COLUMBIA, Mo. - In the maddening era of Mizzou football when Andy Reid was one of three future NFL head coaches on Bob Stull’s staff, it was simple enough to diagnose why they couldn’t quite revive the program.
Beyond the “what-might-have-been?” of the Fifth Down loss in 1990, MU was suffering from stunning institutional disarray as it made Stull its fourth fired coach in 16 years. Including two long-term interim chancellors, MU had six campus leaders in that span to go with a sixth athletic director as it hired coach Larry Smith after the 1993 season.
It hadn’t helped that MU under Stull played nine non-conference games against teams ranked at some point in those seasons … just as Kansas State’s Bill Snyder was achieving perhaps the greatest turnaround in college football history with a blueprint featuring cushy non-conference games.
And then some.
But the most visible impediment was the antiquated facilities: from spartan Memorial Stadium itself (with the cursed Omniturf) to dated practice areas (no dedicated indoor space or lighted fields).
(Long before the bridge across Providence Road was built, the team also faced a perilous passageway on stadium practice days back to the locker rooms as traffic zoomed up the hill around the rather blind curve, as I experienced walking with Stull a time or three.)
So when Dan Devine returned to MU as athletic director in 1992, he observed a shadow of the program he coaxed to a 93-37-7 record from 1958-1971 - including the now congressionally amended 1960 national championship.
But the program Devine returned to was also in some ways a reflection of his time.
Not simply because the facilities in certain ways were the same as he’d left them but because of what he remembered and how that factored into the recruiting industrial complex.
“I made a big mistake …” then-Mizzou sports information director Bob Brendel recalled Devine saying at the time. “In those years, when we were winning and winning and winning big, I never asked for anything. If I had, they would have given me what I wanted.”
Which brings us to the astonishing contrast amplified on Thursday night with the unveiling of the $250 million north end zone project, punctuating MU’s 100th anniversary in the stadium.
With the stadium at last enclosed in a style befitting Mizzou competing in the gnarly Southeastern Conference, the 25th-ranked Tigers pulverized Arkansas-Pine Bluff 54-14.
Between Mizzou grad Sheryl Crow singing the national anthem, the lavish new stadium vibe (including Shakespeare’s Pizza at last in concession stands) and the striking debut of Ole Miss transfer Austin Simmons at quarterback, it would be difficult to have orchestrated a more ideal night for MU and its fans.
“Only disappointment for the night was I didn’t get to meet Sheryl Crow,” said MU coach Eli Drinkwitz, who later noted the atmosphere was "noticeably louder" with the end zone filled in.
Never mind, for now, that the game reflected such an absurd physical and fiscal mismatch that the game made a scant statement beyond the fact Mizzou certainly was ready to play.
All in all, it was a testament both to how good MU has it now ...
And the great responsibility that comes with the great powers conferred on the program as Drinkwitz enters his seventh season.
With 29 wins in the previous three seasons and a 47-29 record overall at MU as of Thursday night, Drinkwitz has fulfilled plenty to date.
But another frontier remains to be realized, one in which MU ascends from this fine plateau to make good on the sort of top-tier promise implied by the school’s now-enormous commitment to football.
A level that Gary Pinkel (118-73 at MU) was particularly established in 2007, when MU’s classic victory over Kansas at Arrowhead Stadium propelled the Tigers to a No. 1 ranking for a glorious but fleeting week.
As of last fall, after all, Drinkwitz signed a six-year contract extension with an average annual compensation of $10.75 million. His augmented assistant coaching salary pool enabled MU to pay new offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey $3.8 million guaranteed over three seasons.
And Missouri’s NIL funding for players is believed to be in the top 20 to 25 in the nation.
Combine all that with an enviable stadium addition, which an appreciative Drinkwitz called a “game-changer,” and it can reasonably be asked:
If not now, when, exactly, for MU football?
The point here isn’t “or else.” Or that Drinkwitz remotely belongs on a hot seat.
Because there’s too much to appreciate about what he’s done with the program and where it is now: having perennial potential to be among the elites left standing at season’s end - especially in the 12-team College Football Playoff era.
But MU also has been stranded just outside that rarefied air, with Drinkwitz going 1-11 against top-10 teams, 7-19 vs. ranked teams, 17-24 against teams that finished the season with winning records and 26-24 in SEC play.
While this starts to get real for Mizzou next time out at archrival Kansas on Sept. 11, the measure of whether their reach can exceed their grasp likely is going to be in their grueling final weeks:
Five of MU’s final seven opponents currently are ranked in the top 10.
First things first, of course.
That includes some no-doubt heightened anticipation of watching Simmons develop more after he completed 17 of 19 passes for 252 yards and four touchdown passes before being pulled late in the first half.
And expectations of the return in the near future of star running back Ahmad Hardy, who is working his way back from a gunshot wound he suffered in his leg in May.
And watching the progress of a defense essentially featuring 10 new starters.
Underpinning it all, though, will be the notion of what athletic director Laird Veatch on Monday called “the shiny new era of Memorial Stadium.”
He pointed to attached pride and elevated energy around campus.
And to how it all reflects “the Mizzou family stepping up at so many levels to come together to make a huge statement that we are serious about chasing championships at Mizzou.”
About the only thing left to be asked for now.