Mizzou, Illini to end football series at Dome
Veteran sportswriter and Illini mouthpiece Loren Tate reports that the season-opening football series between Missouri and Illinois at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis will end after the 2010 season.
Read his report on the IlliniHQ website.
Here’s what Illinois AD Ron Guenther said: “Eventually, we might resume (the series) on a home-and-home basis, or perhaps return to St. Louis, but we have been leaning toward games on campus at some point in the future.”
And here’s what Guenther probably meant: We completed $120 million in stadium improvements in 2008. We want to add another home game every year, not play a neutral-site game.
The Arch Rivalry event has given the lie to a local lament that the Dome is an automatic buzzkill for football fans. Capacity crowds rocked The Ed in ‘07 and ‘08 as Illinois stormed back from huge deficits each time, only to lose 40-34 and 52-42 to highly-ranked Mizzou teams laden with NFL prospects.
Kinda surprised by this. Both schools had to make a boatload of money off these games, and it only helped their strength of schedule arguments before conference games too. Go figure.
This is crazy. This is one of the best ways to start the season.
That’s too bad — this has always been a great series and a blast to attend. They’ve dropped it before and brought it back, let’s hope the same happens at some point in the future…
Maybe they are just taking a break. In the past they did play two years in a row, took off two years, and are now in game three of a four game series. It is a good game as long as you win it. A loss is tough to take since you could have scheduled a blood doner at home for a sure win. Since college football does not have any practice games, this was always a tough game to open the season. Almost every big-time program does not play a game of this type until the third or fourth week of the season.
That’s too bad. This was always a great game, and at the end we would hollar, “ILLINOIS LOST!”
Stupid IS, as Stupid Does
Yeah, it was nice for Mizzou fans to have something to crow about, what with getting their (Truman) tails handed to them every year in the Busch Braggin Rights basketball game. I-L-L!!!!
To look at the IlliniHQ article, it makes it look like Illinois wanted out. Fine, then; bring in Purdue or Indiana or Minnesota or Kentucky or maybe even Notre Dame, somebody who’ll bring a good crowd and a good team. Illinois will regret the publicity as they beat up Bugtussle Tech.
Gotta say, it’s nice to see Mizzou drove the Illini out of town. Now, let’s turn the tables on the hardwood beginning this year.
I think the dome is too dark and its certainly not my favority venue, but…
Illini fans didn’t seem to mind the dome when they were here for the Final Four.
For that matter, Rams fans didn’t complain about the dome during the glory years.
Arrowhead wasn’t all that cold 2 years ago when Mizzou beat KU. Last year it was too icy for my taste.
Losing is the buzzkill, not the dome.
I went to my first Arch Rivalry game 2 years ago and had a GREAT time. Too bad they are taking it away. Hopefully they will reconsider. MIZZOU!!!