It’s borderline uncivilized

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Brandon McAnderson played football here for Lawrence High, grew up a Jayhawks fan in every way and dreamed all his life about playing for Kansas University.

“Just because it’s home,” he said earlier this week. “Not because Kansas was very good.”

But times have changed. A senior running back for the undefeated Jayhawks, McAnderson now bursts with pride.

He walks across a campus that at this time of year usually is focused on its highly ranked, national title-contending basketball team, as a football player with his chest puffed out.

“I guess I know how the basketball players feel,” McAnderson said. “Kind of like a star.”

Second-ranked Kansas (11-0 overall and 7-0 in the Big 12 Conference) plays third-ranked Missouri (10-1, 6-1) today at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo. On the line is a spot in the Big 12 championship game and maybe something bigger -- a place in the Bowl Championship Series title game.

“To be honest with you,” McAnderson said, “this is beyond what I ever hoped for.”

Kansas against Missouri is the nation’s second-oldest football rivalry. Minnesota and Wisconsin have played 117 times. Tonight will mark the 116th time the Jayhawks and Tigers have played -- but never with so much national impact. It is the first time since 1973 both teams are nationally ranked, and the first time ever both are in the top 10 of the Associated Press poll.

In 1960, Missouri was ranked No. 1 after an upset win over Oklahoma, but it lost to Kansas, 23-7. Then, in a bitter twist, the Jayhawks were ruled to have used an ineligible player and forfeited the win. Missouri, therefore, finished the year undefeated but still dropped to fifth in the polls.

In 1969, Missouri whipped Kansas, 69-21, to earn an Orange Bowl bid and a No. 7 national ranking -- and Tigers fans complained that coach Dan Devine hadn’t tried to score 70.

The game is called the “Border War,” and dates to before the Civil War, when Missouri was a slave state and Kansas a free state. Fans still argue vehemently about a massacre in Lawrence supposedly caused by a band of Missouri fighters shortly before the Civil War.

“I grew up in Texas,” said Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing, a sophomore from Austin. “And I know Oklahoma-Texas is a great rivalry, but this one is different. More personal.”

Missouri has brought most of the national success that has come to this football rivalry. As Kansas students streamed out of Lawrence on Tuesday, heading home for Thanksgiving break, there seemed a sense of ominous resignation.

On the back window of a PT Cruiser being driven out of a dorm parking lot was a hand-printed sign that said, “Thanks for the great season. Let’s go Jays, Final Four.”

“I know we’re the undefeated team,” senior defensive tackle James McClinton said. “But I also know everyone expects Missouri to win. We’re still just Kansas football, you know? What’s Kansas football? When I was getting recruited, Kansas football was nothing.”

That started to change when Mark Mangino arrived before the 2002 season after being an assistant at Oklahoma.

Senior wide receiver Marcus Henry, from Lawton, Okla., said he listened to Mangino’s recruiting pitch for one reason. “I wanted to play in the Big 12,” Henry said. “And nobody else from the Big 12 was recruiting me. What did I think about Kansas football? That it was pretty bad.”

Things also hadn’t been going great for Missouri until Coach Gary Pinkel arrived six years ago. There had been a couple of minor bowl games in the early 1990s, but mostly mediocrity for more than a decade before that.

Arriving at their respective campuses at nearly the same time, Mangino and Pinkel quickly learned one thing: “As far as the Kansas game, I don’t care if you have all the other things that are with it, the rivalry has always been great,” Pinkel said. “I inherited it as a great rivalry. There’s a lot of passion in this and it didn’t take me long to figure that out when I got here.”

Said Mangino: “Every game matters. This one matters more to the fans.”

Justin Thornton, a sophomore safety for Kansas who is from St. Joseph, Mo., said he grew up thinking Missouri football was in desperate need of reinvigorating -- as opposed to Kansas football, which “was pretty much hopeless.”

Yet Thornton was swayed by Mangino’s no-nonsense sales pitch.

“Coach Mangino wasn’t flashy or anything. He came to town and asked me if I wanted to build something,” Thornton said. “With Missouri, they had tradition. With Kansas football, there wasn’t much tradition.”

In a sign of a football program still fighting for its position, Kansas is playing host to the game at the home of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. The crowd will be bigger, but with more Missouri fans than if the game were in Lawrence.

“It would be great to have a real home game,” McClinton said. “But I know a lot of students went home for Thanksgiving anyway. You can’t blame them. There was no reason for them to expect this was coming.”

What’s coming is probably lots of offense. Kansas is second in the country in scoring, averaging 45.8 points a game; Missouri is sixth, averaging 42.5. Both Reesing and Tigers quarterback Chase Daniel will get some Heisman Trophy votes.

But it is players such as McAnderson, the hometown kid, who most appreciate what is happening this week. He was noticed only because Mangino’s son, Tommy, was quarterback for Lawrence High.

“Everybody said Brandon was a good high school player but he’s not a Division I player,” Mangino said. “I didn’t buy into that.”

Said McAnderson: “Coach Mangino had the vision to see me as a Big 12 player. And he had the vision to see a lot of other stuff.

“We might never be basketball here, but this week it’s close.”

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diane.pucin@latimes.com