On brad, border wars and being a tiger.

On Saturday, Brad Smith will either lead the Missouri Tigers to a much-needed, soul gratifying victory over the Kansas Jayhawks or, he won't. For the sake of my marriage, I hope Brad shows up and takes Lawrence by storm. Really. Because, although I'd like Mizzou to win especially so that I can rub it in the face of my KU cohorts, I also want to have a nice evening Saturday night. And, I know that if we lose, Nick will be so heated and ticked that I won't want to touch him with a 10-foot poll and so, I won't. He's really trying to not let Mizzou football dictate his state-of-mind, but if you ask me, he's not doing a great job at it. Last weekend, was a great weekend. Why? We beat the pants off of Nebraska. The Iowa State weekend was another story. Yes, we won, but we weren't winning when Nick decided to turn off the radio and to go shopping. The entire time we were shuffling through dress shirts and suit coats and picking out a nice honey goat cheese from The Better Cheddar, he was trying to remain calm and collected, but I just knew something was bothering him. He thought MU lost the game. He was angry. But when we pulled back into our driveway and our neighbor came up to us with his headphones on saying, "Man, what a game!!!" And we were like, "Yeah, we lost." And then he was like, "No, you guys came back, they put the freshman in and you came back." It was like immediately, Nick was a new man, his face was glowing, his eyes were shining and he spent the next few hours watching highlights, talking to friends about the game and talking on tigerboard (for those of you who don't know, it's the message board for MU fans.)

I can't blame him really, being a Tiger is hard. The beginning of a new season always offers hope. We always say, "We're going to be really good this year, I can just feel it." And then, we either are or we are not. Usually, we are not.

Saturday, we face the ultimate ego test, the border war. Some time in the 1800s, the Border War was really all about whether Kansas would be admitted as a free or slave state, which by law would be up to the citizens who lived there. Lawrence was one of the first communities to be established and soon became a symbol of the abolitionist movement. But then, Quantrill, a guerrilla Confederate leader from Missouri, led about 500 men over the border to sack Lawrence. Their mission? To "Kill every man, and burn every house." Not sure if they killed every man, but they massacred 185 men and boys and burned most of the buildings on Massachusetts Street as well as many of the homes in town. And then, they returned to Missouri.

Today, the Border War lives on in spirit. If Kansas wins, the celebration will continue at Free State Brewery, name not ironic, I'm sure. If Missouri wins, Brad Smith will be B-RAD, I will have a good Saturday night and Missouri fans everywhere (me included) will have a something to fill the void that lives in our souls caused by the times when, in the past, Missouri football has let us down - at least until November 5 when we play Colorado.