SEC Fan's Guide to Mizzou Baseball: Other Rivals

Mizzou Baseball's biggest rivals are the ones they just left behind, in the Big 12.

• Kansas, of course, has been the Tigers' biggest rival going on 100+ years, as we talked about last week.  There's always hope that at some point the Bill Self will get over having his panties in a wad, or maybe the rest of the athletic department will tell him to shut up and let them get back to making piles of money playing Mizzou.  Until then, the Border War is is over.
  
  
• MU's chief rivals in the Big 12 were the former Big 8 rivals, the teams Missouri has been playing for most of a century, first in the original Missouri Valley, then in the Big 6, the Big 7 and finally the Big 8:  Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Kansas State, Nebraska.  And Iowa State and Colorado back when they still had baseball.  I suspect some of those teams may make guest appearances on the MU non-conference schedule in the years to come.
  
  
• The only team that became a serious rival among the former Southwest conference that joined into the Big 12 is Texas.  That's because the Longhorns are so arrogant they're easy to hate.  And Missouri always gave Augie's Dogies every thing they could handle. Texas leads Missouri by just 34-30 all-time.

Beyond the Big 12 conference, MU has developed some other rivalries as well.

Missouri State and Missouri play a home-and-away mid-week series each year, usually separated by a week or two.  After MU swept MSU this year, The Tigers lead the Bears 23-22 all-time.

There's some bad blood in the hearts of many Missouri fans ever since what once was called Southwest Missouri State stole our original name of Missouri State University.

Mizzou used to play a home-and-away series each season against the other two in-state D-1 teams as well, but somehow SLU and SEMO have dropped off the schedule in the past few years.  It could have something to do with MU dominating those series 72-17 and 21-9, respectively.

There has been a bit of bad blood spilt with some other "rivals" in the past decade or so.

Coach Tim Jamieson and
Catcher Trevor Coleman
2007 Regional

Louisville is not a favorite among Missouri fans, ever since the 2007 Regional Mizzou hosted.  There was some show-boating and taunting done by former Louisville OF Chris Dominguez, which has lingered in the minds of fans who were around then.

Missouri and Louisville met up again in the Tucson Regional this past June, and there was some talk about avenging that game, but the only people on either team who were still around from 2007 were coaches and their assistants.  Getting beat 11-3 in the final game of the season isn't very impressive in the annals of vengeance, either.

Vengeance was sweeter against Charlotte this past year.  In 2011 the Tigers traveled to Charlotte and got beat 3 out of 4 games.  But the Mizzou coaches and players were not pleased about the arrogant way Charlotte ran up the score in the final 22-7 game of that series. They exacted their revenge a year later, taking three straight from Charlotte.  A fourth game was rained out.

Missouri has some mid-week opponents that show up on the schedule almost every year, but none of them could be called heated rivalries at all.

Illinois and Missouri have met a Busch Stadium in St. Louis over the past 2-3 years, but that inter-state rivalry has never generated much heat outside of basketball.

Beyond the Big 12 and the in-state teams, the only teams on the all-time head-to-head list that MU has played any significant number of times are all smaller schools that Missouri hasn't played for decades (like Washington U in St. Louis -- MU has a 52-28 record against them, all ancient history).

There is one other major school Missouri has played a significant number of times, posting a 28-20-1 all-time record against them.  Most of that is pretty old history, but there is some hope of renewing that rivalry.  That team is our closest neighbor in the SEC:  Ar-Kansas.