I hate the University of Missouri. It’s in my blood.It’s a petty thing, and I know it. Always have. I carry it around, constantly tainted with a putrid smear of guilt for feeling so malicious towards something so faceless as an institution and a town. For me and many of my fellow Jayhawks, Saturday night’s Kansas-Missouri basketball game was not some pithy exercise, one school’s undergraduates scrimmaging another school’s undergraduates. It was an emotional tsunami, something that truly deserved the raw vitriol and venom it inspired, as well as the name “Border War,” the rivalry compounded this year by Missouri’s money-grubbing move from the Big 12 Conference to the SEC. It was the last meeting that wouldn’t be marginalized into the quid-pro-quo, transactional nature of nonconference basketball, and to folks of a certain persuasion, it meant everything—and to some others, way more than that. A loss to Mizzou here, at college basketball’s holiest site (what do Dean Smith, Adolph Rupp, Wilt Chamberlain, and James Naismith have in common?), would make a heart heavy for decades. So Saturday, it was KU-MU, one last time, in Allen Fieldhouse, a funeral for the most vicious, violent rivalry in sports.I won’t recap, but did you see this goddamn game? It was affecting (Joe Posnanski, maybe the most respected sportswriter in the country, said it was the best live sporting event he had ever attended). KU burrowed out of a massive, existential-panic-inducing hole (down 19 in the second half), forced OT on a block by Jayhawk forward/POY favorite/badass avatar/tattoo totem Thomas Robinson and won on a defensive stand where Mizzou’s warrior guard, Marcus Denmon, couldn’t quite get into scoring position in time. Every motion in the last minute of overtime was overflowing with meaning: Kansas, on the verge of an eighth straight Big 12 title, was on its celebrated home court losing to its biggest rival in the final moments of the season’s best game. It seems silly to so heedlessly hang one’s hopes, dreams and futures on something so arbitrary, and you know? It is silly. But as Phil Pressey drove toward Robinson, the immovable object blocked the shit out of the irresistible force. And yeah, probably fouled him. But, for one of those rare times in life, the violent jerk of the moment was the only way it could have happened. MU-KU is one, long, noisy clash, and Pressey-meets-Robinson resounded like hot steel meeting concrete in midair.The history between the schools is well documented, bloody, and disgusting. (Google William Quantrill, then John Brown. That will pretty much bring you up to speed.) As a region, we still haven’t gotten over it. Kansas’s program, like many of the elite college programs, is nothing without its history—its own mythmaking cycle that has made immortal, etched-in-brass names like Naismith and Chamberlain, and monoliths of lesser figures who are rooted more deeply in the narrative, figures like Bud Stallworth, Raef LaFrentz, and Mario Chalmers. KU and MU have played football against one another since 1891 and basketball against one another since 1907. Missouri’s own history is less celebrated, but also imbued by this overarching tradition; if UNC-Duke are the blue bloods of basketball, KU-MU are all about actual blood getting spilled. Imperfect, human, seedy, and exquisitely American.Mizzou’s decision to leave the conference has everything to do with ink (the green kind) and nothing to do with blood. I can understand the rationale, which is not at all to say that I endorse it. And though I wish MU nothing but the worst, the demotion of this rivalry into a caricature makes me unbelievably sad. College sports is not about prowess, but about pageantry, something I learned from experience. Not even my hate for MU can eclipse the hollow sadness of losing this vitality, something so far removed from yourself that you care for it like it’s your own body. Mizzou and KU’s future wars will be fought out in the bloodless nonconference arena. It’s stupid to care so much about something as pointless and crazy as an annual basketball game, but tragic that something that inspired so much passion has to end. The rivalry’s a-mouldering in its grave.@corbangoble