STANDING ALONE IN the middle of the grassy Francis Quadrangle at the University of Missouri are six ionic-style columns. They are the last remaining features from the school’s first building, constructed in 1840, and when photographed with the domed, red-brick Jesse Hall in the background, it makes for a welcoming postcard.

During campus tours, it’s on The Quad where prospective students have long been given a crash course on university lore.

“There were absolutely two things that we hit on every tour,” said broadcaster Kevin Gehl, a Missouri alum and former homecoming king, who guided campus tours as an undergraduate student from 2006 to 2009. “Getting the history tied in right away was always so valuable because we could say, ‘Listen, we have the first and best journalism school in the world and the oldest continuous homecoming.’

“Now, sometimes that would get shortened to, ‘Well, we’ve got the oldest homecoming.'”

For many Missouri alums, the idea the school is the birthplace of modern homecoming — a tradition celebrated at just about every high school and college in the country — serves as a major source of pride.

It all goes back to 1911.

That’s when football coach and athletic director Chester Brewer called for alumni to “come home” to see the Tigers play Kansas in Columbia, starting a homecoming tradition on campus that over a century later remains, without question, one of the largest, most cherished celebrations of its kind. As late as the 1930s, after homecoming had become a common occurrence across the country, Brewer would perpetuate the notion Missouri started it all, and for decades the urban legend grew.

But as Mizzou’s origin story spread, so did competing claims. From Illinois to Michigan to Texas and beyond, there are differing tales of how homecoming came about. After becoming aware of this incredibly low-stakes debate ahead of Missouri’s homecoming game Saturday against Auburn, ESPN set out to answer what seemed like a simple question: Where did the tradition of homecoming begin?

IN EARLY 1910, two University of Illinois students sat on the steps of what was then the school’s YMCA. It’s there, the story goes, that they first discussed the idea for an event to bring alumni back to campus.

“They wanted to do it in the fall because they thought centering it around a football game would be a good anchor to get people to come back,” said Ryan Ross, the director of history and traditions programs for the Illinois Alumni Association. “They also wanted to have other events that people could take part in. The university had been having alumni reunions and class reunions — that sort of thing — for a long time and so what they wanted to do was move those reunions to the fall.”

One of the students, W. Elmer Ekblaw, was a reporter for the student newspaper, the Daily Illini, and used the platform to advocate for the idea during the spring. It quickly gained support and by May, an official homecoming day was scheduled for October, when the football team would host rival Chicago, coached by the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg.

In addition to the football game, there would be a baseball game, a track meet and other reunion events for alumni that planned to attend. The school’s athletic association added 5,000 temporary seats to the football stadium to accommodate an estimated crowd of 12,000, which saw the Illini win 3-0. Illinois’ first homecoming was celebrated as an overwhelming success, with the Daily Illini predicting other schools would follow the school’s lead.

“The echoes of the events of this great home-coming will be heard as long as the University endures, for it is now almost a certainty that it will be adopted as a permanent annual institution the like of which no other University can boast,” the paper wrote. “Illinois may well pride itself on being the originator of the plan for drawing home the alumni, a plan which will undoubtedly be adopted generally.”

The article was prophetic in that homecoming was widely adopted and has been held at Illinois every year since, with the exception of 1918, due to the influenza epidemic. It also likely played a role in establishing widespread belief this was where the nationwide tradition was born.

“For more than a century, there’s been this idea that we created homecoming and this idea has been passed down from generation to generation and just sort of proliferated,” Ross said. “Alumni from here will get into arguments with people from other universities who claim they created homecoming.”

It was of such importance at Illinois that in 2005, graduate student John Franch was commissioned to conduct a research project, paid for by the University Archives Student Life and Culture Archival Program, to determine who created homecoming.

“I was hired to look into the matter and hopefully settle it once and for all,” Franch told ESPN in an email. “Needless to say, the answer to the question proved to be a complicated one.”

It’s complicated because the concept of alumni returning to campus to watch football wasn’t something that needed to be invented. It happened naturally. And many schools had alumni gatherings that were planned around — or just happened to coincide with — football games or other athletic events. These were common in the Ivy League during the late 1800s.

Franch’s report outlined how Michigan hosted what it referred to as “Alumni Games” beginning in 1897. The current football team would play an alumni team, and there were ancillary events designed to bring alumni together. In 1900, the format changed and the team played against Purdue in the designated alumni game. The similarities to homecoming were present, but Franch found that Michigan didn’t start using the actual phrase — homecoming — until it was printed on the cover of a football program in 1947.

Northern Illinois, then known as Northern Illinois State Normal School, traces its homecoming roots to 1906. That’s when the term first appeared in the school newspaper, but the homecoming football game, like how things began at Michigan, was played against an alumni team until 1914, when it played Wheaton College. This week, NIU will celebrate its homecoming, in what has been marketed as its 117th all time.

These examples raise questions about semantics. Should Michigan get credit for homecoming if it didn’t call it homecoming? Should NIU get credit if its early versions were missing an important part — a real opponent — of what the tradition is now?

It’s all up for debate.

What’s not in dispute, however, is that in 1909 Baylor hosted a “Home-Coming” weekend that featured all the elements that remain important today. It took months of planning and included a pep rally, a bonfire, a parade and, of course, a football game, in which Baylor defeated TCU, 6-3.

If history wants to remember the first, official homecoming game in college football, all the evidence suggests this was it.

An 82-page university document was published in January 1910 and went into great detail to memorialize everything that took place.

“The purpose of the Home-Coming was to give an opportunity for the joyful meeting of former student friends, an occasion when old classmates could again feel the warm hand-clasp of their fellows, recall old memories and associations, and catch the Baylor spirit again,” it said.

From that perspective, not much has changed.

“Just thinking about the ways that we make meaning of things and the importance of sports and our culture and the events that happen,” said Dr. Elizabeth Rivera, the university archivist and associate librarian at Baylor. “It’s documented here that human nature doesn’t change over time, and they were doing the same things that we still do today for meaning-making and traditions that mean so much to people.”

Among the attendees was the school’s oldest living graduate at the time, a man named Oscar Leland, who was born in 1826, and, notably, arrived in an automobile.

Baylor wouldn’t host another homecoming until 1915 — something Rivera said was likely due to the cost of such a large-scale event — and it didn’t become an annual tradition until the 1930s. So while Baylor likely deserves credit for being first, it didn’t have as much of an impact on the early growth of the tradition as other places.

For Ross, the existence of Baylor’s homecoming in 1909 serves as clear evidence that Illinois, in 1910, was not first, but he has found that facts haven’t gotten in the way of a good story.

“There’s still people every year who say, ‘Illinois invented homecoming,’ and you have to correct them. You can gently correct them or if it’s a top level administrator saying it, you just kind of let it go,” Ross said. “But it happens all the time. What we’ve sort of come down on is Illinois didn’t invent homecoming, but I think we have had the longest continuous homecoming celebration with the intention of it being an annual event.”

TODD MCCUBBIN, THE executive director of the Mizzou Alumni Association, isn’t exactly sure how Missouri’s claim to have originated homecoming grew so strong over the years.

“We’re very fortunate to have the sort of buy-in that we have from our community, from our students, from our alumni around this tradition,” he said. “Part of that does come from the fact that at some point we were given credit at one time for being the first in the country.

“So, I think people kind of bought into that history and tradition of it. And then, honestly, once you get past that, it has to be more about — they’re not necessarily too concerned about who’s first, we just know we do homecoming really well.”

Even this week, there were at least two new Reddit posts that share a quote from Brewer, indicating Missouri invented homecoming. They link back to an article originally published by MIZZOU magazine in 2011, that wades into the history.

“For years, third-party ammunition has fueled debates about which university can be credited with starting homecoming,” the articles stated. “Recognition from Jeopardy! and Trivial Pursuit is often touted as supporting evidence by Mizzou fans.”

As part of this fact-finding mission, ESPN reached out to “Jeopardy!” for the purpose of sharing the clue and answer relating to Missouri’s homecoming claim, but the exercise didn’t substantiate what was written in 2011.

In 2021, a $400 clue read: “An early version of this tradition was in Nov. 1911 when the U. of Missouri’s athletic director had alumni visit for the Kansas game.” The correct response: What is homecoming?

But in a statement to ESPN, Jeopardy! co-head writer Billy Wisse said: “Sorry to say that Michele Loud [the show’s other co-head writer] and I looked all kinds of ways, but we see absolutely no Jeopardy! clue ever about Missouri and homecoming other than the one from 2021.”

What’s undeniable is that Missouri’s homecoming celebration is among the best in the country. The game is always held on one of the last three weekends of October and is preceded by a parade, talent competition, spirit rally and other alumni events. There are acts of service with a food drive and what McCubbin said is one of the largest blood drives in the country.

RECORD = BROKEN🩸

We are so grateful to our Mizzou community for coming together to beat last year’s donation total with 4,959 units of blood. Thank you to every donor, volunteer and the @RedCrossMO for their help in saving 14,877 potential lives.#LeadingtheLegacy pic.twitter.com/IdcAH4eQ2q

— Mizzou Homecoming (@MU_Homecoming) October 11, 2024

“It’s the biggest weekend of the year in Columbia, by far,” he said. “Everything else pales in comparison.”

When Missouri moved to the SEC from the Big 12 in 2012, homecoming didn’t change much, but it led to one memorable exchange McCubbin had with a colleague at another school, who questioned why the Tigers had scheduled their school as the homecoming opponent.

“I’m like, ‘So what?'” McCubbin said. “And he says, ‘Well, in the SEC it’s got this kind of connotation that [homecoming is] where you kind of schedule the weaker opponent.”

That scheduling philosophy reaches far beyond the SEC, but McCubbin explained that at Missouri, that’s not part of the thinking.

And with over a century’s worth of homecoming history, during which Mizzou was instrumental in shaping an American tradition, who is it for another school to suggest how it is run?

Even if, technically, Missouri wasn’t where it all began.

Arizona State starting quarterback Sam Leavitt will miss Saturday’s game at Cincinnati and possibly more time with an injury to his ribs.

Jeff Sims, a former starter at both Nebraska and Georgia Tech who competed with Leavitt for ASU’s starting job, will lead the offense Saturday. Coach Kenny Dillingham doesn’t have a firm timetable for Leavitt’s return, saying, “It could be two weeks, it could be four weeks.” Arizona State has an open week after Cincinnati before visiting Oklahoma State on Nov. 2.

Leavitt said following Friday’s win against Utah that he took a hit to the ribs, which “started to spasm and [I] couldn’t really breathe.” But he remained in the game as ASU won 27-19 and had 154 passing yards with a touchdown and an interception. Sims had his first two passing attempts for ASU in the Utah game and also has a rushing touchdown this season.

The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Sims started 23 games for Georgia Tech and the first two games last season at Nebraska. He has 4,759 career passing yards with 31 touchdowns and 29 interceptions, as well as 1,372 career rushing yards and 12 scores. Dillingham has said both Leavitt and Sims are “Sunday [NFL] talents.”

“We brought him in to compete to start,” Dillingham said. “Sam’s a really good player, Sam beat him out but it was close, Jeff had a good camp. And now Jeff, who has started a crap ton of games, gets to go start again. To me, there’s not much drama.”

We are two games into both 2024 League Championship Series, and it’s time for our snap judgements based on what we’ve seen so far.

The NLCS is tied after dominant offensive performances carried the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets to wins at Dodger Stadium.

In the ALCS, the New York Yankees overpowered the Cleveland Guardians both nights in the Bronx to take a commanding 2-0 series lead.

What has stood out most so far? Who are the early MVPs of each series? And what’s next for the World Series hopefuls? Our MLB experts weigh in.

Los Angeles Dodgers vs. New York Mets

Who is the two-games-in MVP of this NLCS?

Alden Gonzalez: It’s pretty remarkable to consider the rarity of Jack Flaherty‘s accomplishment for the Dodgers in Game 1. With seven scoreless innings in L.A.’s 9-0 win, he became the first Dodgers starter since 2021 to complete at least six innings in the postseason, breaking a streak of 20 games. The last time someone threw seven scoreless in the playoffs? Clayton Kershaw, in the first round in 2020. The Dodgers have had a lot of starting pitching issues in October — perhaps never more so than this year, with so many key arms injured. Flaherty, who lines up to start again in Game 5, needs to keep pitching deep into games. So do Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler. This team can’t win a championship without it.

Bradford Doolittle: It’s got to be a tie, because we’ve had two completely different games that now leave us dead even. So it’s Jack Flaherty for his seven goose eggs in Game 1, tied with Mark Vientos for his nine-pitch grand slam in Game 2.

David Schoenfield: One thing that’s clear — as seems to be the case every October with the Dodgers — is that Dave Roberts’ decisions will factor heavily into the results of this series. In the end, it’s the players who win and lose the games, and Roberts tends to receive too much of the blame when the Dodgers lose, but in this postseason, he has managed a masterful bullpen game to beat the San Diego Padres in what might have been peak Roberts. But in Game 2 of the ALCS, he issued the ill-advised intentional walk to Francisco Lindor, setting up Mark Vientos’ grand slam. In general, walking the bases loaded is a bad idea, since there is no margin for error with the next batter. So that decision backfired in a big way. It all means Roberts has the potential to be the MVP of the series … or the goat (lower-case version).

Which lineup has impressed you most so far?

Gonzalez: Neither? The Dodgers have combined for a .658 OPS through the first two games of this series. The Mets? .639. The Dodgers are 6-for-20 with runners in scoring position, while the Mets are 4-for-15. The Dodgers have left 29 runners on base, but the Mets aren’t far behind at 24. Simply put, it’s early in this series, hitting is harder this time of year and neither team has separated itself. I think the Dodgers’ lineup is deeper and possesses more upside, but it needs some key guys to get going — primarily Will Smith, who’s 2-for-23 in the playoffs, and Shohei Ohtani, who’s 0-for-19 with the bases empty.

Doolittle: In what is a surprise to me, I’d say the Mets. The Dodgers have some guys either struggling (Will Smith, kinda-sorta Shohei Ohtani), at less than full capacity (Freddie Freeman, Gavin Lux) or on the roster more for versatility reasons than for offensive production. The Mets have a roster of hitters who go more than nine deep and can be adapted to a number of in-game pitching changes.

Schoenfield: As long as Ohtani continues to scuffle a bit, I’ll go with the Mets. They’re a little deeper one to nine and also have some options off the bench, while the Dodgers are stuck with the likes of a defensive replacement in Kevin Kiermaier and a weak-hitting utility player in Chris Taylor. The Mets do need to get something out of Jose Iglesias, who was the big surprise in the regular season (hitting .337/.381/.448) but hasn’t done much in the playoffs (.222/.263/.222).

What has surprised you most about the Dodgers so far in this series?

Gonzalez: That their bullpen strategy backfired so drastically in Game 2. It was because Alex Vesia isn’t available in this round, Daniel Hudson was unavailable for Game 2, and (mostly) because Landon Knack allowed five runs in the second inning. When the Dodgers shut out the Padres with eight relievers in Game 4 of the division series, Knack didn’t pitch until the ninth, when the game was already out of hand. Before Monday, that was the only inning he had pitched in about two weeks. The Dodgers would prefer not to use a bulk reliever for games when one of their traditional starters doesn’t take the ball. But it appears they don’t have a choice at this point. They don’t have enough arms.

Doolittle: The way Ohtani finished the season, I fully expected one of those 1.300 OPS postseasons from him that defy the challenges of facing playoff pitching. So far, that has not been the case, and at times, he has looked a little lost against breaking pitches. Othani has still had his moments, and it was a good sign that rather than getting antsy in Game 2 he still took a couple of walks. I don’t expect his uneven production to continue much longer.

Schoenfield: How much they’re suddenly relying on Enrique Hernandez as a key contributor — and might need to continue to do so. In the final two games of the NLDS and Game 1 of the NLCS, he went 5-for-11 with four runs scored, and the Dodgers won all three games.

And what about the Mets?

Gonzalez: The Mets were at times a mess on the bases and on defense early this season, then they got rolling and seemed to tighten up. But they’ve made some pretty glaring mistakes in both departments through the first couple of games in this series. They were finally starting to rally in the fifth inning of Game 1, getting back-to-back hits, but then Jesse Winker got deked by Enrique Hernandez, who threw behind him from center field and got him caught in a rundown. In the sixth inning of Game 2, they almost blew a big lead, with Jose Iglesias botching a tailor-made double-play ball and Pete Alonso failing to corral another grounder that went for a two-run single. They need to clean it up.

Doolittle: Vientos was going well during the regular season, but he has been the most impactful hitter of the playoffs overall. That trajectory has continued with his Game 2 slam. Vientos, just to remind everyone, started the season in Syracuse, partly because of a roster crunch, but also because he had real issues to work through in terms of approach. You expect shortcomings like that to be exposed in October, but Vientos has been the one exposing pitchers instead. I’m not shocked he has been good, but I’m very surprised at just how good.

Schoenfield: Not a surprise, but did Edwin Diaz finally find his fastball in the ninth inning of Game 2? Diaz has been an adventure all postseason, struggling to throw strikes, but after the first two Dodgers reached, he threw 13 consecutive fastballs and struck out Mookie Betts, Teoscar Hernandez and Freddie Freeman (getting Freeman on a slider). That version of Diaz looked unbeatable.

What is one thing each team needs to do from here to take control of this series?

Gonzalez: The Dodgers need their starting pitchers to be effective. It’ll probably be Buehler, Yamamoto and Flaherty, in that order, pitching the next three games at Citi Field. If the series shifts back to L.A., the Dodgers will have to stage a bullpen game at some point. And their preference would be to utilize only their high-leverage arms rather than someone like Knack or Brent Honeywell to take down bulk innings. That only has a chance of happening if they get production from their starting rotation. The Mets need to continue to neutralize Ohtani and Betts at the top of the order. The two of them have combined to go 3-for-15 with five walks, which isn’t terrible but also isn’t great. Given how hobbled Freeman is behind them, taming those two will be key to the Mets’ chances.

Doolittle: Baseball isn’t really a “one thing” kind of sport, but among the options, the Dodgers need the bottom of their order to get on base. It’s not that I exactly buy into the Ohtani empty-base split, but it’s certainly true that the more he and Betts hit with runners on, the higher the scores are going to be for L.A. For the Mets, it’s a matter of taking advantage of the lower tier of the L.A. playoff pitching staff. They did that in Game 2, and based on what we’ve seen this season, they have an immediate opportunity with Buehler. But the Dodgers have a lot of pitchers who are dealing, so the Mets have to make hay while they can.

Schoenfield: I’m sticking with Ohtani has to hit for the Dodgers, since it’s still likely their questionable starting pitching/bullpen games will surrender some runs. For the Mets, the starters have to pitch deep into games, given even the top Mets relievers don’t inspire a lot of confidence.

New York Yankees vs. Cleveland Guardians

Who is the two-games-in MVP of this ALCS?

Jorge Castillo: The Yankees have struggled hitting with runners in scoring position (2-for-17), but they’ve generated plenty of traffic on the basepaths, and Gleyber Torres has been a big factor there. The second baseman has reached base in five of his nine plate appearances from the leadoff spot. He has scored three of the Yankees’ 11 runs. He has been instrumental in applying early pressure, delivering a single in the first inning in Game 1 and a double in the first inning in Game 2. He was on base for Aaron Judge‘s home run in Game 2 and has done his job setting the table for Juan Soto and Judge exceptionally well. It has fueled the Yankees’ offense.

Jeff Passan: Carlos Rodón‘s dominant Game 1 outing helped the Yankees secure a lead in the series and allowed manager Aaron Boone to avoid overtaxing his best relievers ahead of Game 2. If the Yankees can win one of the next two games, Rodón will be in line to finish the series in Game 5 — and if he can manage another similar start, he’ll almost certainly get the actual award. Honorable mention goes to Juan Soto, who has the highest on-base percentage (.625) and slugging percentage (1.000) of any hitter in either LCS.

David Schoenfield: Let’s give a shout-out to the Yankees’ bullpen, which has been stellar throughout the postseason so far with three runs allowed (just two earned) in 23⅓ innings and tossed a strong 4⅔ innings to hold the lead in Game 2. Clay Holmes has found his early-season groove, Tim Hill has gotten some key lefties out, Tommy Kahnle got four outs on Tuesday and Luke Weaver has locked it down in the ninth (although he did serve up a home run to Jose Ramirez in Game 2). We always talk about a bullpen getting hot at the right time, and New York’s is hot right now.

Has Aaron Judge finally broken out?

Castillo: Who knows? Maybe the home run in Game 2 is the start of one of his trademark barrages. Maybe it’ll ease the pressure some. But it’s Aaron Judge. It was always just a matter of time before he figured things out and started clobbering baseballs again. The question was whether the Yankees could afford to wait until he did. The way this series is going, it looks like they can.

Passan: Yes. When Judge hits home runs, they tend to come in bunches, and this wasn’t some short-porch cheapie. Hunter Gaddis‘ fastball works exceptionally at the top of the zone — he had allowed only one home run off the 230 such pitches he threw in the upper-third or higher this season — and Judge turned it around in a hurry. The ball left his bat at 111.3 mph, landed 414 feet away in center field and portends the sort of run that has a chance to flip the narrative on the Yankees’ captain in the postseason.

Schoenfield: Well, it was certainly the most overanalyzed 17 at-bats in recent memory before Judge finally homered in his 18th. It does feel like his plate appearances have been improving, including a sac fly in Game 1 and another one in Game 2 prior to the home run. Now toss in the home run, and let’s just say the Guardians better be very wary of the big guy moving forward.

What do the Guardians most need to do to get back into this series?

Castillo: They need to score more runs. Five runs in two games isn’t going to cut it against a team as talented as the Yankees. And it starts with Jose Ramirez. The star third baseman was 0-for-7 with a walk before swatting a home run in the ninth inning of Game 2. He and the rest of the offense will need to do more of that. The bullpen, as good as it is, needs more support.

Passan: To start playing like themselves again. The Guardians won 92 games and the American League Central because they play a good brand of baseball. They had the second-most defensive runs saved this season — and you don’t do that by dropping popups and bobbling balls in the outfield. They had the best bullpen ERA by more than half a run — and you don’t do that by issuing five wild pitches in a playoff game. The Cleveland team of the first two games is not the Cleveland team of the 162 during the regular season or the five in the division series. The Yankees are good enough already. The Guardians’ gift-giving season needs to end now.

Schoenfield: Not make mistakes. They don’t have the firepower to overcome their shoddy play in the first two games. In Game 1, it was seven walks and five wild pitches (four of them by Joey Cantillo). In Game 2, there were a few defensive miscues, including two errors that led to two unearned runs. It’s no fun having a weapon like Emmanuel Clase in the bullpen and not being able to get the ball to him with a lead. But that has to start with cleaner baseball (oh, and getting some hits with runners in scoring position, after going 1-for-11 the first two games).