| 04 September 2009
There isn't much to the rivalry between Mizzou and Illannoy outside of St. Louis. I mean Mizzou has great rivalries with kU and Nebraska, and I'd even throw K-State and Oklahoma in before I would Illannoy. The Illini have rivalries with....[crickets].
Well, this "rivalry" does matter to a select few; the Illinoisan's that grew up Mizzou fans on the east side of St. Louis, like myself and Mizzou backup punter Matt Grabner. It matters in Alton, Edwardsville, Belleville, O'Fallon, Fairview Heights, East St. Louis, and even up north to Quincy, where it's usually 50/50 Mizzou and Illinois fans. For us, CoMo is a hell of a lot closer than Champaign-Urbana, and we all learned quickly that Champaign was pretty much only for pricks.
I heard a great breakdown of this one time as a kid: I had a middle school teacher in the early 90's who was a recent Mizzou grad at the time. A kid one time asked her why she had Mizzou schwag all over our classroom when we were in Illinois. My teacher gave a Gen. Patton like speech. "You like the Cardinals, right? They are winners. How about the Cubs? They are losers. Mizzou fans are Cardinal fans, and Cubs fans are Illini fans. So what do you come up with in this equation? Illini fans are losers. I'm prepping you for life, and the last thing I want is for you to become a loser.". The analogy has stuck in my mind for 15yrs or so, so this speech is almost verbatim. I remember riding my bike home that day and all I could think was "I'm a Mizzou fan. I'm a Cardinal fan. I'm actually doing something right other than throwing my hand down my pants and discovering I have pubes!". It stood out to me that, even in enemy territory, Tiger fans are unabashed in their fandom.
Back to Matt Grabner. We are both from Alton, and well, he may hate the Illini as much as I do.
Grabner said he grew up as a Missouri football fan. “I always loved Mizzou,” he said. But what about his home-state Illini? “Absolutely not,” he stressed. “Absolutely not.”
Excellent. Maybe that teacher is still in the school district doing their job.
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