Sixty years ago Jan. 12, Shelbyville High's Norm Stewart went to his first major-college basketball game as part of a trip to see the University of Missouri.

Top-ranked Kansas was MU's opponent at Brewer Fieldhouse, where Stewart later got his perpetual-motion coaching style dodging pigeon droppings.

The game remains vivid to Stewart, who recalled MU leading KU 59-58 late with the ball but losing after a traveling call.

"Dean Kelley hit a jump shot from the right-hand side, on the Moberly end of Brewer Fieldhouse," said Stewart, speaking from his winter home in Palm Springs, Calif. "I can still see the ball hit the left rim, hit the backboard and come back through, and Kansas won 60-59, I believe."

It did, en route to a national championship.

That was the beginning of Stewart's nearly five decades immersed in MU basketball, appropriately enough entwined from the start with Kansas — Mizzou's principal adversary since long before even the 77-year-old Stewart's time.

"Unfortunately, it's based on (Civil War) history," he said.

Stewart chuckled when asked about his own emphasis on the rivalry during his 32-year tenure, which began in 1967.

"Well, I saw that if you could beat Kansas in football, you could keep your job. And if you didn't, you couldn't keep your job," he said. "It wasn't quite that much in basketball, but it was considered beneficial if you could beat them once in a while."

But perhaps surprisingly to those who followed the career of Stormin' Norman, there was a distinct absence of malice as he reflected on the series that will be played out for the 266th time overall — and last scheduled in Columbia — on Saturday when the fourth-ranked Tigers play host to No. 8 Kansas amid the hoopla of ESPN's "College GameDay.''

In fact, his tone was downright conciliatory as he considered that the future of the series is in jeopardy as Mizzou prepares to leave the Big 12 for the SEC.

Not that he wasn't conscious of some bad blood over the years, going back even to the year before Stewart arrived when Kansas' Clyde Lovellette was thought to have stomped on MU's Win Wilfong. Never mind that Wilfong later was reported to say he didn't think Lovelette meant to step on him and added, "He's a swell fellow. I'm sorry it happened."

That episode still lurked, and Stewart suggested the Kansas football forfeit in 1960 after beating then-No. 1 Missouri "riled up everything again" and led to a basketball brawl at Brewer in 1961.

Yet those were just "two black eyes" over several generations to Stewart, who seems to treasure the game and acknowledge that he perhaps added some theater to the cause.

For instance, the notion he never spent any money in Lawrence was a myth, albeit one he played up.

The legend sprouted early in his head coaching career, shortly after he'd had occasion to visit with then-Missouri Lt. Gov. William Morris.

"We were talking about bids from the university going out of state, and he said if a person is manufacturing in the state of Missouri, he should get first consideration, and if it's close, he ought to get the bid," he said. "We were just visiting about that, and I really wasn't very interested at that time.

"I was 32-33 years old, I was just trying to win a damn ballgame, and I wasn't interested in who was getting the bids except for my tennis shoes: My tennis shoes were going to some damned place in Illinois. And I wanted a local guy to have that."

With a laugh, he added: "Now a game comes up, and I'm over at Kansas, and the reporter says, `I noticed you didn't stay in Lawrence, you stayed over in Kansas City.' Well, it popped in my mind what the Lieutenant Governor had told me, and so I said,`Why, hell no, I'm not staying in Lawrence. I'm not spending a damn dime over here. This is Missouri money.'

"You know, hell, it wasn't really true, but it was something you could play on. And if you guys really asked a good question, then I could avoid it."

Former Kansas coach Ted Owens, against whom Stewart had plenty of dustups, was among the first to call when Stewart's granddaughter died in a car accident in 2009. And Stewart says he still has the rocking chair KU presented him in a ceremony at Allen Fieldhouse a year after he retired.

"The idea was instead of going to every school, well, my association started at Kansas, and Roy (Williams, KU's coach) said, 'You ought to come over here,'" said Stewart, recalling standing with Williams before the event. "It turned out a lot of people on each side did not like (the idea). I told Roy before the game, 'Let's don't stand too close together.'

"He said, `Why not?'

"So, they can't get us with one shot."

As it happens — brace yourselves, MU fans — Stewart even took a recruiting trip to Lawrence, Kan.

In a parallel universe somewhere, perhaps Stewart even became a Jayhawk.

After all, someone in Shelbyville had a nephew who was a student at Kansas, and somehow word got to basketball coach Phog Allen that they should bring him in for a look.

"So they did, and I drove to Lawrence, Kansas, for my trip, and that's how my association started with them," Stewart said.

Stewart also made a visit to Southern Methodist before choosing Missouri with the guidance of his high school coach, C.J. Kessler, who nudged Stewart that way on the advice of his close friend, Indiana coach Branch McCracken.

McCracken said, " 'You send Norm to Missouri,'" Stewart said. "So I went to Missouri."

As a player, assistant coach and head coach, Stewart directly was involved in 1,127 of the 2,151 games in MU history when he retired in 1999.

Eight-eight of those were against Kansas, nearly a third of the games played in the MU-KU series, with Mizzou winning 37 of them.

Stewart was 30-34 in regular-season games against Kansas as Missouri's head coach and 5-1 as a player, making him 35-35 in those roles (not counting a 1-9 record in tournament games against KU as a player and head coach).

"So I can talk to you about winning, and I can also talk to you about losing, equally, and I'll try to be unbiased," he said, laughing.

With so many games and moments to choose from, Stewart was a scan button of memories over the years going back to his playing days, when he scored 133 points in eight games against KU, and to his first game as a head coach playing at KU.

KU went ahead 66-65 on free throws with 2 seconds left only to foul Mizzou's Tom Johnson on the inbound pass.

"No time on the clock, he made two, and we won," Stewart said.

As the clock apparently is running out on the series, Stewart is less emotionally invested than he was when it was his livelihood.

He and his wife, Virginia, keep busy with family and travel, and Stewart now is dabbling in song-writing.

"These words kept coming to me" on a flight to November, Stewart said, adding that he asked the flight attendant for pen and paper and told her he was going to write a song. "She said, `Are you a song writer?'

"I said, 'Not yet.' "

With the help of a friend who's a composer and lyricist who put the melody to it and framed the words, Stewart's song is on CD now and has been "playing some" in Kansas City, he said, as he still tries to improve it.

It's called "I've Always Known That Now." From his perch at a less-emotional distance, he could say the same about how to approach the jeopardized rivalry.

"I'm watching the negotiations, and when you let three things come into play, you don't get good negotiations," he said. "Fear, anger and panic, and that's the order they come in, when you let that enter in, you don't get good negotiations. ...

"I really understand why Kansas would not want to play Missouri if we're not in the conference. I really would understand that. I hope Missouri people do, too, because if you don't, then you're never going to play.

"And you've got to see why they don't want to play, and then try to just present a case where it is a great rivalry."