The Missouri Tigers are now claiming themselves “national champions” for the 1960 college football season.
Earlier this month, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) formally recognized the 1960 Dan Devine-led Tigers with a claim to the school’s first-ever national title in football. Missouri plans on recognizing the 1960 team during its home game with Troy on Sept. 19.
“We appreciate Sen. Schmitt and the U.S. Senate for recognizing the accomplishments of our 1960 football team and for bringing renewed attention to a remarkable group of Tigers,” Mizzou Director of Athletics Laird Veatch said. “The 1960 team has an important place in Mizzou history, and after reviewing the historical record, we believe it is appropriate to honor that team as national champions.”
There’s just one little problem with all of it: the Border War.
The Tigers maintain an unblemished 11-0 record, despite falling to rival Kansas 23-7 in a game where the top-ranked Tigers, as well as the former Big Eight Conference, observed a forfeit by the Jayhawks due to running back Bert Coan being ruled ineligible by the dissolved league. With the game recorded as a forfeit by the league, Missouri carried on to defeat Navy 21-14 in the Orange Bowl.
Coan was ruled ineligible by the league over funding for a trip to Chicago for an all-star game, which, both he and Houston Oilers owner and KU benefactor Bud Adams contend, occurred before Coan became a student at KU, according to original reporting by the Lawrence Journal-World. The Big Eight, ultimately, ruled against Coan and Kansas, which lost its league championship status as a result of the forfeiture.
The outdated “Poling System,” which last recognized a “national champion,” BYU, in 1984, declared Missouri its champion for the 1960 season amid the contested Kansas loss. To this day, the Jayhawks still recognize themselves as the winner of the 1960 Border War and maintain a 7-2 (6-0-1 Big Eight) overall record for 1960 in the school’s official record books.
And so, as Missouri travels to Lawrence for its second battle with Kansas in the new era of the Border War, it’ll do so claiming a national championship in college football. As if the history isn’t juicy enough, it’ll be exactly 66 years since the fateful contest decided one team’s season and derailed another.
Kansas hosts Missouri on Friday, Sept. 11, at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium.
