Finally, on the third attempt, on February 16, 1863, the Kansas Legislature designated Manhattan as home to the state's Land-grant university.

Then, beginning in the 1940 football season, the winner of the KU-KSU contest received the "Peace Pact Trophy", which was miniature bronze goalposts.

Kansas was coming off an appearance in the Orange Bowl the previous season, led by future Pro Football Hall of Fame running back John Riggins, while Kansas State in 1969 was an offensive juggernaut led by quarterback Lynn Dickey and running back Mack Herron.

The game was not decided until the final play, when two K-State defenders jarred the ball loose from a KU receiver in the end zone.

However, it was later determined that Kerwin Bell, a running back for Kansas in that game, was a partial qualifier despite his high school transcripts indicating otherwise and he was ruled academically ineligible at the time of the 1980 season.

The lone tie during the Governor's Cup era took place on November 7, 1987, in Manhattan, and is the most infamous game in the history of the series.

While his counterpart, Stan Parrish, kept his job, he was fired in 1988 after the Wildcats posted a 0–11 season to extend their winless streak to 28 games.

Parrish's firing led to the hiring of Bill Snyder, who would shift the direction of the series in favor of the Wildcats and built them into a powerhouse.

Both teams would finish the season ranked in the top ten, but this day belonged to Kansas State.

An 11-year winning streak by KSU that began in 1993 – at that time, the longest by either team in the series – was broken on October 9, 2004, when KU won a back-and-forth 31–28 thriller in Lawrence.

KU went on to build an 11–0 record on the season before losing to Missouri, and secured an at-large bid to the 2008 Orange Bowl.

Recently, the University of Kansas has been dominant in the series, including a winning streak of 31 games over K-State that lasted from 1994 to 2005.

Despite the lopsided record, the rivalry has become more relevant again in recent years, with both teams ranked in the AP Top 25 for many of the match-ups.

[18] Jeff Sagarin's rankings of the nation's top programs by decade in the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia nicely track the history of the rivalry.

Over the decades, the rivalry has seen a number of notable coaches match wits, including Jack Gardner, Tex Winter, Lon Kruger and Jack Hartman at Kansas State, and James Naismith, Phog Allen, Larry Brown, Roy Williams and Bill Self at KU.

The rivalry heated up further with the arrival of Bob Boozer at Kansas State and Wilt Chamberlain at KU in the middle of the decade.

To close the decade, Kansas State swept the season series from KU on the way to a 25–2 record and a #1 ranking in the final AP Poll for 1959.

In prior decades, Kansas State had played their games in Nichols Hall, which doubled as a gymnasium, livestock pavilion, and pool.

In 1950 Kansas State opened Ahearn Field House, one of the largest basketball facilities in the country at the time, which seated 14,000 spectators.

This event was held from 1957 to 1968, and featured national powerhouses such as UCLA, Xavier, San Francisco, St. Joseph's, Cal, and Marquette.

Nevertheless, in the championship game of the Big Eight Holiday Tournament in December 1962, KU posted a surprising 90-88 quadruple-overtime victory over K-State.

Also, on February 20, 1965, one of the classic pranks in the series was perpetrated when a pair of 6x12 banners saying "Go Cats, Kill Snob Hill Again" unfurled on the east and west sides of the Allen Fieldhouse scoreboard with eight minutes left in the first half.

For years the Kansas State administration has attempted to stop this practice, and following a nationally televised game on February 19, 2007, PETA complained about it in a letter to KSU President Jon Wefald.

At the start of the decade, Rolando Blackman at Kansas State and Darnell Valentine at KU squared off in some classic match-ups.

In what was supposed to be the rubber game, in the 1988 Big Eight Conference tournament, Kansas State won a decisive victory by a 69–54 score.

Kansas State was led by a first-year head coach, Frank Martin, and featured one of the top-rated groups of freshman players in the nation.

Prior to the season, Kansas State freshman phenom Michael Beasley boasted that "We're gonna beat KU at home.

With number one seed implications on the line, Frank Martin called it "the biggest game we've ever played at K-State".

One of the ugliest moments in the rivalry's history took place in January 2020 in Allen Fieldhouse, when a brawl erupted between KU and KSU players near the end of an 81–60 Jayhawk win over the Wildcats.

The brawl started after KU's Silvio De Sousa had the ball stolen from him by KSU's DaJuan Gordon while attempting to dribble out the last few seconds of the game with a 21-point lead.