Traditional rivalries lay an egg

Before breaking down the rivalry games that have always mattered most -- Kansas vs. Missouri, Boise State vs. Hawaii -- let’s address a few that tend to get overlooked.

* Auburn and Alabama are playing in something called the “Iron Bowl.” One team has lost three games and the other is coming off a home loss to Louisiana Monroe. The Alabama coach, Nick Saban, drawing an annual salary of $4 million, compared the Tide’s fifth defeat to the catastrophes of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.

The school attorney is thinking of adding a “stupidity clause” to the coach’s contract.

* The Egg Bowl? They say Mississippi and Mississippi State play this every year around Thanksgiving, but we’re not sure why. The only “egg” involved this year is on Ole Miss Coach Ed Orgeron’s face. He just put 20 players on probation for pilfering pillows and radios from team hotels.

One more defeat and Ole Miss can strike a deal with Motel 9 (losses).

* Boston College vs. Miami. Saw it once in person, back in 1984. In the end, a short guy threw a long pass. If you want to watch short quarterbacks now, check out Todd Reesing of Kansas and Missouri’s Chase Daniel. They’re both headed for The League (Six feet and under).

* Nebraska vs. Colorado. An old scrapbook clipping revealed that, in 2002, at Boulder, Nebraska earned a trip to the national title game with a momentum-building, 32-point loss to Colorado.

* Help us out here. There are two games in Florida involving multiple-loss schools so we’re not clear which is the better: Florida State at Florida or Florida Atlantic at Florida International? One of the schools is ranked and someone on television recently suggested this year’s Heisman Trophy winner could emerge from the game at Gainesville.

* Notre Dame (2-9) vs. Stanford (3-7). Ran across an old ticket stub once from a time when this matchup got people so fired up they took trains to the game. It was from the 1925 Rose Bowl.

* Texas vs. Texas A&M.; These schools, apparently, don’t like each other much. Wonder what the fuss is about?

* Clemson vs. South Carolina. We couldn’t find much on this one except something about a “Chicken Curse” that dates back decades but apparently has nothing to do with Colonel Sanders.

* Something you may not know: Saturday’s game between Washington State and Washington at Seattle is called the Apple Cup.

* Oklahoma State vs. Oklahoma. A Google search on the Oklahoma State coach led to a YouTube clip of him holding up a newspaper and screaming at no one in particular.

Now, the main attractions:

* Kansas (11-0) and Missouri (10-1) play Saturday night at Arrowhead Stadium with both schools trying to secure their first Big 12 Conference North championship since the league expanded in 1996.

So what has changed?

Kansas is ranked No. 2 in this week’s Bowl Championship Series standings and is two victories from playing in the national title game Jan. 7.

Missouri is No. 4 in the BCS and also probably two wins from a title-game berth if you believe a win Saturday and another over Oklahoma or Texas on Dec. 1 will vault the Tigers over BCS No. 3 West Virginia.

“It’s a head-on collision and it’s finally here,” Daniel, Missouri’s diminutive quarterback, said of the looming showdown.

Kansas and Missouri, as territories, have been fighting since before the Civil War. This is the 116th meeting of the football squads, yet the first time both have been ranked in the top 10 when they played.

Best snapshot of the rivalry: In 1960, Missouri was No. 1 when Kansas upset the Tigers at Columbia, Mo. Kansas had a secret weapon, a running back named Bert Coan who ran for 67 yards and two touchdowns in the 23-7 win.

Problem: Coan wasn’t an eligible player. The year before, he had been illegally recruited away from Texas Christian by a powerful Kansas backer, Bud Adams, now the owner of the Tennessee Titans.

The Big 8 Conference declared Coan ineligible before the Missouri game, but Kansas played him anyway. The Jayhawks had to forfeit the win, but it seemed a fair trade for knocking Missouri to No. 5 in the polls.

Missouri went on to defeat Navy in the Orange Bowl in a game attended by President-elect John F. Kennedy.

A Border War, indeed.

Kansas still claims credit for the 1960 win over Missouri and insists the overall series record is 54-52-9. Missouri counts the game as a loss and its official record of the series stands at 53-53-9.

Kansas versus Missouri had been a nice neighborhood feud for more than a century -- but not this century.

Neither team was ranked in the top 25 entering the season. Neither team saw this collision coming.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Daniel said. “No way.”

So how did it get so big?

“It’s a big game because we made it a big game and Kansas made it a big game,” Daniel said.

* Boise State (10-1) vs. Hawaii (10-0) on Friday is about football, but it’s also about politics. If Hawaii ends up 12-0 after two more wins and doesn’t clinch a major bowl berth, Western Athletic Conference Commissioner Karl Benson is going to be upset.

Benson will not be thrilled, either, should Boise State finish 11-1 and not make a BCS game.

Hawaii and Boise State need to finish ranked in the top 12 to get an automatic berth. Hawaii is No. 15 this week; Boise is No. 19.

How mad Benson gets depends on what happens. He is the commissioner who once threatened legal action for greater access into the BCS. A deal was struck a few years back that relaxed the bid requirement from top six to top 12.

Last year, Boise State, which finished No. 8, needed the rule change to get the chance to beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.

Will Hawaii get in?

“I still have confidence in the system,” Benson said.

No one could argue that Hawaii’s schedule, well, stinks.

It didn’t help that Michigan State pulled out of a game and Hawaii ended up having to play two lower-division teams.

Here, though, is the question Benson and others are asking:

Why is Kansas, which has also played a weak schedule, No. 2 in the BCS standings while Hawaii is No. 15? They are the only two unbeaten schools left in major college football.

Kansas is No. 1 in Jeff Sagarin’s ratings this week with a schedule rank of 101; Hawaii is No. 32 with a schedule rank of 153.

No one is arguing Hawaii should be ranked ahead of Kansas, but why the discrepancy?

Benson thinks a built-in bias favors BCS conference schools.

“The system is built around the six conferences,” Benson said. “And whether it’s preseason rankings or regular-season rankings, the teams in those leagues are going to get greater recognition.”

Is Benson right?

Kansas started the season unranked yet, with a suspect schedule, has shot into national title contention.

Here’s how Kansas’ four nonconference opponents fared last weekend:

* Florida International fell to 0-10 with a loss to now 3-8 Louisiana Lafayette.

* Central Michigan lost to Eastern Michigan. Earlier this year, Central Michigan lost to I-AA North Dakota State, which lost last Saturday to South Dakota State.

* Toledo came up 21 points short in a loss at Ball State.

* Southeastern Louisiana, another lower-division team, ended a five-game losing streak and improved to 3-8 with a win over Nicholls State.

Granted, Associated Press voters didn’t give Kansas much credit for any of those wins, all played in Lawrence, but jacked the Jayhawks from unranked to No. 20 after a Big 12 win over Kansas State, now 5-6.

Kansas jumped to No. 15 the next week after a five-point win at Colorado.

The day after Kansas improved to 9-0 with a rout of Nebraska on Nov. 3, the Jayhawks were No. 5 in the country.

This has all happened in a year in which Kansas missed Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech on the Big 12 schedule.

Hawaii, conversely, began No. 23 in the AP and has crawled up nine poll spots in three months.

Hawaii’s schedule is hardly defendable, with victories against now 1-10 Utah State, 1-10 Idaho and 2-9 Nevada Las Vegas. But Hawaii also dropped four spots in the AP poll, to No. 24, after an overtime road win at Louisiana Tech.

Benson thinks the voters will respond if Hawaii closes with victories against Boise State and Washington.

However, it may be tough for Boise State, at 11-1, to meet the top-12 threshold despite being the defending champion of a BCS bowl -- the Fiesta.

Boise State went 13-0 last year and its only loss this year was at Washington, on Sept. 8. Boise dropped out of the poll Sept. 9 and did not get back in until Oct. 29 after improving to 7-1 with a 13-point win at Fresno State.

“It is discouraging,” Benson said. “But it is the system.”

What it is after Dec. 1, well, we’ll just have to BCS see.

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com