The University of Missouri and University of Illinois play every year in St. Louis, in a heated basketball rivalry known as the “Braggin’ Rights” game. While the football series in St. Louis never seemed to catch the intensity as its basketball counterpart, the two border universities will be giving it another go, in a four-year series starting in 2026.
Unlike the series in St. Louis that was last played in 2010, the four games between the Tigers and Fighting Illini between 2026 and 2029 will be played on-campus, from 2026 to 2029. Two games (September 26, 2026 and September 16, 2028) will be played in Champaign, Illinois, with two others (September 18, 2027 and September 15, 2029) being played at the University of Missouri’s Faurot Field in Columbia.
The announcement of the series with Illinois is the second announcement by the Tiger football program of the renewal of a border series in the 2020’s, with MU and K-State announcing a home-and-home, two year agreement last Thursday. Missouri has shown a continued willingness to play the school’s oldest and most bitter rival, Kansas, but the Jayhawks continue to be unwilling to schedule their border rival in basketball or men’s basketball for the foreseeable future.
