Dive into the Heart of Mizzou Athletics

This was arguably the longest, windiest road down memory lane of the series.

The morning before each Mizzou football game in 2024, Rock M’s Quentin Corpuel will look back at MU’s best moments versus that week’s opponent. This week: Independents, since UMass and Mizzou have never played each other.

Opponent: UMass Minutemen

Gametime: Saturday, Oct. 19 at 11 a.m.

Location: McGuirk Alumni Stadium, Amherst, MA

Record versus Independents: It’s complicated

For the third time in the last four seasons, Mizzou will play an FBS team that they’ve never played before.

This time, the Tigers will head to the northeast for a battle with UMass in Amherst for just their second trip to Massachusetts in program history. They’ll hope it goes a little better than their other trip to the Bay State, which was a 41-34 overtime defeat at the hands of Boston College.

Along with Notre Dame and UConn, the Minutemen are not affiliated with a conference (although that will change next season when they rejoin the Mid-American Conference, which they called home from 2012-15). Historically, becoming independent is a good thing. Oftentimes, countries have made holidays out of themselves becoming independent. But in collegiate athletics, being independent has never been ideal.

Now, here’s why dissecting Mizzou’s history against Independents is tricky. Conferences in college football weren’t very prevalent until well after World War I. Up until the late 1920’s, a large majority of FBS Division I schools were Independents, from Ole Miss to Gonzaga to Yale. Essentially, MU’s early years of football saw most of its opponents reside as an independent school or at a non-Division I level.

But then, as more schools were elevated to Division I in the early 1930’s, most resided with the Independents, ballooning those numbers back up. Even with the growth of the Southern and Southeastern conferences throughout the mid-20th century, most schools were still Independents.

That trend continued until the late 1970’s, when a lot of schools either joined a conference (Houston went to the Southwest Conference in 1976, for example), dropped down to a lower division (Dayton, Holy Cross) or disbanded its football team altogether (Villanova, but they were brought back just three years after their presumed death in 1981). In 1974, there were 37 Independents; by 1984, there were just 21, the fewest since 1890, when there were only 18 schools in the entirety of Division I.

That number would jump back up into the mid-20’s and stay there until the early 1990’s. The genesis of the Big East, the expansion of mid-major conferences and major conferences adding schools like Florida State (ACC), Penn State (Big Ten) and South Carolina (SEC) shrunk the number of Independents to single digits by 1997. Since then, there haven’t been more than 10 Independents at one time.

So what does that history lesson mean in the context of this series? Essentially, most college football teams have been independent at some point in time. Mizzou has technically played a ton of games against Independents throughout its history, but that group has included schools like Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia, schools that were only independent for a fraction of their FBS I-A lives.

With all of that in mind, two caveats will be established to see which games actually qualify to be potentially used here.

One is that Mizzou’s opponent has to have been independent at some point after 1990, which is around the start of the massive decrease in Independents. Again, most college football teams have been unaffiliated at some point in time; this eliminates the possibility of including a game like Mizzou’s 5-4 win over Texas in 1907. Was I going to include that anyways? Probably not. But I hope this clarified which games were up for dissection.

Honorable mention: Pillaging in Pennsylvania (10/1/1960)

Like most successful Mizzou football seasons, the 1960 team didn’t enter the year with national notoriety…but it didn’t take the Tigers long to gain some.

After dismantling SMU and Oklahoma State to start the season, MU traveled to Happy Valley for a contest with Penn State. The Nittany Lions were coming off of just their second nine-win season in program history and figured to make national noise once again.

Unfortunately for them, their train of momentum was stopped temporarily, as Mizzou claimed a 21-8 victory. Two-way superstar Danny LaRose made a major impact on both sides of the ball, catching touchdown pass while intercepting another later in the game. Norris Stevenson sealed the deal with a late touchdown, and the Tigers had officially skyrocketed to national prominence.

#5: Sweet tangerines (12/19/1981)

Before the bowl game that’s played in Orlando encompassed all citrus fruits, the tangerine was the spotlight from 1946-82 in the “Tangerine Bowl”. Mizzou has competed in the game twice: the Tigers defeated Minnesota in 2014, and they also knocked off a high-quality Southern Mississippi squad in 1981.

The Golden Eagles were far from the mediocre Conference USA/Sun Belt team that they have been over the past few seasons. Decades prior, USM had the best scoring defense in the country, and that wasn’t a product of an easy schedule. Southern Mississippi tied Alabama at Legion Field (which seldom happened under Bear Bryant), defeated ranked Mississippi State in Jackson, MS and smacked Florida State in Tallahassee. Their quarterback, Reggie Collier, became the first quarterback in FBS history to throw and rush for 1,000 yards in a single season.

It wasn’t easy, but Mizzou emerged victorious 19-17. Legendary linebacker Jeff Gaylord shined in his final collegiate game, as he played a huge part in limiting Collier, who went 5/17 and accounted for just 70 total yards. Bob Lucchesi kicked four field goals for the Tigers, and Mizzou had officially won eight games in three of its last four seasons, the first time the Tigers had accomplished that feat since 1939-42.

#4: Rising up (11/14/2015)

As if the 2015 season couldn’t test the will of Mizzou any further, the week leading up to MU’s contest against BYU in Kansas City proved to be especially tumultuous.

For months, Mizzou students had called for the removal of UM System President Tim Wolfe after numerous racist incidents on campus occurred throughout the first semester. Boycotts and protests gripped the university, and tensions reached a boiling point in early November. Graduate student Jonathan Butler announced on Nov. 2 that he would go on a hunger strike until he passed away or Wolfe was removed; five days later, the black players on MU football announced that they wouldn’t play until Wolfe was removed. Wolfe eventually resigned on Nov. 9, ending one of the darkest periods in the university’s history.

Then, the day before Mizzou football was set to take on the Cougars in Arrowhead Stadium, another bombshell rocked the university. Gary Pinkel had told his team that the 2015 season would be his last. He’d been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in May, and a PET scan during Mizzou’s bye week proved to be the deciding factor.

But similarly to so many instances throughout its history, the Tigers overcame the odds and rallied. An offense that had scored a combined 25 points over its previous four games looked…functional! MU’s 434 yards of offense ended up being the most it registered in any game that season, and a stout Tiger defense held a quality BYU offense to one of its worst performances of the season. The win was capped off by a late MU drive that featured a pair of huge third-down conversions; a 22-yard run by Russell Hansbrough and a 16-yard completion from Drew Lock to Sean Culkin. The latter chunk gain allowed Mizzou to kneel out the clock and make a grim season a little less grim.

“He was able to keep this team together during that turmoil back in Columbia,” CBS play-by-play commentator Brent Musberger said as the Tigers began to celebrate. “And even when he announced he was stepping away, they came out and played as a team despite the uncertainty of what’s going to happen next year, especially for the young players. Hats off tonight to Gary Pinkel and these Missouri Tigers.”

#3: How in the world did they just beat Notre Dame? (10/2/1972)

Mizzou football in the 1970’s can be defined by the following made-up conversation between them and a personified version of circumstances:

Circumstances: Certain results should not happen, and there are many logical reasons why

Mizzou: Check this out lol

Entering the contest, Notre Dame was rolling. The Irish had defeated their first four opponents by a combined 100 points, including two road shutouts at Northwestern and Michigan State. They were potent on both sides of the ball, with the charge being led by a handful of future pros.

Meanwhile, Mizzou was 2-3, had been walloped 62-0 by Nebraska the week prior and were without their top three running backs. In a wishbone offense, where running backs are an essential component to not just success, but mere operation, playing without your top three running backs is extra killer. Also, Notre Dame had arguably the best defensive line in the country.

On the other side of the ball, the Tigers were discombobulated defensively. Even if the Nebraska game is removed from the sample, Mizzou had allowed 23.25 points per game against its first four opponents. For context, 1972 Navy allowed 23.4 points per game over the entire season and finished 90th out of 127 FBS teams in that category. Last season, Fresno State and Oklahoma allowed 23.5 points per game and finished tied for 48th out of 133 FBS teams in that category. Three touchdowns and change was a lot back then!

The South Bend night was frigid and foggy. Notre Dame was favored by 35 points.

Mizzou scored 30 points.

They also won.

Even the finest movie directors would have a difficult time replicating this Quarterback John Cherry was brilliant. Mizzou’s battered and beaten up offense sailed smoothly, totaling 223 yards on the ground and 106 in the air. The Tigers forced three Irish turnovers while not giving up the ball themselves.

#2: How in the world did they just beat Notre Dame (Part 2)? (9/9/1978)

https://www.rockmnation.com/pages/september-9-1978-mizzou-3-notre

Remember that hypothetical conversation between Circumstances and Mizzou football from earlier? Six years after the Tigers shocked the Irish in South Bend, the same conversation proved to be true once again.

Entering the 1978 season, the Irish were the defending national champions and were ranked fifth in the preseason AP poll. Their star quarterback was back to lead an offense that returned almost every major contributor from the year before; his name was Joe Montana. Notre Dame was almost a 20-point favorite at home facing a Mizzou squad playing its first game under new head coach Warren Powers. It was also around 100 degrees in South Bend.

The actual game itself saw Notre Dame in far more advantageous scoring positions than Mizzou. With some help from MU punter Monte Montgomery, who struggled for most of the afternoon, the Irish were living in Tiger territory all game long. On the other side, Mizzou’s offense mustered up just three points, which didn’t come until 12:50 left in regulation.

All signs pointed to a Notre Dame victory…but the signs proved to be wrong. There was no Irish win at the end of the arrows. The three points were all that the Tigers ended up needing, as they walked out of northern Indiana as Goliath slayers once again.

This might be the single most Herculean defensive performance in Mizzou history. Notre Dame created nine decent scoring opportunities (including five trips inside of the MU 25-yard line) and came away with zero points. It seemed as if the Tiger defense strengthened as the Irish inched closer to paydirt; Mizzou would either intercept Montana, recover a fumble or stop Notre Dame on fourth down. Montana was held to just four completions in 17 attempts and threw two interceptions in the first half alone. It was the first time ND had been shut out since 1965 and marked Montana’s worst collegiate game to date.

In the same year that Mizzou would shatter Nebraska’s national title hopes in November, the Tigers got the upset party started in September. The improbable victory added to MU’s treasure trove of upset victories throughout the 1970’s, which was almost lengthened the next week when Mizzou gave top-ranked Alabama a scare in Columbia.

#1: The first bowl win in Mizzou history (1/2/1961)

Playing in a major bowl game is a tremendous honor. It’s a celebration of a spectacular season in a (usually) glamorous venue.

But heading into the 1961 Orange Bowl against Navy, Mizzou had been freshly stung. A national championship had evaporated at the hands of unranked Kansas the week prior. The pain only worsened when KU star fullback Bert Coan, who played a major role in derailing MU’s national championship hopes, was deemed ineligible by the NCAA after months of investigation. Instead, it would be 8-1 Minnesota, who’d lost to eventual 4-4-1 Purdue just two weeks before, claiming the 1960 national title.

This all led the Tigers to Miami, where Dan Devine’s crew would face Navy, who were captained by Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Joe Bellino. In a battle of elite ground attacks under the watch of the newly-elected president John F. Kennedy, Mizzou outdueled Navy on the back of Mel West (108 of MU’s 223 rushing yards) and a phenomenal defensive effort. Bellino was held to just four rushing yards, and the Tigers came away with three interceptions, which included a 90-yard pick-six by Norm Beal in the first quarter.

The victory marked Mizzou’s first bowl win in program history; the Tigers had lost their previous six, which included the previous year’s Orange Bowl against Georgia.

This wasn’t what MU wanted. The incomparably sweet nectar of a national championship, a first-time visit to the summit of college football, was within arm’s length…only for their arch-nemesis to deny them at the gates of glory. But if there were any consolation, taking down the mighty Midshipmen in front of the future President is a pretty good one.