30 Years, 30 Games, 30 Days: #28
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. 28.
Mizzou 20, BYU 16 -- Kansas City MO -- November 14, 2015
Perhaps never in the history of college football has a meaningless November non-conference game been so cathartic for the victor.
Five days before the Tigers and Cougars kicked off at Arrowhead Stadium, nobody knew if the game would be played. A team protest that broke the previous Saturday night related to racial tensions on campus had the Tigers saying they would boycott football activities until changes were made at the University. Those changes--at least some of them--came to fruition on Monday, Nov. 9. The Tigers said that day they would play against BYU. How realistic it ever was the game wouldn't happen is up for debate, but the Tigers got back to practice. And that wasn't the last major story of the week.
On Friday, Nov. 13, some 30 hours before kickoff--and less than 60 minutes before the Tigers were set to board a bus from Columbia to Kansas City--PowerMizzou.com broke the news that Gary Pinkel was retiring at the end of the season.
So after a week of chaos and stunned from the news that their coach of 17 years would be on the sideline for just three more games, the Tigers took the field on Saturday night at Arrowhead Stadium. Absolutely no one knew what to expect.
The Tigers had lost five of six after a 3-0 start, thanks mostly to their historically bad offense. Starting quarterback Maty Mauk had been indefinitely suspended. The season was perhaps the most chaotic of any in Missouri history...and not just for the football team.
What Missouri offered that night was its most complete effort of the season. The Tigers rolled up 434 yards of offense and held the Cougars without a first down until the final play of the first quarter. J'Mon Moore had a touchdown catch and Tyler Hunt a touchdown run as the Tigers won the game 20-10 and then celebrated Pinkel on the turf at Arrowhead in one of the more emotional scenes in Tiger history.
Pinkel would lose his final two games to Tennessee and Arkansas. He finised as Missouri's all-time winningest coach with a record of 118-73. The win over BYU was his last as a head coach.
WHY IT'S ON THE LIST: Mostly because it was Pinkel's final win. You can argue whether he's the best coach in school history, but you can't argue if he is the winningest. Pinkel led Missouri football out of the desert to national prominence and one last time--in the toughest of circumstances--his team showed up and won one for him. In a season that simply should not have been the way Gary Pinkel went out, for one night, everybody that followed Mizzou football felt good.