Kansas has led for most of the game, but it’s late and Missouri is driving.

A field goal wins its for the Tigers, whose fans are in a mad frenzy at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., as the seconds wind down in a game up for grabs.

KU’s fans are too tense to lift a finger, anticipating the biggest game they’ve ever seen their team play is about to get away.

Where would those Missouri fans be if this game was being played in Lawrence, as originally scheduled?

Most of them would be at home on their couches. Or in a sports bar, tipping a few back. Only a couple thousand or so would be at KU’s Memorial Stadium, where the overwhelmingly crimson-and-blue crowd would give the Jayhawks a big edge.

The promise of a huge payday for both schools, though, was enticing enough for the athletic directors – KU’s Lew Perkins and MU’s Mike Alden – to make a two-year deal to play at Arrowhead.

Neither Perkins nor Alden could have foreseen the stakes of Saturday’s game, of course. But foreseen or not, the stakes are there, and they’re sky high.

No. 2 Kansas, 11-0 and in the middle of the national championship chase, has never had a season like this.

If the Jayhawks beat No. 4 Missouri (10-1), also in the mix for a national championship, they would play for a Big 12 title next week in San Antonio.

Win that one and KU most likely would be in the Jan. 7 national championship game.

This is no time to fool around with a change of venue. But the genie is out of the bottle, and there is no question the neutral field for Saturday’s game is a plus for Missouri.

How big a plus becomes the question.

The crowd will be close to evenly split, and the home-field advantage that would have belonged to Kansas is gone. And don’t think for a minute home field doesn’t mean something.

KU has won seven of its past eight meetings against Missouri in Lawrence. The Jayhawk faithful gets a little crazy for that home game, and the team usually follows suit.

Forget for a moment how adversely the move to Arrowhead affects the poor business owners in Lawrence. Forget, even, the home-field advantage that would belong to Kansas.

The thing I hate most about this game being played in Kansas City is that even if the Jayhawks win, there won’t be a celebration on the field or in the parking lots and frat houses that surround Memorial Stadium.

This would be one of KU’s biggest wins ever and the people who care most will be stuck trying to get out of the parking lot at Arrowhead.

College sports shouldn’t be all about money. As I was typing that sentence, I realized how naive it sounds. But I stand by it – college sports shouldn’t be all about money.

Are the bank accounts at Kansas and Missouri so barren that the athletic departments desperately need this money?

Does Perkins, in his private thoughts, have a funny feeling about his decision to move the game?

What if Missouri wins on a late field goal? Isn’t it, then, logical for KU fans to jump to a conclusion that if the game had just been played in Lawrence, where it belonged, the Jayhawks would have prevailed?

Perkins is messing with something dangerous for the sake of the almighty dollar.

He is already under fire because so many KU season-ticket holders, who sit in prime locations at Memorial Stadium, are being bumped into the end zone, or into the upper deck, at Arrowhead.

All in all, though, KU fans are behaving pretty well about the venue switch.

That’s because they’re too nervous about the game and about its ramifications to stir up a big ruckus. And they know their football team is a force whether it plays at Memorial Stadium, Arrowhead Stadium or Mars Stadium.

Still, wouldn’t KU fans feel much better if Saturday’s game were being played in Lawrence instead of an hour way at Arrowhead?

But, hey, if the Jayhawks lose, just think of all that extra money going to the athletic department. Wouldn’t that be a nice runner-up prize?