Braggin’ Rights for Missouri
Over the last four years the Braggin’ Rights game pitting Missouri against Illinois has been a great way to start the season…at least for the fans. The tradition of that rivalry goes back to 1896, but the teams have squared off on the field just 24 times in their long histories. Having that rivalry back has been a treat and it really signaled the start of the football season on a weekend that is often littered with not so great games.
The original game, back in 1896, was played in St. Louis and the Illini won 10-0. The series was sporadically played in Columbia, Missouri and Champaign, Illinois over the years, ending in 1994…which was incidentally the last time the Tigers lost to the Illini. In 2002 the Braggin’ Rights game was moved to the neutral site of St. Louis. They played in 2002 and 2003 before taking a short hiatus and resuming the series in 2007.
The game will certainly be missed on opening weekend of college football, unless you are an Illinois fan since they have a nice habit of losing to Missouri every year. Perhaps moving the game to East St. Louis and playing in Illinois instead of Missouri would balance things out a little bit. There might be a stadium in East St. Louis that can sit a few hundred people or so. With the Big 12 moving down to ten teams and having nine conference games, it may be unlikely that this rivalry resumes any time soon. The Tigers would like to have a little more leeway in their scheduling.
Now that Colorado and Nebraska are out of the conference, Missouri has to play all those quality teams in Texas and Oklahoma every year. Adding a team like Illinois to the schedule would not make things any easier and would certainly limit their options for scheduling a decent home and home series with another BCS school. The Tigers will most likely do what many Pac-12 teams have done in the past and schedule a couple cupcakes with one quality opponent before getting into conference play. If that is the case, there will not be anything to brag about for a while.
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