Merry Christmas to All! It's fun to share. Glad y'all are enjoying these clips from the past. Here's a good one.
The 1961 KU vs MU game is the game I remember the most. KU was 6-2-1 going into the Missouri game with a one-point loss at TCU and a one-point loss at Colorado. KU was loaded with All-American John Hadl at quarterback, Bert Coan and Curtis McClinton at halfback, and Doyle Shick at fullback. (All four would go on to play professional football.)
Both teams were highly ranked. It was a much-anticipated game. I have mental pictures of this day. A bright, crisp fall day with the field surrounded by Kansas Highway patrolmen, many of them with German police dogs! Thatās how intense the rivalry was still 100 years after the start of the Civil War. (People just don't realize how intense the rivalry was. German shepards surrounded the playing field!) Before the game, the spirit squad had covered the bottom of the south goal posts with a paper sign encouraging KU, and the team was to charge out of the locker room, burst through the sign and onto the field. Before the KU players came out of their locker room (in those days under the east stands), a Missouri student ran onto the field toward the sign-covered south goal posts. A highway patrolman with a German Shepherd on a leash started after him. Just as the Missouri student broke through the sign, the German Shepherd was nipping at the buttocks of the studentās blue jeans. (A mental picture that is indelibly etched in my mind.)
The game ended dramatically with the Columbia blue-clad KU Jayhawks leading 7ā3 when, late in the fourth quarter, a KU fumble near the west sideline (back-lit by a late fall sun) bounced in the air. A MU player grabbed it and ran it in for a 10ā7 Missouri victory. (Another mental picture Iāll never forget)
In spite of the loss, KU went to the Bluebonnet Bowl, and MU did not get a bowl invitation! Ha ha. Missouri officials were, of course, incensed. So they tattled to the Big 8 Conference. Bert Coan, a Texas recruit, had been flown in the private airplane of Bud Adams, owner of the Houston Oilers, to the College All-Star game in Chicago, Illinois. Bud Adams was also an alumnus of the University of Kansas. The violation of rules, however, happened when Coan was previously enrolled at TCU!
Still, the Big 8 forfeited KUās win two years previously in 1960 when MU had been ranked #1, thus erasing Missouriās only loss that year. Missouri counts the 1960 game as a win by forfeit, thus giving it the only undefeated and untied season in school history. However, Kansas (and the NCAA) count the game as a Kansas victory. Ever since, the two universities have disputed the overall wināloss record in (what used to be) the longest-running continuous series west of the Mississippi River.
Coan, notable for his extraordinary speed (9.4 in the 100-yard dash) at 6ā 5ā and 220 lb., went on to play in 72 games in seven seasons in the American Football League, the first season with the San Diego Chargers and the rest with the Kansas City Chiefs.
