Chris Harris: KU football players won infamous fight vs. basketball counterparts

photo by: Nick Krug

Denver Broncos cornerback and Kansas alum, Chris Harris Jr. celebrates after his team scored a touchdown during Alumni Game prior to the Spring Game on Saturday, April 9, 2016 at Memorial Stadium. Harris served as one of the coaches.

Former Kansas football star and Super Bowl champion Chris Harris of the Denver Broncos didn’t hold back Thursday in an appearance on ESPN’s Highly Questionable.

In the midst of an interview with co-hosts Dan Le Batard and Bomani Jones, Harris offered his recollection of an infamous on-campus altercation between members of the KU basketball and football teams, back in 2009.

“Were you on the Kansas football team
that lost the fight to the basketball
Morris twins?” Le Batard asked.

Smiling, Harris responded: “We
definitely won that fight.”

Jones followed up: “We hear the other
way.”

As reported by the Lawrence Journal-World at the time, the brawl left KU guard Tyshawn Taylor with a dislocated left thumb weeks before the start of the 2009-10 basketball season.

According to LeBetard, Marcus and Markieff Morris’ account of the incident includes them back-to-back, taking on football players “over someone who was on the track team.”

Harris remembers the fracas differently.

“Nah, man. I mean that story right
there, I think it was over one of the
little track girls, but, I mean, we
had 300-pound dudes fighting these
basketball guys, so they definitely
didn’t win,” Harris said. “I
definitely watched it and seen it with
my own eyes. We definitely won that
for sure. I love the Morris twins,
though. Those my boys, though.”

Furthermore, Harris claimed there wasn’t really a football versus basketball dynamic at KU.

“We (the football team, coming off
back-to-back bowl-win seasons) were
actually pretty good at that time,”
Harris said. “I guess you could say
they were running the campus. We were,
too.”

Reiterating his love for the Morris twins, Harris said he had to have his football teammates’ backs during the heated disagreement, before again laughing at the idea of a humongous defensive tackles in a melee against slighter basketball players.

“It’s not fair to fight a 6-foot point
guard or 6-7, 6-9 power forward. I
think we had a little advantage,”
Harris recalled, wearing a grin.

Harris, who played with volatile cornerback Aqib Talib at Kansas and is teamed up with him again in Denver, also shared on ESPN one of his favorite Talib stories from back in the day.

“I was a true freshman, and I was
starting opposite of Talib, who was an
All-American. We were playing
Missouri. They had their whole team on
the 50-yard line, and Talib just like
ran through their whole team,” Harris
said. “And they were warming up,
running plays, and he like, they had
to get the cops to come drag him off
there, off their side of the field for
warmups, back in the tunnel. So I was
like, ‘Man.’ That was one of the
craziest times I’ve seen Talib right
there.”

Watch the entire entertaining segment with Harris below: