Prior to the 2010 Insight Bowl, the Tigers and Hawkeyes hadn’t played for a century despite the states bordering one another. Why?
When Mizzou and Iowa take the field at Nissan Stadium Monday for the 26th edition of the Music City Bowl, it’ll be the first time the Tigers and Hawkeyes meet on the football field since 2010.
That matchup came in the Insight Bowl, where unranked Iowa upset No. 14 Mizzou 27-24 in Tempe, Arizona. Before that game, the two teams hadn’t played since 1910, which is odd.
Like, really odd.
At the power conference level, most teams have last played other teams in their border states in, at the very least, this century. There are a few exceptions: West Virginia and Ohio State, for example, last played in 1998. North Carolina and Tennessee last played on a campus in 1961. Kentucky last met the Mountaineers on a campus in 1979, the Buckeyes in 1935, Virginia in 1930 and Illinois in 1913.
Since Mizzou began playing American football in 1890, the Tigers have forged longstanding relationships with regional foes on the gridiron. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, teams traveled to road games by train; the first passenger flight wouldn’t take off until 1914. Thus, road trips were usually confined to within a certain radius of a team’s home campus (unless you were Sewanee, in which case you were traveling everywhere all the time).
For its first 20 years of existence, Mizzou’s travels often took it around the Show-Me State, which included frequent trips to St. Louis for battles with Washington University. The Gateway City also saw the Tigers meet other Midwest teams in the middle, such as Northwestern, Purdue and Illinois. By the start of World War I, Mizzou had visited Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Indiana and Texas.
The relationship with the Cornhuskers and Jayhawks, however, was especially strong, as the three of them helped form the four-team Western Interstate University Football Association (WIUFA) in 1892. The WIUFA was one of the first major collegiate conferences; most teams were Independent back then.
The fourth team in that conference? Iowa, whom Mizzou would play 12 times from 1892-1910. When the WIUFA was formed, there seemed to be a good chance that the Hawkeyes would develop the same kind of rivalrous relationship with the Tigers as Kansas and Nebraska would (although the Border War is in a different stratosphere in terms of genuine hatred between the two schools).
But in Nov. 1910, after Mizzou had taken its third consecutive contest against Iowa, University of Missouri President A. Ross Hill wrote a letter to University of Iowa President George MacLean stating, “There will be nothing for us to do but sever athletic relations”. Then-Iowa head coach Jesse Hawley also declared that the Hawkeyes would never again play the Tigers under his watch.
Hawley left Iowa city in 1915 — he’d go on to coach Dartmouth, his alma mater, where the team would claim a national title in 1925 after an 8-0 season. But even when Hawley became a king in New Hampshire, his proclamation still held strong, as Mizzou and Iowa still hadn’t played each other. When the two teams were matched up in the 2010 Insight Bowl, it broke an ice that’d been frozen over for a century.
Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images
But why? Why were two teams whose states bordered one another, whose teams were a part of college football’s earliest era of conferences, separated from competition on the football field? The answer is rooted in that period from 1892-1910, which was marred with violence, racism and much of what constituted a darker side of Missouri as a state.
1892: Mizzou 24, Iowa 0
To preface, I hope you enjoy history. If not, perhaps this article can be an exception.
Missouri’s history is filled with flagrant racism that has unfortunately extended well into the 21st century. A tangible origin of such can be found in 1720, when French merchant Philippe François Renault brought about 500 slaves of African descent from Saint-Domingue to southeast Missouri. A century later, The Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state in order to balance the number of free and slave states in the U.S. 34 years later, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, allowing popular sovereignty to decide whether slavery would expand into the newly-admitted Kansas Territory or not. Desperately desiring to uphold slavery, loads of Missourians made their way to Kansas to vote in favor of slavery. When anti-slavery forces met them having the same idea, violence erupted between the two sides in what became known as “Bleeding Kansas”, which became the genesis for the Mizzou-Kansas rivalry in athletics.
Speaking of athletics, Mizzou was the last Big 8 team to integrate its football team; its first black players, Norris Stevenson and Mel West, joined the team in 1957 (however, MU wasn’t the last to integrate, as Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Ole Miss wouldn’t integrate until 1971. You know, two years after humans landed on the f***ing moon).
Those feelings didn’t magically disappear when it came to football. In 1892, the WIUFA’s inaugural season, Mizzou started its campaign against Nebraska, where the Tigers … refused to play the Cornhuskers altogether. NU’s best player, running back George Albert Flippin, was Black. The Tigers apparently thought that was the worst thing in the world, so instead of getting over themselves, MU opted to forfeit the game instead. The following season, the conference passed a new rule that imposed a $50 fine on any team that refused to play a conference game. Mizzou ended up swallowing its pride, playing against Flippin and the Cornhuskers in 1893 and 1894.
Nebraska Athletic Department
After taking a triumphant stance against integration, MU would dominate Iowa in its first-ever matchup with the Hawkeyes. The forfeit to Nebraska didn’t end up costing Mizzou a conference title; the Tigers finished 1-2 (all three games were WIUFA contests), while Kansas claimed the crown at 7-1 (3-0 WIUFA, including a 12-4 win over Mizzou).
1893: Iowa 34, Mizzou 12
After being thumped in the previous year’s contest, Iowa flipped the script in 1893, handing Mizzou what would be its only loss in the month of November.
The Hawkeyes scored four touchdowns in the first half (the value of a touchdown wouldn’t increase to six until 1912), paving the way for a dominant victory. However, the teams would finish at opposite ends of the standings; MU won the conference at 4-3 (2-1 WIUFA), while Iowa finished last at 3-4 (1-2 WIUFA).
While this game didn’t feature any violent extracurriculars, the genesis of this series’ ultimate termination began the following season in Columbia.
1894: Mizzou 32, Iowa 6
The 1894 contest between Mizzou and Iowa was extremely well-attended: according to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, all Columbia business houses closed for the game, and folks from several surrounding cities such as Fulton, Mexico and Moberly took “special trains” into Columbia for the clash. The estimated number of spectators reached the thousands for a game that featured both teams having not lost in conference play up to that point.
In the first half, Mizzou crushed Iowa, but tempers wouldn’t start flaring until about midway through the second half, when a Hawkeye quarterback and a Tiger defensive lineman started fighting each other.
Now, in today’s sports-verse, altercations between two players are often quelled pretty quickly, even in a league like the NHL where fist fighting is not infringed upon by the referees. In the late-19th century, fights between players often spread to the stands, and even if they didn’t end up involving spectators, they often became entranced in the fisticuffs.
That spring, Baltimore Orioles third baseman John McGraw kicked Tommy “Foghorn” Tucker of the Boston Beaneaters in the face as he slid into third. Tucker jumped up and threw a punch at McGraw, and the two began swinging at one another. The fight caught the attention of the spectators at the South End Grounds in Boston, so much so that no one seemed to notice a fire under the bleachers in right field. While Boston right fielder James “Foxy” Bannon tried to stomp out the flames, a gust of wind spread the fire into the grandstand. The South End Grounds would end up burning to the ground, as did more than 12 acres, of land and about 200 buildings valued at more than $300,000 in what became known as “The Great Roxbury Fire”. The blaze could’ve easily been prevented had a fight not caught the attention of so many who could’ve helped.
goodoldboston.blogspot.com
Back to Rollins Field. As the two players skirmished, “the entire male audience swarmed on to the field and proceeded to give the Iowa team the biggest scare of its existence,” according to the Iowa Alumni Association. Another account said that Iowa players were “struck with canes and fists”. Also according to the Iowa Alumni Association, several Hawkeye players were arrested by an “officious constable”. The game was called at 2:30 p.m. CST with the Tigers up big.
1895: Mizzou 34, Iowa 0
In 1895, Iowa football made history when Frank “Kinney” Holbrook, a freshman from Tipton, Iowa, joined the team. He became the first black intercollegiate athlete at the school since its founding in 1847.
1898 Hawkeye Yearbook
While Mizzou had chosen to forfeit its game against Nebraska three years ago because of the Cornhuskers having a black player on their team, the Tigers did not do so this time around. Part of it could’ve been the fact that Holbrook, who played starting left end on defense, wasn’t an impact player like Flippin was for NU. Iowa was also a porous squad in 1895, having staved off bankruptcy before the season courtesy of emergency fundraising. The lack of money led to Iowa playing the 1895 season without a head coach; a disorganized atmosphere as a result contributed to the Hawkeyes finishing the season just 2-5.
Regardless of what ended up pushing the Tigers to play this game, Mizzou rolled over Iowa. A win over Kansas the following week clinched a three-way share of the WIUFA title with the Jayhawks and Nebraska.
However, while Holbrook didn’t encounter any publicized racist incidents at Mizzou, he did before the Hawkeyes even arrived in the Show-Me State. When Iowa boarded its train bound for Columbia, the train employees, including the conductor, refused to acknowledge Holbrook’s existence. When the team stopped at a hotel for dinner in Cameron, Missouri, Holbrook was stopped by the landlord and informed that, “n*****s could not eat in that dining room”. Despite several of Holbrook’s teammates standing up for him, the landlord didn’t budge, and the team left the hotel. The train was held until a place was found where Holbrook could eat with his teammates.
The following season, Holbrook and Iowa would return to Missouri. This time, however, Holbrook had blossomed into one of the best ball-carries in the country at left halfback along with becoming Iowa’s best defensive player. He’d given the vaunted University of Chicago Maroons its toughest test of the season, and his touchdown against Kansas was the only one in Iowa’s 6-0 victory that put the school in position for a share of its first conference title.
Holbrook was now a known figure in college football. In that era, however, being Black and successful was a double-edged sword. In 1896, Holbrook would meet the other side of it.
1896: Iowa 12, Mizzou 0
In the days leading up to the 1896 contest, Mizzou alumni sent word to new Iowa head coach Alfred E. Bull demanding that Holbrook not play. Bull declined, saying that there would be no game if Holbrook weren’t allowed to play. Since MU would be fined if it ditched a conference game, the Tigers reluctantly agreed to take the field.
The night before the game, MU fans filled the visitors’ hotel, voicing their dissent of a Black player sharing the same field as Mizzou.
“Alumni of Missouri could be heard in the corridors of the hotel at which the Iowa team was staying, and in other public places, saying in terms too offensive to print that they hoped the Missouri team would ‘kill the Negro’,” Iowa’s student newspaper, the Vidette-Reporter, claimed.
Upon Iowa’s arrival to mid-Missouri, Holbrook was refused admittance into all Columbia hotels before being taken in by a local black barber. MU officials asked Iowa to not bring Holbrook to the stadium for the game; once again, Iowa declined, and Holbrook would suit up for the Hawkeyes. Coach Bull had pulled Holbrook aside before the game and asked him if he wanted to play under these circumstances.
“Sure I will,” Holbrook responded.
It was a frigid November day in Missouri, and a crowd of about 600 turned up to watch the Hawkeyes and Tigers battle. According to an Iowa reporter, Mizzou fans did not hide their feelings towards Holbrook, which included numerous racially-charged chants such as “kill the ni****r!”. They also waved “canes, clubs, and wagon spokes” in the air. On the field, the Tigers continuously hit Holbrook with cheap shots, but Holbrook kept getting up.
“He made numerous brilliant tackles and runs, even though the players with whom he was about to collide were being urged to do him violence by such remarks as ‘Now’s your time, Conley, to kill that ——- n****r!’ and ‘Kill him, Hill!’,” the Vidette-Reporter noted. “And it was evident that each man tried to do as he was bid by his admiring supporters, but never once did Holbrook show the least intimidation.”
Iowa would take an early 12-0 lead, which included a touchdown from Holbrook. But almost all civility would evaporate by the third quarter. Frustrations from losing, along with the apparently daunting existence of being a Black football player, had been boiling over on Mizzou’s side for a while. Towards the end of the first half, Mizzou players were arguing with officials over a play where Holbrook tackled a Tiger into the stands. MU player Hal A. Conley punched one official, Professor Dehn, square in the face.
What Conley did was obviously wrong — he was ultimately ejected from the game. But similarly to on-field fights heavily involving the crowd, assaulting referees/umpires was commonplace at this point in history. It was especially wild in baseball, where one umpire was straight up shot and killed during a game (yes, baseball was completely nuts in the early days of the MLB).
At halftime, Mizzou head coach Frank Patterson physically threatened Dehn after he refused to reinstate Conley. Dehn initially stood his ground, but in a shocking turn of events, it was Iowa’s coaching staff who also asked Dehn to reinstate Conley. The only reason the Hawkeyes wanted to do so is because they didn’t want an already-furious Mizzou crowd to become even angrier. Dehn reluctantly agreed to rescind his ejection of Conley.
Eight minutes into the second half, however, that decision proved to be costly for Dehn. After Iowa left tackle Kalita Leighton dropped the ball following a whistle from Dehn, Mizzou’s Hill picked up the pigskin and began running downfield. Hill claimed to have not heard the whistle; after Holbrook tracked him down forty yards down the field, Dehn ordered that the ball be placed back where Leighton was downed.
In a totally reasonable act of defiance, Conley grabbed Dehn by the neck; although Dehn fought himself free and began walking away, Conley punched Dehn a second time, this time in the back of the head. Dehn tumbled to the turf, and the other officials agreed to call the game.
After Iowa had boarded its bus, Mizzou fans started pelting the vehicle with rocks. The bus was only able to pull away due to the presence of a sheriff, two deputies on horseback and three large gentlemen with shotguns.
In large part due to the hostility of the 1896 contest, Mizzou and Iowa refused to play each other in 1897; because there were only four teams in the WIUFA that played each other round-robin style, two of its teams not playing each other prevented the conference from operating. The WIUFA would dissolve in 1897; the Hawkeyes wouldn’t schedule the Tigers again in football until 1902.
1902: Mizzou 6, Iowa 0
In Mizzou’s first trip to Iowa City since 1893, there would be more controversy surrounding the referees. MU’s 6-0 clunker over Iowa featured a touchdown that shouldn’t have counted, according to the Omaha Daily Bee.
“Birner made an eighty-yard run after catching a punt. Briggs, Iowa’s center, was held by a Missouri halfback as he was about to tackle Birner soon after the Missouri runner started in his big gain,” they said. “Umpire Burkland did not see it and would not allow a penalty,”
However, the ensuing drive saw another missed call, according to the Bee.
“Birner was downed on Iowa’s twenty-five-yard line, and on Iowa’s twenty-yard line Perry fumbled and Hollenbrek fell on the ball, but the referee did not see this and would not allow it.”
Iowa had been looking to establish some normalcy — in the two weeks prior to playing MU, the Hawkeyes fell to Michigan 107-0, then beat Washington University 61-0. Unfortunately, they couldn’t win their first low-scoring affair in almost three weeks. Iowa would end the season with an 80-0 loss at the hands of Illinois the following week.
1903: Iowa 16, Mizzou 0
Outside of a 75-0 smackdown at the hands of Minnesota (which still remains as the largest blowout in series history that now sits at 118 games), Iowa had a wildly successful 1903 campaign, going 9-2. The Hawkeyes shut out six opponents, including Mizzou at Rollins field.
The Tigers, on the other hand, endured their worst campaign in their young program’s history. A 40-0 win over Missouri Mines (now Missouri S&T) in the season-opener ended up being their only win. Nine days later, Mizzou fell to Grinnell 15-6; that’s the last time the Tigers would score all season, as they were shut out in their final seven games, ending 1903 at 1-7-1.
While we’re here, let’s see if racism has died down at all in Missouri. The record shows that, on Apr. 15, a mob of several thousand white people in Joplin, Missouri lynched a Black man in broad daylight, then followed that up by terrorizing the black population in town. I’ll take that as a resounding no.
1906: Iowa 26, Mizzou 4
The Mizzou part of this final score is interesting, because it’s one that doesn’t really exist anymore (again, touchdowns were still worth four points). The last team to score four points in a game was Penn State in 2004, who picked up two safeties in a 6-4 loss to, funnily enough, Iowa.
On another note, let’s check back in on racism’s existence in Missouri. Oh, it appears that three Black men were lynched by a white mob in Springfield, Missouri on Easter, causing much of the thriving Black population to leave town.
1907: Iowa 21, Mizzou 6
If you thought conference realignment was crazy in the modern era, it was somehow even more wild over a century ago.
In 1907, Iowa was in two conferences at the same time: the Hawkeyes won a share of the Missouri Valley Conference title with Nebraska by virtue of its lone MVC game against Mizzou. They also finished fourth in the Western Conference at 1-1.
Meanwhile, the Tigers went 7-2, but just 1-2 in the MVC. Thus, they finished second-to-last only ahead of Washington University, who lost its lone MVC game to MU 27-0.
1908: Mizzou 10, Iowa 5
Still a part of two conferences, Iowa would finish dead last in the MVC at 0-4; after a 92-0 win over Coe College in the season-opener, the Hawkeyes would score just 40 points over their final six games. Mizzou finished 6-2, with its only losses coming against Iowa State and eventual conference champion Kansas.
Almost exactly two months before Iowa and Mizzou played in Columbia, more lynchings and acts of terror by white mobs upon Black people plagued Springfield. The events became known as the Springfield Race Riot. It was clear that Black people were unwanted by many in Missouri, and it had been clear for a long time. Their liberation was a burden. When Iowa football brought another Black player to Mizzou in 1909, that sentiment held strong.
1909: Mizzou 13, Iowa 12
In 1909, Archie Alexander, a freshman at Iowa, joined the Hawkeye football team. He took the torch from Holbrook as not just the only Black player on Iowa football, but he was the only Black student at the school as well.
Alexander, an Ottumwa, Iowa native, was nicknamed “Alexander the Great” by his classmates. He was also a phenomenal student, becoming the first African-American student to complete Iowa’s engineering program.
hawkeyerecap.com
However, heading into the Hawkeyes’ 1909 matchup against Mizzou, it didn’t matter that Alexander was a great student or a great football player. All that mattered was MU despising having to face Black players. Not wanting a repeat of 1896, Alexander was benched, even as the game was on Iowa’s home field. It’d be the only game he’d miss in 1909.
Mizzou would win its second consecutive game against Iowa en route to a 7-0-1 season. The Tigers won the Missouri Valley Conference, their only slip-up being a 6-6 tie to Iowa State.
Luckily for Alexander, he’d sat out a game in the friendlier confines of Iowa, and thus, there were no confrontations. When the Hawkeyes traveled to Columbia the following season, that wouldn’t be the case.
1910: Mizzou 5, Iowa 0
Mark Twain, a Missouri native, once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”.
When Iowa made another trip back to Missouri in 1910, it was once again met with feelings more bitter than the Midwestern cold. The Hawkeyes faced adversity before they even got to Columbia — only 19 players made the trip. One of the players not in attendance was Alexander; Mizzou once again told Iowa that if it played a Black player, it wouldn’t play. Unlike Bull, new Iowa head coach Jesse Hawley complied, also not wanting a repeat of Holbrook’s experiences in Columbia.
Once the Hawkeyes got to Columbia, a mob of locals met them, making sure that Alexander wasn’t with the team. The actual game was played in sweltering heat in front of a Mizzou fanbase that remained hostile towards Iowa, even with Alexander not playing. Iowa quarterback Paul Curry was knocked unconscious, and the Tigers won 5-0 on a safety and a field goal. After the game, Hawley said that Iowa would never again play Mizzou as long as he was the head coach in Iowa City.
In the ensuing weeks, Iowa athletic officials seemed to share Hawley’s feelings; they were understandably fed up with the constant hostility their football team faced whenever it played Mizzou. That November, Iowa told Mizzou that they would not “maintain the existing contract unless colored players can be used in case they are regular members of the team.” Additionally, University of Iowa President George MacLean proposed a compromise to A. Ross Hill, the President of the University of Missouri. He said that Iowa “would meet Missouri halfway and not play a negro in Missouri” but would pine for an integrated contest in Iowa City.
“The public sentiment of this state,” he said, “is about as strong that a negro must be admitted to play as it is in your state that he cannot play.” He ended his letter by saying “the old [saying] may apply: ‘When with the Romans do as the Romans do.’” It was a concerted effort to get Mizzou to potentially change its ways.
President Hill’s response would help determine if these two teams were to keep playing each other in football. The fate of potential heroes, bragging rights and instant-classics rested in the ink that seeped from Hill’s writing utensil.
“I tried to make the position of Missouri clear, and you have made clear that of Iowa,” he said.
“In that case there will be nothing for us to do but sever athletic relations, because Missouri will not play against any team that has a ‘ni***r’ on it.”
Welp, there you have it. 55 years after former University of Missouri President James Shannon made a speech where he used religion to justify slavery, Hill effectively ended football relations with Iowa because he (as well as Mizzou football) simply couldn’t bear to share the field with a Black player.
Hawley would coach Dartmouth until 1928; he passed in 1946 just four days shy of his 60th birthday. Even then, Mizzou and Iowa still hadn’t played. As decades passed, rivalries across the country gained strength; within those annual contests came traditions, heroes, bragging rights and instant-classics. The Tigers experienced such with border foes in Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska; more recently, they’ve developed rivalries with Arkansas and South Carolina. There would be none found between them and Iowa.
Cal Tobias/Rock M Nation
While both teams played in separate conferences from 1911 on, the Tigers would schedule (and play) games against every other original Big Ten team — Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Purdue and Wisconsin. Mizzou and Iowa agreed to play a four-game series in 1994, one that was to be played between 2005 and 2008. But in Jan. 2004, Mizzou voided the first two years of the series. Iowa then proceeded to cancel the final two games.
When the Tigers and Hawkeyes take the field in Nashville on Monday, both teams will be playing for history. An Iowa win will mark its fifth nine-win season in seven years, which would be a first for the program. A Mizzou win will mark consecutive 10-win seasons for just the third time ever.
But there will be another history present in Music City. It’s a history that never existed, one whose song never played because of reasons that plagued Missouri for decades prior to Holbrook and Alexander’s existence, an existence that bothered Mizzou to a point where the Tigers erased a future that could’ve been filled with traditions, heroes, bragging rights and instant-classics.