Leave it to a Kansas boy to up the ante at the state’s biggest sporting event of the year.

Clint Bowyer, an Emporia native, will take to the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan., this weekend in front of 80,000 fans and race for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series. For those of you who aren’t familiar to the sport, the Sprint Cup is the big leagues and Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart are all part of the Show. These guys will see the race as another stop along the way, but Bowyer sees things a little differently.

Leading the Chase for the Sprint Cup is Carl Edwards, a native of Columbia, Mo. Bowyer, who is in sixth place in the standings, happens to be a Jayhawk fan. With that said, this is all about the rivalry.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun to go back there and be racing against Carl for the championship. It’s kind of a Kansas-Missouri border war,” he told Motorsport.com this week. “I remember going to the KU-MU game at Arrowhead Stadium last year, and this kind of reminds me of that. It’s the Kansas boy against the Missouri boy. Hopefully, we’ll put it on them.”

Bowyer, who lives in Clemmons, N.C., has not shied away from showing his love for the Jayhawks this season. Before Kansas played North Carolina in the Final Four in men’s basketball in April, he was down in Texas for a couple of races. With basketball on his mind, he swore his allegiance to Kansas.

“Being from Kansas and living in North Carolina and with Roy Williams being out there, I’ve definitely been trash-talking,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “Hopefully, they don’t let me down.”

Looking back on things, the Jayhawks certainly didn’t let Bowyer down. But Bowyer hopes not to let down his state this weekend.

“It’s an important racetrack for me,” he said in a press release this week. “You always want to go back and run well in front of the hometown crowd.”

Although he has never won at the Kansas Speedway, he has done well in his two races for the Sprint Series. In 2006, Bowyer had a ninth place finish after starting sixth, but came closer the next year.

In a wild race full of three hours of rain delays and multiple crashes, Carl Edwards included, Bowyer nearly won. In a controversial call, Gregg Biffle was waved through at the finish line as the winner even though it looked as if he was out of gas and could not keep up to pit road speed. As the field drove through the checkered flag to signal a finish, Biffle slipped to third. Under league rules, since Biffle did not maintain pit road speed through the flag, Bowyer should have been credited with the win.

With eight out of 10 races left until the Sprint Cup champion is named, a win would bring Bowyer closer to the 106 points he trails behind Edwards. It would also give the Kansas boy something a little more meaningful in the area: bragging rights.

— — Edited by Kelsey Hayes