I could write a number of columns listing all the things I don't know about this Missouri football team. I don't know how the offense will be, I don't know if they'll make a bowl game, I don't know ultimately whether Barry Odom will succeed here or not.
Here's what I do know: The University of Missouri has never needed to play a football game as much as this one this weekend at West Virginia.
You may have noticed the last ten months or so haven't been all sunshine and rainbows at Missouri. There have been some, ummm, adverse situations over the last year.
But this Saturday morning at 11 a.m., we get football. And football makes everything else seem like it matters a little bit less.
I'm really not here to dredge up the past year again. We've done that so often. Many are still doing it. And make no mistake, if the Tigers go lay an egg this weekend in Morgantown, some young, enterprising journalist is going to think he's really clever when the lede to his game story reads, "Maybe Missouri should have boycotted this game."
But on Saturday, the ridiculousness of the last 10 months around this football program fades into the background. It doesn't go away. Not completely. But it fades.
POST YOUR PREDICTIONS: MIZZOU VS WEST VIRGINIA
I think Odom has done just about everything he can to turn the page and make it clear Missouri is moving forward. He's said all the right things. He shook every hand. Hell, the head coach served coffee to students on campus last week. Now he has to do the one thing that is more important than any of those in getting everyone to move on: He needs to win football games.
Because at the heart of it, if our team is winning, we don't really think about the rest of it. Yeah, it makes us seem shallow. Maybe it actually means we are shallow. Most of us might not want to admit it. But it's true. Win games, we're happy. Lose them, we'll keep talking about all the other junk.
Odom has a tall task ahead of him. His offensive line has a combined three career starts. No team in the nation brings back less experience up front. He has a quarterback who, let's be kind here, struggled last year. His backfield is almost brand new. And, you know, he's never actually done this before.
Vegas has the over/under for Missouri pegged at 5.5 wins--which would actually be a half-game improvement over last year. The Tigers are two-score underdogs in the opener. They're picked somewhere between fourth and seventh in the SEC East by most prognosticators.
"I'll be honest. I really like it. I like the opportunity to go prove people wrong," Odom said on Monday. "I'll use any motivation I can use."
There should be no shortage of that for this coaching staff.
Missouri's fanbase is fractured right now. Has been for a while. I've talked to people who have given up season tickets, who have stopped donations, who say they just can't make themselves care all that much. Some of that will change with winning football. I think most of it will. But Odom isn't winning this fanbase back in one weekend. Maybe not in one season. There's a lot of healing to be done.
The healing starts in about 66 hours, though. And in about 70 hours, the most divisive issue among die-hard Missouri fans will be whether they should have gone for it on fourth down or whether that one play call in the third quarter was kind of stupid or really stupid. The headlines will be about either an improved offense or the work left to be done, not about protests and departures and decreased enrollment.
Football is back. And here in Columbia, Missouri, we've never needed it more.
