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.
All of Missewera’s “key” players are gone - Pinkhole gets a raise to $2M/year and promptly brings in a 99th ranked recruiting class whose “star” would have committed to Miami if his mom hadn’t insisted he “stay close to home” and who couldn’t even qualify under Missewera’s hillbilly admission standards. Illinois gets it - they’ll be beating the crap out of Missewera on a regular basis now and they want to do it in front of their fans in their own stadium.
“Notre Dame??!!! HAHAHAHAHA You Mizzou fans may want to wait for, I don’t know, more than two successful Top 25 years prior to pretending you’re any kind of football powerhouse. Notre Dame looks at Missouri football like a lion looks at a gnat.
— Brett Schulte”
Brett - ND picks unranked teams to run their win records up all the time. For example, check out how many service academy games they play. Coincidence? That powerhouse of Army/Navy/Air Force that they play must be a single cell. ND is over-ranked consistently and especially in the past few years.
It would be a big draw because ND fans are faithful to a fault.
Seriously measure the competition your team is playing before making comparisons.
I’ve been to several, I will miss this. I saw Brad Smith’s coming out party as a freshman, and soph repeat. I saw J Mac’s debut and the game changing punt return. I saw ‘Spoon rip the ball out and score on an “interception” in one of the greatest defensive plays I’ve ever seen, almost as if he said “If I have to, I’ll make sure we win this myself.” The TV exposure, the party, all were amazing. I understand Illinios needs to use its stadium. Somehow Mizzou has found a way to have 2 “neutral” site games a year in KC and STL lately. Too bad it can’t continue.