Powered Up: The Agony of Defeat
In his first season as Missouri’s head coach, Gary Pinkel’s Tigers lost 35-16 to nationally ranked Texas. There were some cheers and polite applause acknowledging the idea that nobody really expected Missouri to have any chance and hanging around and being semi-competitive was a pretty good thing for a program that had gotten used to being down.
That kind of pissed Pinkel off.
"We walk in this locker room and people are cheering, ‘Great job, Missouri.’ I hate that. That’s how losers think," he said after the October 27, 2001 game.
New Missouri coach Barry Odom is three games into his career as Pinkel’s successor. Mostly because of Pinkel’s attitude and success over the previous decade-and-a-half, Odom takes over a program in much better shape than the one Pinkel inherited. But if there’s one similarity more striking than most between the two, it’s their disdain for coming up on the wrong end of the scoreboard.
“There’s a winner and a loser in everything we do,” Odom said. “I hate losing more than I like winning.”
That was evident on Saturday night, after the first heartbreaking loss of Odom’s career. Sure, Missouri had lost its opener. But the 26-11 setback at West Virginia was never really close. This one, oh man. Missouri led for more than 27 minutes of the second half and held the lead all the way until a fourth-and-ten pass from Jacob Eason to Isaiah McKenzie.
“You don’t want to lose any of them,” safety Thomas Wilson said. “Especially the way that we lost.”
“Losing sucks,” linebacker Michael Scherer said. “Losing like that sucks even more.”
There were multiple wasted chances and every one grated on Odom in a postgame press conference during which, at one point, he had to pause and fight back tears. It was a battle he lost in the locker room, when players told the media the coach cried as he addressed them.
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I walked out of that press conference wondering if Odom can continue to take losses so hard and hold up through a season. I asked him on Monday if dealing with losses was harder as a head coach than it had been as an assistant. The only difference? Now we all see how he deals with it.
“It is different. It’s different because of the platform that I’m on now,” he said. “If I was interviewed last year after a couple of defeats, you’d probably see the same thing. And in 2009 when I was coaching the safeties, you’re probably going to see the same thing. And in 2001 when I was at Rock Bridge High School, you’re probably going to see the same thing.
“I celebrate wins like nobody’s business and I live in misery with losses. That’s the way that I have to function. That’s me. I’d like to give you a bunch of coach talk, but that’s who I am.”
Some coaches resemble robots. They appear almost emotionless on the sidelines, spit out the same same quotes week after week. That’s not Barry Odom. And his players appreciate it.
“That means he’s into it too. He’s not just into it for himself,” running back Ish Witter said. “He told us after the game he loved us, he wouldn’t take any other team. He’s an emotional guy and that’s what we like about him.”
“You got to have a head coach that you’re willing to run through a brick wall for,” Scherer said. “When you see him kind of sharing the same emotions that we have, feeling the same way that we are and you see how passionate he is about it, you see how much he cares about us, that’s when you say, ‘All right, he’s with us in this and we’re going to do whatever we can to make sure that man is successful. It’s not so much about us, I think when you look at his passion, you look at what he’s taught us and what he’s done for everyone here, you’re like, ‘I’m not gonna let that man down.’”
“He’s very emotional,” Wilson said. “But you can also see that he’s put a lot into this as well as the players. He just wanted to win for the guys and this program.”
The losses are crushing. This is not a quality that is distinct to Odom. All coaches feel that way. So do the players. “I hate losing more than I like winning.” I asked a lot of Missouri’s players about that quote. They all agreed with it.
“I don’t think I know anybody that likes to lose,” Aarion Penton said. “When you get a win, you feel like you worked hard and all the hard work has paid off. When you lose, it’s just like all the hard work, I wouldn’t say went to waste, but you don’t get the outcome you worked hard for.”
“I don’t think you ever move away from a loss,” Scherer said. “I don’t think I’ve moved away from losses we had three years ago.”
Not only do the players agree, they said to succeed at this level, you have to feel that way.
“I feel like you do,” Wilson said. “If you don’t, I feel like something’s wrong with you. You don’t have the competitive edge that you need to have.”
“If you’re okay with losing you’re probably going to lose a whole lot of stuff and you’re probably not going to be a successful person. That’s just the way it is,” Scherer said. “If you’re obsessed with winning and you hate losing and you don’t ever want to lose a single thing, then you’re going to try your best not to lose anything in your life and it’s going to make you a better person for it. You’ll be better if you win all the time. You work harder because you want to win.”
Missouri didn’t win. And it crushed them. The players and the coach.
“There was frustration, there was anger, there was sadness, all the things that go along with pouring your soul into something and coming away on the wrong end of things. That hurts. And that’s okay,” Odom said. “Again, we’re not in it to participate. We’re in it to win things. I will stand by that every day of the week. That’s the way my program is going to be built. There’s a winner and loser in everything that we do.
“This will make us a better program. This will make us have a little bit more toughness. That’s what trying times do.”