Remember when Mizzou sports were fun?
It's been a while, so we'll forgive you if you don't, but believe it or not, it's happened before. And I've got good news: It's about to happen again.
This weekend is your chance to soak it up and have some fun.
The main event is going to happen on Friday night.
It actually starts on Friday afternoon, when Mizzou will unveil a (well-deserved and long overdue) statue of Norm Stewart in front of Mizzou Arena at 1:30. Six-and-a-half hours later, the real fun begins.
No program in America had a better college basketball offseason than Missouri. None. Not Duke, not Kentucky, not defending national champion North Carolina (though you could argue the Tar Heels are pretty close considering Roy Williams beat the NCAA itself, in addition to winning its basketball tournament).
On March 24th, Michael Porter Jr. posted the most famous tweet in Tiger history (the original is no longer available because Porter's account is now inactive).
It has been 231 days since then (232 by the time Porter takes the court in a real game in a Missouri uniform--I mean, since, you know, half the people in the arena in Kansas City a couple weeks ago didn't care). Missouri fans finally get to unwrap their brand new shiny toy. Spoiler alert: It's a basketball program that matters.
Some of us--those over the age of 18--have seen this before. It's been a minute, but Mizzou basketball did used to matter. Those of you closer to 18 will take that to mean 2011-12, when Frank Haith and his six-man rotation took college hoops by storm, won 31 games and flipped the Big 12 the double bird on the way out.
If you're a little older, you remember Mike Anderson and his nephew (that's DeMarre Carroll by the way) making an Elite Eight run that fell just short. Some of you harken back to Kareem Rush and Ricky Paulding and Arthur Johnson and Quin Snyder before it all went bad.
Those of us who have a few miles on our tires can list off Stipo and Sunny, Coward at the buzzer (twice), the Band-Aid Man, Doug Smith and AP, Melvin Booker and the perfect season and Stormin' Norman in his heyday.
The point is, it's mattered before. And it's about to again.
When you do what I do, as I tell you all the time, you don't get too emotionally invested in the results. There have been a lot of games and I've written after all of them and they all kind of run together.
But I've got no shame in telling you Friday night is going to be different. I'm going to get there early. I'm going to soak it in. I'm going to look around and listen to a sold out arena. I'm going to pay closer attention to the introductions. I'm going to welcome back a program that has given so many of us so many memories.
Friday night's gonna be different. It's going to seem like 1994 or 2008 or 2012 again for a couple hours (or maybe for five months). Win or lose (and make no mistake, more so if it's win), Friday night's gonna be special.
But suddenly, the rest of the weekend might be all right too.
This was always going to be a big weekend. I mean, it was always Cuonzo and MPJ and all the rest. But it's gotten a little better over the last three weeks.
A month ago, most of you had buried Barry Odom. Don't feel bad about it. I'd kind of accepted the fact I had better get a hot board ready and I was going to spend two or three weeks of this wildly fun basketball season at Mizzou covering a coaching search. There wasn't much reason to think otherwise.
Then Missouri beat Idaho and Connecticut and we thought, yeah, they looked good, but I mean it's Idaho and Connecticut. Then they did it to Florida. And, yeah, you've got to admit the Gators didn't look like they were all that fired up about doing much chomping on Saturday, but still, it was Florida and it was Missouri and it was the Tigers putting all the backups in late in a blowout.
Over the last three weeks, the Tigers haven't just won. They've outscored their opponents 165-49. I don't care if you're playing the Tolton JV, that's pretty good.
And suddenly, this football season has gotten a shot in the arm. We've gone from "Who's the next coach gonna be?" to "Which bowl game are they gonna play in?" and "Are we sure the quarterback's gonna be here next year?" There's some work left to be done (PSA here, it doesn't matter if you and I look ahead. It matters if the team does, but me writing it or you posting about it matters not at all). The postseason is now not only a possibility, but it's something that should happen for the Tigers. They'll be favored in all three games the rest of the way in all likelihood. Win two and you get to go to a bowl game for the first time in three years.
I feel like I've said this a lot lately, but sports are supposed to be fun for us. If they aren't, why would we spend so much time on them? They haven't been for a while. Football's been bad, basketball's been worse and for a long time--as one of my colleagues said to me--"I don't know if aliens are ever going to land on Earth, but if they do, I'd bet it's going to happen in Columbia." That's a nice way of saying there was a lot of crazy off-the-field stuff that went down here over the last few years.
I'm not trying to be the sunshine and rainbows guy. Not really my personality. But you know what? We get a fun weekend. Let's enjoy it. Join me for about 28 hours this weekend.
Watch the rebirth of a basketball program. Watch the continued reclamation of a football season. Have some fun. Take a minute to appreciate it. It's been too damn long.
