It is plenty to play for.

They own the Sunflower Showdown with a decent advantage over KU.

This is a significant enough rival that it gets teams motivated even when they are having losing seasons. Let alone a chance to hurt the others excellent seasons. So a chance to even be in the conversation and take your opponent out of the conversation is plenty if motivation on both sides to not mail it in. It will be a competitive game with a lot of passion...