Tonight marks the 43rd edition of the annual Braggin’ Rights game in St. Louis, a marquee college basketball event that features the Illinois Fighting Illini versus the Missouri Tigers on a neutral court. Despite Mizzou recently dominating this series, the Illini have a 26-16 all-time advantage.
Friday also brought news that this series will be extended, as expected, through 2029.
And that means it’s the perfect time to discuss what a horrible mistake it was to renew the football version of this series.
Of course, there is still plenty of time and space to correct that mistake. Six years ago, the Illini announced a revival of this series, inexplicably by staging entire press conference, expressly for this purpose, when a tweet or press release was sufficient enough.
Braggin’ Rights football series, in which Mizzou leads 17-7 all-time, including 12 of the last 15, renews in 2026.
The Tigers coming in riding a six game wins steak, the longest in series history.
In other words, it’s hard to look at this, if you’re someone who cares about Fighting Illini sports, as anything but guaranteed Ls moving forward. This is especially true for the games in Columbia, MO as the resumption of the series will be home and homes, and not in the STL.
The Illinois are coming off yet another disappointing 5-win-season-that-immediately-followed-up-a-big-breakthrough-campaign-the-previous-season.
It’s what Illini football does, as this program is simply allergic to consistent sustained success.
The 5-wins-after-a-great-year routine also happened in 2002 and 2008, where the Illini, you guessed it, lost to MIZ NOZ in the Braggin’ Rights game.
There is still plenty of time for the University of Illinois to pull out of this deal, and replace Mizzou with a cupcake on the 2026 schedule.
The University of Missouri will understand accordingly, and even if they don’t, then who really cares?
While the Duke and Kansas series deals made perfect sense at the time they were stuck, the Braggin’ Rights renewal was a very dumb idea from the start.
The Illini need to start stacking bowl wins, period.
Get those 15 extra practices, the bowl payout money, and all the added exposure that comes with playing a game that most people who are interested in college football will be watching. Illinois can’t be trusted to that when they’re playing a SEC powerhouse in the non-conference.
The only shot Illinois has at doing this would be to schedule more group of five, mid-major, patsies, scrubs, etc. whatever you want to call them, in the non-conference.
Illinois badly needs those buy games, because that is where they are as a program right now. They haven’t achieved consistent, regular success in well over 30 years.
Having Missouri come to Memorial Stadium only hurts them, it does not help them.
Mizzou is nationally ranked and in a New Year’s 6 bowl game. The Illini are home for the holidays in an era when teams with a losing record sometimes make a bowl game. They just went sub .500 in the worst division in the entire history of power five conference football.
Come to think of it, they may want to buy their way out of the Kansas and Duke series as well. But we can save that discussion for another time. Getting out of the Braggin’ Rights is a no-brainer.
No one will miss it.
It won’t lead to much bad publicity, if it leads to any negative press at all. Just do it in the summer when college sports are off-season and it’ll be like a 12 hour story, at most.
Paul M. Banks is the owner/manager of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He’s written for numerous publications, including the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. He regularly appears on NTD News and WGN News Now, while writing for the International Baseball Writers Association of America. You can follow the website on Twitter.