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Is KU Alumni Association trolling the entire state of Missouri?

Final Four Kentucky Kansas Basketball

A Kansas fan holds up a giant face of Kansas head coach Bill Self before the start of the NCAA Final Four tournament college basketball championship game against Kentucky, Monday, April 2, 2012, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

AP

Missouri is leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. The Border War (yes, I still use the politically incorrect nickname for the KU/Mizzou game), which began in 1891, will no longer be played. That doesn’t mean Kansas and Missouri fans are done lobbing verbal hand grenades at one another - no not by a long shot.

When the Kansas Alumni Association proposed that Jayhawk license plates be made available in the state of Missouri, their rationale -- that more than 30,000 KU grads live east of the state line -- was nominally true, but seemed more like a very visible trolling/marketing stunt.

The odds were against the initiative from the beginning, because a member of the Missouri legislature must sponsor any bill to add a new plate design. It sounds like another Mission: Impossible sequel, but as KUSports.com pointed out, finding a politician willing to risk statewide shunning was difficult, but, surprisingly enough, not impossible.

Enter Missouri Rep. Charlie Denison, a Republican from Springfield. After a KU alumnus approached him with the idea for the plate, Denison had no qualms about signing on.

“I have sponsored several different plates that wouldn’t necessarily have to do with the University of Missouri,” said Denison, who is the chairman of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation.

Denison said he was unaffiliated in the historic rivalry between the Jayhawks and the Tigers. He earned a scholarship out of high school to attend Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas.

“If I could get a license plate from there, I probably would, but I probably would have to pay for the whole thing myself,” Denison said.

If Denison’s committee approves the plate in the 2013 legislative session, the alumni association will have to provide 200 completed applications in order for sales of the plate to begin.

So, yeah, this could actually happen. All the Alumni Association has to do is find 200 people who are willing to sign on to have their cars egged, keyed, and otherwise damaged, and they’ll be all set.