To the editor:

In Friday’s front-page hype of the final regular season game between the ‘Hawks and Tigers, the attribution of the beginning of the rivalry to William Clarke Quantrill is just silly. If you want a Civil War beginning, you should note the sack of Osceola, Mo., on Sept. 23, 1861, by Lawrence’s own Jim Lane, noted military leader and politician. Both Lane and Quantrill were from Ohio and Quantrill rode with Lane on raids in the 1850s.

The rivalry — oldest west of the Mississippi — began during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt and was based on football, which is far more important than terrorist raids 40-odd years earlier.

I will miss the MU-KU rivalry. But things change.