First off, this article’s not about San Antonio. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful city and it definitely deserves mention here, but it’s not where I’m from. I actually spent twelve years growing up in the town of Columbia, Mo. It’s home to the University of Missouri, popularly known as “MU,” “Mizzou,” or by any of the unsavory monikers worsted Wildcat fans may have given it by now. I apologize if the subject of my hometown is still a sore one for many Northwestern readers. I’m sorry if the very mention of “Missouri” conjures up images of flyover country, missed field goals, and a San Antonio Riverwalk overflowing with tears. There’s more to us than that. Promise.
I only say that because I know Columbia pretty well. For better or for worse — I’m really trying to sell you on the former — my roots there are deep. My family still lives just a few minutes from the campus where my parents met, and where I may very well have been conceived. My dad’s folks hold lifetime season tickets for MU home games that we will inherit once they don’t need them anymore (hopefully five years at most — sorry, Grandma). Facebook informs me that I have 160 friends on the Mizzou network. We even keep several pet tigers in our backyard who are all named after Harry S. Truman’s cabinet members (one of whom, Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard, nursed me until I was in junior high). With all this, you’d expect my veins to run with black and gold. And for the first two decades of my life, they sure did. Allow me to explain.
You see, if the city of Columbia were a woman, and assuming you were a person of utmost quality (yes, I said “person,” for she is definitely open-minded), you would want to date her. You would pass up the cosmopolitan St. Louis and sprawling Kansas City that loom on her either side for the more modest, Midwestern charm she offers. She’s educated, committed to the environment, and (if you prefer Asian women) has sister cities in Japan, South Korea, and China. She enjoys solid relationships with her humbler neighbors, a proud agrarian tradition, civic recycling, a thriving downtown, bike trails, and one of the state’s lowest violent crime rates. Unfold her topographic map and you will see that she has elevation in all the right places. Your buddies will high-five you until your palms are cracked and bleeding but she will still hold your hand. Take her home to meet your mother and they will become best friends. Your father will meet her and long to be young again. Your little brother will retreat to his room and whisper a song about her as he strums his acoustic guitar and you will never hear a word of it. Your sister will develop an eating disorder.
It’s that good. So, imagine my excitement on that December day when I found out our bowl assignment. My school, which had not won a bowl game since 1789, would be taking on my hometown Tigers. I had followed the latter team as they were heartbreakingly bested by Kansas, Oklahoma State, and Texas in the weeks prior to a humiliating loss to Oklahoma. If there was ever to be a bowl game I could justify driving 14 hours for, this was it. I bought my ticket and loaded up my buddy’s Subaru Forester with a few changes of clothes, my teenage brother, and two friends: Tyler, a native Columbian who now attends Mizzou, and Quinn, a Northwestern sophomore from Indiana. So, like a Midwest microcosm, we left Columbia at 5 a.m. the day before game day. Any competitive banter over the coming game flagged well before Missouri had finished flying away under our tires. Oklahoma and Texas consisted of naps in the backseat, good music, and a 90-minute podcast on video games. But mostly, Tyler and I expressed our overwhelming anticipation for delicious Tex-Mex cuisine.
But please, imagine my predicament when I found myself suddenly underneath the Alamodome on the evening of Dec. 29, watching my hometown team square off with my own school. Fans on both sides were yelling terrible things about the two entities I care very much about. While I had shown up wearing purple and had planted myself right behind the Northwestern marching band (I figured I pay too much to do otherwise), I was suddenly torn. I had my paw up (as Mo Greene would have wanted), but it was raised in defiance to the cheers from the black-and-gold-clad crowd that I had grown up with.
It was awful. And lonely. All of a sudden, I felt like I wasn’t a true fan for either side.
However, as the game went on, something changed. My paw edged a little higher. My voice got a little hoarser (my keys, however, remained in my pockets, and the words “state school” stayed buried deep in my throat). Somehow, I couldn’t resist the infectious spirit of my classmates and the natural appeal of the sport. Columbia’s too good of a city to sell out after only two years in another town, but I am now a Northwestern student, first and foremost. I had to cheer on my friends and fellow students. Before the first half ended, I was enjoying the game without any remaining shadow of guilt or betrayal. When the game rolled into overtime after a missed Missouri field goal, I definitely hugged more dudes than I have ever hugged in my life (and I don’t even like dudes that much). As I embraced my purple-clad cohorts, I’ll admit to having a secret: I hoped the game would somehow end in a tie. Perhaps subconsciously, I had given this game more weight than it deserved, somehow viewing it as some sort of confrontation between my past and present conditions, my roots and myself.
Interestingly enough, upon returning to Columbia the night after the game, I found several people who assuredly hadn’t heard the result. I met up with some friends who chided me for wearing the “wrong color” or attending the “loser school,” but believe it or not, I also ran into some buddies who were still ignorant of the outcome (we still get our news by Conestoga wagon, after all). Once I explained where I had been for the past few days, they naturally asked me who had won the game.
“We did.” I said, pointing to my Northwestern shirt, wrinkled from hours of bucket seats, seat belts, and mocking pats on the back from victorious Mizzou fans.
“Oh!” they responded, surprised.
So take heart in this: somewhere, in the very bengal-striped bosom of Tiger country, there are still a few Columbians who believe our school to be the winner. And yeah, a little white lie is nowhere near as good as an actual win, but isn’t it a small victory nonetheless?