Missouri faces a supreme opportunity and a chance to defeat history.
Matt Zemek, 16powers.com.
History tells us that when Missouri football has a chance to do something great, the program will usually step on a rake or slip on a banana peel and fall short of glory.
One could say that in 2023, this did not happen. The Tigers didn’t fall short in any meaningful sense. They overachieved. They reached a New Year’s Six bowl. They beat Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. It was a great season by any measure, and no one could claim otherwise. No one expected Missouri to be that good that quickly under coach Eli Drinkwitz. Yet, in a case of “Missouri luck,” the Tigers produced their amazing season one year before the College Football Playoff expanded to 12 teams. Last year, Missouri would have been a lock for the 12-team playoff, but the field was still only four teams.
Are we going to look back on the 2023 season as “the year when Missouri mistimed its excellence and preceded the 12-team playoff by one year,” or will we look at 2023 as the year when Missouri football built a foundation which led to even greater heights and a playoff appearance the next year, in 2024? That’s what this season is all about: delivering Mizzou football to the biggest stage in college football.
When we talk about history being unkind to Missouri, what do we mean? The Tigers’ New Year’s Six bowl appearance last season was their first NY6 game since the 1970 Orange Bowl. People will immediately respond with the correct statement that Missouri had reached the Cotton Bowl on multiple previous occasions before the 2023 season. However, in those two seasons – 2007 and 2013 – the Cotton Bowl was not recognized as a top-tier bowl game under the Bowl Championship Series banner. The Fiesta, Rose, Sugar, Orange, and BCS National Championship Game were the five BCS bowls at that point in college football history. The Cotton was not part of the BCS rotation. It was a second-tier bowl game, a reality which began after the old Southwest Conference died in 1996. The Cotton Bowl was a prestigious, top-tier bowl game from its founding in the 1930s through the mid-1990s, but from the death of the SWC through the final BCS season in 2013, the Cotton was not an elite bowl destination.
Missouri went to the 2008 Cotton Bowl not as a reward, but as the product of a snub, all while a lesser team from Illinois went to the Rose Bowl. Missouri played the biggest game in school history at the end of the 2007 regular season. Had the Tigers defeated Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship Game, they would have reached the BCS National Championship Game. Instead, they lost and let a rare opportunity slip away. The Cotton Bowl was not a reward for that season.
Missouri similarly went to the Cotton Bowl after the 2013 season as the punishment for losing that year’s SEC Championship Game to Auburn. Had Mizzou not allowed a close game against South Carolina to slip away in 2013, the Tigers probably would have played in a major bowl game. As it was, the Tigers missed out. It took them over 50 years – from the 1969 season to last year’s breakthrough in 2023 – to finally get back to a top-tier bowl game. Yet, even then, the accomplishment was laced with a little bit of cruelty from the fates: There was no 12-team playoff to enjoy.
In 2024, it is clear that Missouri is playoff or bust. The team is there. The optimism is there. The coaching is there. What also helps is that the SEC’s powerhouse programs are going through transitions. Alabama no longer has Nick Saban at the helm. The Crimson Tide could be great under Kalen DeBoer, but Year 1 might be a bumpy ride for the Tide with all the transitions that have occurred in Tuscaloosa. LSU and coach Brian Kelly have had to completely revamp their defensive staff after a brutal 2023 campaign. Texas and Oklahoma are proud and prominent football programs, but moving into the SEC and leaving the Big 12 behind will instantly make those two teams’ schedules harder than they were in the Big 12. Texas A&M could be good, but it will have a first-year coach, Mike Elko. Any team bringing aboard a new coach presents the distinct possibility that the pieces won’t all fit in the first go-round.
With so many points of uncertainty flowing through the 2024 SEC, Missouri – fresh off its amazing 2023 journey – has a tremendous chance to make the playoff and put the Tigers front and center in the national college football conversation. This is the kind of opportunity which didn’t come along very often in the four-team playoff era. The 12-team playoff era instantly makes top-tier competition more accessible to the Missouris of the world. The Tigers haven’t had luck on their side many times over the past 50 years, but this could be a year in which fortune smiles on Columbia.
The biggest reasons to trust Missouri in 2024 are simple: First, Brady Cook has proven he can be a great quarterback and a transformative leader for this offense. The Tigers have a veteran quarterback who is comfortable in Drinkwitz’s offense and can make plays with his legs and his arm. Cook gives Missouri stability, versatility, proven production, and a guy everyone in the locker room trusts. What’s not to like?
The second reason to go all-in on Mizzou this year is that Luther Burden is a star playmaker. Whether he is the one catching passes from Cook or is serving as a decoy to open up the rest of the field for his teammates, Burden is a true equation-changer as a skill player. He will make life easier for Cook and the whole Missouri offense on so many levels. This Mizzou offense should be great, not good, in 2024. It will need to be, and this is where the one concern about the season comes into play.
As great as Missouri was in 2023, some games were uncomfortably close, most notably the Florida game in which Mizzou needed a late 4th-and-17 conversion to escape with a victory. If Missouri plays at the same level it did in 2023, the Tigers won’t make the playoff. They will lose more often than they did a year ago. This team needs to be several notches better than it was in 2023 in order to take the next step and compete in the playoff in 2024. Missouri will need to be 10 points better than its opponents, so that one bad call or one untimely mistake merely means the difference between a comfortable win and a close win. If Mizzou leads an opponent by only three or four points in the final minutes, that one mistake could cost the Tigers a game, a season, and all of their dreams.
Remember: Missouri is the program which was victimized by the officiating debacle known as “Fifth Down” against Colorado in 1990. This is the program which was gut-punched by Nebraska’s miraculous “Flea Kicker” in 1997. Missouri can’t live right on the margins. The Tigers need to transcend those margins if this promising 2024 season – with only three especially challenging games against Oklahoma, Alabama, and Texas A&M – is to live up to its full potential.
