So I decided to do some digging to see what the race to 600 wins actually looks like. My research has turned up some interesting history.
KU first fielded a football team in 1890 while K-State didn't have an official football game until 1896. Also worth mentioning is that KU almost immediately joined a conference playing games while K-State was independent with its programs and only scheduled a handful a year. In the first 10 years of KU football from 1890 until 1899, KU played 77 total games winning 57 of those.
K-State only played 15 games in that same time period, going 4-7 with 4 ties.
The next 12 years were a mix of independence and conference affiliation for KU, and total independence for the good guys in Manhattan. KU played 120 games during this stretch and had a record of 78-32 with 10 ties. K-State played 108 games during that stretch with a record of 63-41 and 4 ties. That brings the total records for KU and K-State at the start of the 1913 football season to 135-50-12 and 67-48-8 respectively. That's 197 games compared to 123, of which they've won 68 more than K-State. Why is 1913 important? Well, that's the year that K-State finally dropped its independent status and joined the Missouri Valley Conference, of which KU was already a member. The MVC as you know, eventually led to the creation the Big 6 in 1928, the Big 7 in 1948, the Big 8 in 1960, and then the Big 12 for 1996.
So essentially, the current lead for KU is entirely due to them playing football in a time when most people literally rode horses everywhere and electricity was still a new thing that most people didn't have. Now, full disclosure, there are some conflicts as to how many games took place during this early time frame and how many wins each program truly has depending upon your source for information. We are talking about the 19th century here. For my following analysis, I used Winsipedia.com for both programs.
Okay, so that may not come as a giant surprise to some of you super sports history buff types, but it did to me. However, it's one thing to tell you about it, but what about showing it to you?
If you graph every official game played for both schools and put it on a chart, this is what you get. You can click on any of these graphs to enlarge.
Damn, they're so close. We don't stand a chance, right!? Well, let's take a closer look at the trajectory of these two programs.
As I said before, K-State joined a conference with KU in 1913. So if we wipe away all the horse drawn carriages and inflated pig stomachs that use to constitute a "football" game, this is what things look like. Again, you can click on the graph to enlarge.
Okay, that looks a little more interesting. So counting ONLY the last 107 years, we can see that K-State is doing better than we though But again, that blue line only has to reach ~ 465 in this graph while K-State basically has to reach 500.
But does it look like adjusting the timeline again? Well, the Coaches Poll was started in 1950, and people like nice round numbers. So here's the last 70 years of football.
Uh oh Jayhawk fans. You're starting to level off pretty fast.
Most consider 1992 to be the beginning of the modern era of football. This was when the 85 Scholarship Limit went into effect, the first FBS Conference Championship Game finally took place, and it was the beginning of the Bowl Coalition. No collegiate athletes were alive prior to this time, so this is all they've known. Here's what it looks like now.
Wow
Finally, here's the modern college football era, including all previous wins.
You'll notice that the last segment in their graph is flat, because they haven't won a game yet in 2020, and ours only has a slight slope accounting for the 2 wins we have so far.
Now I don't have a crystal ball, but based on their trajectory in the last 30 years and ours, this race is going to be really close!
Hopefully Les can stick around in one sense or another to see the exciting finish!
