Reliving Missouri football's unlikely, unsanctioned 1896 trip to Mexico - ESPN

Saturday afternoon, college football will kick off on the other side of the Atlantic when North Carolina and TCU meet in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic.

While the Dublin game becoming a yearly Week 0 staple is a recent development, it's far from the first time the sport has gone abroad. International college football boasts a rather underrated history — games have been played outside of the United States since the sport's earliest days.

The Bacardi Bowl was contested a handful of times between 1907 and 1946 in Havana, featuring American universities facing Cuban opponents. Matchups played in Canada by American schools against McGill University and other colleges from across the northern border date back to the 1870s. And who can forget when Missouri took that unsanctioned spontaneous trip to Mexico in 1896 with Texas?

Wait, what?

The games the teams played are not officially recorded by either school — they were exhibitions — so the first known college football contests in Mexico exist largely as obscure footnotes in the pantheon of the sport's lore. But they happened. And the chronicle of Missouri going rogue to play them is wilder than any of the actual on-field action.

College football is a sport that prides itself on championing the obscure and unusual alike. This is a tale that ticks both those boxes, starting with a future attorney's wisdom and ending with a dismissed coach. In the spirit of college football making its return today on international soil, we went back on a tour of one of those obscure footnotes, reconstructing one of the lesser-known oddities in gridiron history.

Mizzou's unauthorized jaunt across the Rio Grande was the byproduct of an unlikely marriage of convenience between opportunity