College Football - MU

Missouri FootballPinkel: “The football team is preparing for Iowa State. They are playing very well, and are bowl eligible. Paul Rhoads has done an exceptional job with the football program. They have a dual threat quarterback, probably the best in the league, and one of the best in the country. They also have a great running back, a 1,000 yard rusher. It will be senior day for us, that’s a big deal around here.  We want to honor our seniors their last time playing at ‘The Zou.’ We are trying to play two good games in a row.  We haven’t done that yet this year. It’s going to require a lot of work, but we’re going to do it.”

Missouri FootballPinkel: “Our focus is now on Baylor, understanding that they are a good football team. We've got to improve in all areas. I think our players are excited. Obviously, it was a tough three weeks around here, certainly a very difficult week last week. The win felt good, but I told my players it's going to get tougher and tougher. November is here and if you want to have great success as a football team you have to win in November.”

Missouri FootballPinkel: “They (Colorado) are a great football team. They just had a great win against Kansas. They have a new quarterback.  He’s a guy who can run and is very athletic.  We’re trying to get better as a football team. I I think they (both QBs) will play. We have to prepare for that. We have to be ready for any situation.”

Missouri FootballPinkel: “I think what you do is we focus on ourselves and trying to get better, That’s my frustration a little bit, I don’t think we’re getting better. I don’t think we’re improving like we need to be and that’s my job. But we’re working hard and with the right people and we are making them a good football team. It’s my job to get us there. So we are going to persist and will continue to work hard at the highest level and be positive, until we work our way out of this.”

Missouri FootballThe Missouri Tigers (4-1 overall, 0-1 in Big 12 Conference play) look to rebound from their first defeat of the 2009 season, as they head to Stillwater, Okla., where they’ll take on the 16th-ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys (4-1, 1-0). This will be the first Saturday game for Missouri in just under a full month, as the Tigers (ranked 24th in the USA Today Coaches’ poll, but unranked in the AP poll) last played on a Saturday on Sept. 19th, when it cruised to a 52-12 home win over Furman.

MizzouWhen writing a lede to my first Missouri football piece on the 2009, the urge is to say something like, "It's been a long time since we entered a season with such a high degree of uncertainty." Time moves fast, though, and after thinking things through, I realize that it hasn't been that long at all. When it comes to achieving expectations, the Tigers have been all over the map during the Gary Pinkel era. However, losing Chase Daniel, Jeremy Maclin and Chase Coffman at the same time does signify that we're entering the next era of Missouri football. Expectations have waned from a team that had national title aspirations a year ago. My question is this: Have expectations dropped too far?

MizzouA couple of months ago, The Star's Steve Penn wrote a piece on Derrion Thomas, son of late Chiefs Hall-of-Famer Derrick Thomas and himself a standout, pass-rusher. In Penn's article, Thomas was said to be leaning towards attending Mizzou. Now, according to Bill Althaus of the Independence Examiner, that appears to be a done deal: Derrion is planning to walk on with the Tigers.

It's a good day to be Mike Anderson.Sorry about that title -- I lapse into poor grammer when I get excited. The Star is now reporting that Mike Anderson has agreed to a seven-year contract to stay on as coach of the Tigers. We can keep debating the attractiveness of Anderson's other options and Anderson himself on my previous post. But the arguments appear to be moot.

Mizzou will have to make do without Jeremy Maclin.There really isn't much to say about Jeremy Maclin's decision to enter the NFL draft. Most draft projections that I've seen have Maclin going in the top 10. As we all know, football is an exceptionally violent sport and Maclin has had his share of injury problems since arriving in Columbia. He simply couldn't risk another year of college football. As a Mizzou fan, I'll miss him -- he has been the most scintillating Tiger player of my lifetime, more so than even Corby Jones or Brad Smith. He made the right decision. Good luck, Jeremy, and I just hope you end up in Denver so that I can root for you as hard as ever.

The Tigers celebrate their Alamo Bowl victory.There was a lot going on as I watched and blogged Mizzou's overtime Alamo Bowl win over Northwestern last night, so maybe I missed something. The reaction I am seeing is not in line with what I would have expected. What I saw was an exciting game, with play on both sides a little ragged but with plenty of effort from a couple of good, not great, teams that aren't that far apart on the talent scale. The idea that MU fans, players or coaches should feel embarrassed about winning a bowl game is, frankly, absurd to the point of offensiveness. Just what the hell do people expect?

Chase Daniel emerges victorious in his final game at Mizzou.6:10 p.m.: This is an exercise in impossibility. I, Bradford Doolittle, am attempting a multi-layered plunge into the abyss of multi-tasking, armed only with a head full of herbal tea and anti-anxiety medication. What follows is a "live" blog of the Missouri-Northwestern Alamo Bowl. The quotes are necessary on "live" because I will not actually be posting anything until after the game is over. That is because while composing the text for this raw reaction to Tiger postseason bliss, I will also be designing four pages of tomorrow's sports section, following tonight's NBA action on LeaguePass Broadband, updating my NBA stats database, accepting calls from my wife wondering if tomorrow will finally be the day that I shave and get a haircut and, of course, watching the Alamo Bowl itself. Under the guidlines set forth in the Unholy Decree of Multi-tasking by the International Brotherhood of Sports Bloggers, I hereby absolve myself of all eccentricities, inaccuracies, and any other -cies contained herein. There will be typos, which I will try to fix later.

Alamo BowlThis bowl won’t have any bearing on the Big 12 finishing #1 or #1-#2 or #1-#3. However, since MU is the fifth best team in the conference, a blowout would be beneficial to the overall standing of the league – something which could, hypothetically, come into play when the final poll is released. One thing to notice right away is the fact that the rankings of the two schools are nearly identical, however the Tigers are 12.5 point favorites. If that doesn’t show you the fallacy of the polls, I don’t know what will.

Faurot FieldWARNING: This is a long one, probably the longest blog post I'll ever write. Plenty to get off my chest. And if I've misremembered a detail here or there, well, blame the meds. IF you've ever been to Faurot Field, you're probably aware that the stadium lies on the southeast corner at the intersection of Stadium and Providence. The "stadium" part of the locale is obvious and hardly symbolic. But providence? Hmmm. Makes a person wonder. One definition of the word is "a "looking to, or provision for, the future." Coincidence or not, the rocky trail traveled by the tenants of Faurot has often foreshadowed my own, making this connotation of providence particularly apt. Of course, this is only apparent in retrospect, a realization that struck me as I slunk out of Arrowhead Stadium last Saturday for the second weekend in a row, with my metaphoric Tiger tail between my legs.