By MIKE DeARMOND
The Kansas City Star

COLUMBIA | Barely had Missouri confirmed its acceptance to play Iowa in the 2010 Insight Bowl than the story lines began to pop up.

How long it had been since these two schools from bordering states had played.

And why.

How the Insight skipped over Nebraska to take the Tigers.

How it was now incumbent on Missouri fans to prove, not only to the Insight bowl but to all future bowls, they would travel in big numbers to support their football program.

With surprising bluntness, Missouri coach Gary Pinkel explained why, when he began the reclamation project of MU football a decade ago, he and Missouri athletic director Mike Alden dropped a four-year series against Iowa set for 2005 through 2008.

“We got ‘em off the schedule because they’re good,” Pinkel said. “We were building our program and that didn’t make a lot of sense to me to play such a great football program.

“I would say that was an intelligent decision.”

Missouri has averaged 10 victories a season over the last four years and now will be playing in a sixth straight bowl game, a school record.

But when the 10-2 Tigers meet the 7-5 Hawkeyes at 9 p.m. on Dec. 28 in Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz., it will be the first meeting between the double black and gold in 100 years.

In 1910, Missouri edged Iowa 5-0, in Columbia, boosting the Tigers’ edge to 7-5 in a series that was about to pull a Rip Van Winkle.

MU wide receiver T.J. Moe spoke with just as much boldness on how Missouri, after being passed over by the Insight last season for Iowa State, was taken by the Insight over Nebraska.

“I know a lot of times we’ve been snubbed in the bowls a little bit,” Moe said.

“I know right now, Nebraska has one more loss on their record (9-3) than Missouri does. That’s good for us.

“You’ve got 10 wins in a season, I don’t think you’re too worried about what bowl you’re going to after that. You either get screwed or you don’t. It’s not up to us any more.

“I don’t know if anybody got screwed.”

Nebraska fans, Moe was told, might disagree, with the Cornhuskers going to the Holiday Bowl to play Washington.

“Nebraska always thinks they got screwed,” Moe shot back.

The bottom line was delineated clearly by Pinkel and other MU officials.

Missouri has 11,000 tickets to sell to the Insight Bowl. An estimated 3,500 had been sold by early Sunday evening.

Following the 2007 season, Cotton Bowl officials credited Missouri fans with buying 35,000 tickets to that bowl in Dallas.

However, MU officials estimated the school sold only about 6,500 tickets to the 2008 Alamo Bowl and the 2009 Texas Bowl.

So Pinkel put it bluntly:

“We need our fans there,” he said. “It’s our job to consistently go to bowls and we’re doing it now.

“Mizzou fans, (I) challenge you.”

The MU Athletic ticket office began taking orders for the bowl game on Sunday evening at 7:30. Fans may order tickets by calling 1-800-CAT-PAWS or on the Internet at www.mutigers.com, or starting today at 8 a.m., by showing up in person at the Mizzou Arena ticket office.

Tickets through the MU web site on Sunday listed for $64 and $82, and there was an option to purchase and donate tickets for others at the web site.

The MU Alumni Association is offering full air/land and land/only tour packages to the bowl game. Information for that is at www.MizzouSportsTravel.com or by calling 1-888-649-9681.

Tickets and other information are also available at www.fiestabowl.org. The same organization runs the Fiesta Bowl and the Insight Bowl.

Pinkel said he didn’t harbor any ill feelings about Missouri being bypassed by the Insight Bowl last year, when bowl officials cited a real need to have a home team that promised to buy a ton of tickets for a bowl that was only on the NFL Network.

“Everybody’s got to make decisions for the reasons that are necessary for their organization,” Pinkel said Sunday night.

Pinkel got off the best line of the night when he talked about Iowa vs. Missouri not becoming a rivalry like Kansas vs. Missouri or even Illinois vs. Missouri.

Eight states share a common border with the state of Missouri.

“If we’ve got a natural rivalry with every one of them,” Pinkel said, “we’d have our own conference.”

Senior captain and cornerback Kevin Rutland, on hand at the MU bowl announcement, shook his head over his head coach’s words about not playing Iowa.

“To hear him say Iowa’s a great team, that’s why he dodged them, it takes a man to say something like that,” Rutland said.

“We’re playing them now. There’s no dodge.”