30 Years, 30 Games, 30 Days: #19
Missouri goes in front of the press to preview the 2017 football season on July 13. To lead up to the unofficial kickoff of the college football season, PowerMizzou.com will take a look back at the 30 best Tiger games in the last 30 years.
In the course of compiling this list, there was no set criteria. I looked at the most memorable games, the most entertaining games, the most important games to the program at the time. All of these factored in when I put together the list. It is an entirely subjective list sure to inspire plenty of disagreement.
We continue the countdown today with Game No. 19.
Missouri 41, Colorado 31 -- Boulder, CO -- November 1, 1997
The point at which Missouri turned its football program around after a decade-and-a-half of awfulness is up for personal interpretation. Each may pick a different game that was the turning point. But only one is the game that officially ended Missouri's 14-year bowl drought.
Colorado had been 56-0-2 in its previous 58 games against unranked Big Eight and Big 12 opponents. But Missouri, riding high off a dramatic win over No. 12 Oklahoma State the week before (more on that later), ran a stampede of its own on the Buffalo defense.
The Tigers ran 69 times for 353 yards and held the ball for more than 42 minutes on their way to a 41-31 win. Missouri had 517 yar7-ds on the day. Colorado ran only 45 plays.
The win was the sixth of the season for Missouri, making the Tigers bowl eligible for the first time since 1983. Ironically, their postseason game would be the same one as their last. The Tigers would fall 35-24 to Colorado State in the Holiday Bowl, ending 1997 at 7-and-5.
WHY IT'S ON THE LIST: A generation of Missouri fans had started every season thinking "Maybe we can just win six and make a bowl this year." It had not happened since 1983 until this game. The Tigers would fall to No. 1 Nebraska on the kick and catch (again, more on that later) the following week, but would finish the regular season with a win over Baylor. The Tigers would return to postseason play in 1998 before enduring another five-year bowl drought.