Hey, one guy can’t beat us.” And I looked at him, like, Hey, this guy might beat us tonight. He’s pretty freaking good. But we ended up getting the W.
In the last Border War at Allen Fieldhouse in 2012, Missouri led by 19 in the second half. A win for the Tigers would have meant the two teams shared the Big 12 title, and it would have been a season sweep for MU. KU rallied, and star big man Thomas Robinson went to the line with 16.9 seconds left with a chance to tie the game on a three-point play. A year earlier Robinson had lost two grandparents and his mother within a month’s time.
English: That instance with Thomas gives me chills. He’d just went through something that no one that young should go through, losing his mom. I was hoping that he’d miss. I was getting ready to box out, and he touched the tattoo of his mom and whispered something. I put my head down, like, Make it. Whatever. I knew he wasn’t going to miss that free throw after that.
Robinson (in “Beyond the Streak”): “We wore a patch honoring my mom on my left shoulder of our jerseys. It had her initials on it. And I have her name tattooed on my wrists. I’d say ‘Lisa’ and then I’d just rub her tattoo.”
Robinson made the free throw and then blocked Phil Pressey’s shot to send the game to overtime. Allen Fieldhouse was so loud after Robinson’s block that the vibrations from the building froze my laptop. Kansas would win, 87-86.
Winning in the other team’s house
Link: When we played at Allen Fieldhouse, we spent not one dime — not one dime — in the state of Kansas. We’d stay at a hotel in Kansas City, Mo., the night before. We’d get up the next morning, have a nice breakfast and drive over to Allen Fieldhouse. We’d play the game, we’d get back on the bus and we’d come home.
It was a very, very tough place to play, but if you go back and check the records, my junior year we beat KU at Allen Fieldhouse 79-63. I remember the score because not many people beat them by 16 points. With 10 seconds left, Coach Stewart came down to the end of the bench and said, You shake hands, you guys go in the locker room and you wait for me.
Advertisement
To KU’s credit, they had some of the best and more knowledgeable fans in America. They stayed until the very end. We get in the locker room and we’re pretty jacked. But we’re also very, very afraid of Norm Stewart. That was a young Norm Stewart, and people who didn’t know him when he was young, they have no idea the respect that he demanded from his players and the fear that we all had of him. So we’re all sitting in there after the game and feeling good, but no one is really saying anything. He walks in, looks at us and says, “Take a shower and get on the bus.” Then he walked out. I remember looking over to Al Eberhard, and I said, “He knows we won, right?”
But again, the fear factor. You know what we did? We took our showers and got on the bus, and it was like crickets. Coach Stewart always sat in the front of the bus. As soon as that bus crossed the state line from Kansas to Missouri, Coach Stewart walked back to the middle of the bus and said, “OK, let it all out.” And I’m telling you what, I almost thought we were going to turn the bus over. Guys were jumping off of guys. The bus driver was screaming, and he was pumping his fist. We got over to Kansas City, Mo., and we had one of the best meals I can remember after a great win. We gassed the bus up, and we came back home.
Stewart won 11 times as a coach at Allen Fieldhouse, and one of the most memorable trips was in 1990. Mizzou had already handed the top-ranked Jayhawks their first loss of the season in Columbia, 95-87. The Jayhawks won their next five and climbed back to No. 1, but on Feb. 13, Mizzou came in ranked No. 2 and upset the Jayhawks for a second time, 77-71.
Stewart: Dick Vitale was there doing his usual thing on TV, saying, “Mizzou is going down in Lawrence.” You know, players watch that stuff. We beat them over there, and it was really a good team with Doug Smith and Anthony Peeler. I had a guard, John McIntyre, and he had not had a good game in Columbia, and boy, when we went to Lawrence, he lit them up. He absolutely lit them up.
Stewart’s next win in Lawrence came in 1994, the year the Tigers went undefeated in the Big Eight.
Stewart: Melvin Booker came to me before the game said, “Coach, I’ve been here four times. That sign down at the end, Beware of the Phog, what does that mean?”
On the banquet circuit, it becomes a story: Well, Melvin, that’s the way they spell fog in Kansas. I said to Melvin, “A great coach here was Dr. F.C. Allen, and his nickname was Phog. So that is on the sign, and the idea is that as we play and get into the important part of the game, a fog will develop over your end of the floor and you won’t be able to see or play because of a lack of sight.”
Advertisement
Booker: It was on national TV. That’s one game that sticks out, because I didn’t beat them my first three years and it was my first win in Kansas. I was feeling good that day. The jump shot was feeling good, and I ran off a few points in a row to get us to tie or take the lead.
Stewart: At the end of that ballgame, Melvin hit three 3s and we won going away. He came to me in the dressing room and said, “Do you think I cleared out the fog?” I said, “Yes you did, Melvin. That was a great exhibition, but I’m going to tell you something. Don’t you say anything until we got on the bus, or we might not get out of here alive.”
From 1996 to 1998, KU had one of its best three-year runs in school history. Despite their lack of tournament success in those years, the Jayhawks lost only seven regular-season games. Three of those losses came in Columbia. The 1998-99 season was a down year for the Jayhawks, but Robertson finally got his first win at Hearnes Center.
Robertson: We never played a lot of zone, but we played a lot of it against them that day. Our zone was called “point defense,” so I would have to throw up a No. 1 signal that would tell my team we were playing zone defense. I heard after the fact that a lot of Missouri fans thought I was being cocky and arrogant, because every time we scored, I put up a No. 1 like, I’m No. 1. It still makes me chuckle all these years later that people thought I was arrogant.
I felt real relief. The idea I would not go to Missouri and play at Kansas and never had the chance to win a game there, that would have been a hard pill to swallow for a long time. So the fact I got a W there meant a lot.
Thirteen days later, Missouri traveled to KU for what would be Stewart’s final game as coach in the rivalry.
Grawer: We practiced back in Columbia how we were going to celebrate when we beat Kansas in Lawrence. We practiced just walking off the court and shaking hands, and once we get to the locker room, we can go nuts, but we’re walking off that court expecting this was no surprise to us.
Advertisement
Stewart: My wife was going to have surgery the day after the game. I told her, “You know, my team is so ready to play that I’m not worried about it. We’re going to win.” That was coaching bullshit. I said, “I’m not going to go to the game.” She said, “You’re going to the game.” So I didn’t tell the players. I said, “Here’s how we’re going to react. After we win, I want you to walk to the bench and stand there. No celebration. You just stand there and admire the crowd. Then we’re going to shake hands.” So we practiced that. We put the score up, put the horn on and it went off, but guys were not allowed to jump around. So we practiced our celebration, which you know, there’s psychological bullshit to that, because winning and losing is not the objective; it’s to get to the point where you don’t do anything.
Grawer: There was no better sound in my college career than the silence when you leave Allen Fieldhouse after beating them. That was the most gratifying. To this day, I get excited and the tone of my voice gets excited talking about that. Not to have to hear “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” chanted at the end of the game was an incredible feat.
(Top photo: Rich Sugg/Kansas City Star/MCT via Getty Images
