Football season is rolling toward the finish line, Mizzou is hot on the recruiting trail and Tiger fans are ready to Drink Up! There's only one place to get set for Mizzou game day every week this season. Macadoodles does tailgating like nobody else. Get your crew ready to watch the Tigers take on the SECs with a stop at Macadoodles on your way to Faurot Field. Whether it's beer, wine or spirits you're looking for, Macadoodles will make your tailgate the pre-game place to be in Columbia this season. Who does tailgating like nobody else? Macadoodles does.
Every week, PowerMizzou.com publisher Gabe DeArmond answers questions from Tiger fans in the mailbag. This format allows for a more expansive answer than a message board post. Keep your eye out each week to submit your question for the mailbag or send them to powermizzou@gmail.com. On to this week's inquiries.
zoutiger22 asks: From a head coaching perspective, is Mizzou basketball or Mizzou football the more attractive job?
GD: That's a really good question. I don't have an answer right off the top of my head so stick with me as I kind of talk myself through it.
First of all, football is always going to pay more and it's always going to get top billing, even more so now that Missouri is in the SEC. Basketball is easier to get going toward an elite program because you really only need one or two players to do it. Football gets more attention if it's really good, but basketball is easier to make really good. Especially in the league Missouri is playing in.
There's been a longstanding argument whether Missouri is a basketball or a football school. I've always said it's entirely dependent on how old you are. If you're my parents' age (they graduated in 1972) it's a football school because you remember the Dan Devine years and you grew up on a Mizzou team that was one of the country's better programs in the 1960s. If you're my age, it's a basketball school because you grew up on Norm Stewart and it was a good football season if Missouri managed to win four games. If you're my kids' ages, it's a football school because your formative years were Gary Pinkel and Brad Smith and Chase Daniel. If you're a student now, it's a wrestling school.
Ultimately, I think the vast majority of major conference schools are football schools as long as football is above average. College football is a far bigger deal than college basketball. The best way to look at it is probably "if both sports are really good, which one is getting more attention from the fans." The only schools where that answer is basketball are Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky (although that one is getting a little bit closer than it usually is), Indiana and Kansas. You might be able to put Louisville, Purdue and Syracuse in that boat too. Everywhere else, I think the majority of the fanbase is going to be more on the football side of that argument. If you give the fans the choice of one to be elite in, I think pretty much every school except the eight on that list is going to choose football. Mizzou is included in that.
But does that mean the coaching job is better? Not necessarily. The truth is, it's very difficult to see a path to Missouri regularly being one of the three or four best football programs in the SEC, which is what it takes to have a chance to play for a championship (even if the playoff goes to 12 teams). But it's not hard to see that at all in basketball. In fact, most Mizzou fans probably think that's where the program should be. Add in the fact that in basketball you can be entirely average and save your season with a nice two or three week run at the end and I think basketball is the better job at Missouri.
MIZ...SEC asks: Next two games are against Georgia and South Carolina with the most likely outcome being 5-5, with two left.If somehow Drink is able to find a win against Florida or Arkansas and get to 6-6 would you consider 6-6 with the mess Drink’s had this season more impressive than 5-5 with an all SEC schedule last season?Would an 11-11 record during a rebuild be somewhat amazing?
GD: Amazing? No. Unless Missouri beats South Carolina, Florida and Arkansas to get to 7-5 in the regular season, this year is at least a little bit disappointing. If you'd asked the fanbase in August "will you be happy with 6-6 this year?" I'm going to guess about 90% would have said no. And that's pretty close to the best case scenario right now. I also want to insert the caveat here that saying a win over South Carolina is "likely" is more generous than I would be. It's possible. Missouri might even be favored by a couple points. But I'm not sure it's likely.
Next, you say "the mess" he has had this season. What mess? A defense that is even worse than it was last year? He bears responsibility for that. A quarterback that has regressed as the season has gone on? He's the offensive coordinator and works with the quarterbacks. I'm not sure what "mess" is here that he hasn't had a big hand in creating unless you're in the "everything bad is still Barry Odom's fault and everything good is because of Eli Drinkwitz" crowd.
Drinkwitz took over a program that was 21-17 over the previous three seasons. So 11-11 isn't "amazing" by any metric. We all know he didn't take over a program in great shape by any means, but he didn't take over the dumpster fire that some want to pretend he did either. I'm not going to bury Drinkwitz and say he has been terrible or anything, but I'm not going to say he's been amazing either. He's been fine. He's recruited incredibly well. As far as the product on the field, he's been okay. Last year ended up better than we all thought it would, this year is likely to be worse than we all thought. In the end, that comes out to a first two years that are probably about what we should have expected with some hope for the future, but plenty of questions yet to be answered. My stance is that if you'd call 6-6 this year "amazing" you're just looking for reasons to inflate what's happened.
