I am a Mizzou alum and lifelong resident of Kansas City. Here is my read of the KC-Mizzou issue (enrollment and recruiting)....... I have also taught in two large suburban KC districts for nearly 20 years.
One reality of living here is that ku is closer. I can be in Lawrence from my house in about 40 minutes. Columbia is more like 2 hours. This closeness breeds fandom, kids like ku around here. If you were to walk around a high school in KC you would see more ku gear than Mizzou. And there are a ton of ku teachers around KC (KS education sucks, their teacher pay is bad and their teacher retirement is awful). I was in a building last year of about 75 teachers. There were seven from ku and only 3 from Mizzou (lots of Northwest, UCM, William Jewell, etc). Kids are influenced by this in KC, no doubt. Sports talk here is dominated by ku with little to no Mizzou influence. Lots of ku grads working at the local sports talk stations and NO Mizzou grads at all as hosts of any shows in the KC area. So, kids around here are not around a lot of Mizzou fandom. Heck, Arkansas has made a huge dent here because they offer in-state tuition to Missouri kids. There were nearly as many seniors from my high school last year who went to Arkansas as went to Mizzou. The protests did not help (hate to say it). I have a friend who went to Mizzou who sent his daughter to Arkansas last year. He said he can't send his kid to Mizzou right now. Another friend who went to Mizzou had his older son go there but his daughter, who is now a sophomore, will go "somewhere else" (his words). Kids in KC just don't see Mizzou as cool right now.........(I do not want this to be about the protests, just pointing out that it didn't help, which we already know and we have discussed way too much on this site)
As far as recruiting, same goes. Not much love for Mizzou from the kids or the schools. Case in point (and I know this basketball and not football). A local kid, Ochai Agbaji, committed to ku for basketball today. You would have thought the world ended and today was the greatest day in the history of KC sports. Self came to a game last week and the principal and superintendent of NKC took pictures with him and posted it on twitter like he was the most famous person in the world and they could not believe they were meeting him. The local news covered it in droves, the admin's in the building have blanketed social media as if the world just ended.......... when kids go to Mizzou around here (Daniel Parker, etc) it is a yawn fest and no one cares.
All of this is sad to me but I do not think it will change quickly. KC is just not really a Mizzou town. You can't go anywhere here without seeing tons of ku crap everywhere, it is disgusting. Just one guy's perspective..
One reality of living here is that ku is closer. I can be in Lawrence from my house in about 40 minutes. Columbia is more like 2 hours. This closeness breeds fandom, kids like ku around here. If you were to walk around a high school in KC you would see more ku gear than Mizzou. And there are a ton of ku teachers around KC (KS education sucks, their teacher pay is bad and their teacher retirement is awful). I was in a building last year of about 75 teachers. There were seven from ku and only 3 from Mizzou (lots of Northwest, UCM, William Jewell, etc). Kids are influenced by this in KC, no doubt. Sports talk here is dominated by ku with little to no Mizzou influence. Lots of ku grads working at the local sports talk stations and NO Mizzou grads at all as hosts of any shows in the KC area. So, kids around here are not around a lot of Mizzou fandom. Heck, Arkansas has made a huge dent here because they offer in-state tuition to Missouri kids. There were nearly as many seniors from my high school last year who went to Arkansas as went to Mizzou. The protests did not help (hate to say it). I have a friend who went to Mizzou who sent his daughter to Arkansas last year. He said he can't send his kid to Mizzou right now. Another friend who went to Mizzou had his older son go there but his daughter, who is now a sophomore, will go "somewhere else" (his words). Kids in KC just don't see Mizzou as cool right now.........(I do not want this to be about the protests, just pointing out that it didn't help, which we already know and we have discussed way too much on this site)
As far as recruiting, same goes. Not much love for Mizzou from the kids or the schools. Case in point (and I know this basketball and not football). A local kid, Ochai Agbaji, committed to ku for basketball today. You would have thought the world ended and today was the greatest day in the history of KC sports. Self came to a game last week and the principal and superintendent of NKC took pictures with him and posted it on twitter like he was the most famous person in the world and they could not believe they were meeting him. The local news covered it in droves, the admin's in the building have blanketed social media as if the world just ended.......... when kids go to Mizzou around here (Daniel Parker, etc) it is a yawn fest and no one cares.
All of this is sad to me but I do not think it will change quickly. KC is just not really a Mizzou town. You can't go anywhere here without seeing tons of ku crap everywhere, it is disgusting. Just one guy's perspective..
