Sunday View: Nothing is out of reach for the Tigers now
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For Missouri, the biggest news on Saturday was a fifth-straight win that put the Tigers 5-1 on the season and 2-0 in conference play. But for many, the biggest news may have happened outside of Columbia. Third-ranked Georgia fell 20-17 in double overtime to South Carolina. The stranglehold the Bulldogs seemingly had on the SEC East was loosened with that game.
Missouri, of course, wasn’t going to talk about it.
“One and oh,” Barry Odom said when asked how it feels for his team to control its own destiny.
Odom knows it’s boring. He said as much. He won’t let his team’s focus stray to the conference standings. He’s seen what can happen when this Tiger team gives something less than its full attention or best effort.
But we don’t play for Barry Odom. We can look ahead. And after Saturday’s games around the division, the path to a division title opened wide for the Tigers.
There’s plenty of work to do. Nobody’s going to make Missouri the favorite. That’s probably still Georgia, which will make the conference title game if it wins out. If it’s not Georgia, it’s probably Florida. The Gators suffered their first loss of the season on Saturday, 42-28 to LSU in Baton Rouge, but looked the part of a legitimate top ten team a week after knocking off Auburn in Gainesville.
Missouri’s going to be that other team. They’re in the conversation, even if they’ll remain on the fringes of it for most national pundits. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way though.
The Tigers beat South Carolina by 20 three weeks before the Gamecocks turned their season around in Athens. The other West opponent is Arkansas, which has now lost all 11 SEC games it has played under Chad Morris. Georgia and Florida still have to play each other. The Bulldogs still have Auburn. The Gators come to Columbia.
The path is there. It’s far too soon to really break down all the scenarios. Any of those three teams would finish atop the division standings if they win the rest of their games.
But Saturday introduced a slight margin of error for the Tigers. They can’t lose to Vanderbilt next week or Kentucky the week after. The Commodores are a complete mess after a 34-10 loss at home to UNLV and might have a new coach by the time Mizzou hits town next weekend. Kentucky deserves credit for finding a way to win an SEC game with a wide receiver at quarterback, but the Cats had to fight and claw and overcome a ten-point deficit to beat Arkansas 24-20 and they lost 24-7 to South Carolina a couple of weeks ago. If Missouri’s got legitimate designs on being the best team in this division, those two have to be wins.
But for the sake of argument and because we can look ahead, let’s say Mizzou sits 7-1 heading into the season’s second bye week. It will then face the two games that will define the season. On November 9th, Mizzou plays at Georgia. The following Saturday, it hosts Florida.
By the time those games are played one of those teams is guaranteed to have two league losses. Florida and Georgia play in Jacksonville on Nov. 2 while the Tigers are off. The week after facing the Tigers, UGA gets Auburn. The week before the Cocktail Party, Florida has a trip to Columbia, SC that no longer looks like a game that should be marked as a win in permanent ink.
That’s all a very long-winded way of saying Missouri may not need to win out to win the East. The Tigers probably can’t lose to Georgia and Florida, but they probably can lose to Georgia or Florida. Earn a split there and take care of business in the other games and the Tigers could be atop the SEC East at the end of the regular season.
Notice I did not say they could be headed to Atlanta. We don’t know that. Only the five person NCAA appeals committee knows whether that’s going to be allowed and they’re not telling anybody and nobody knows when they will.
For now, though, that’s immaterial. Eventually, it will be a thing. A Missouri fan’s worst fear of winning the division and not being able to play in the title game is possible. It would sting, no doubt. But it wouldn’t diminish the achievement of being the best team in one division of college football’s toughest conference. If the Tigers can take that step, they’ll be more than happy to worry about if they are allowed to take one more when the time comes.
“We really don’t care about none of that,” safety Joshuah Bledsoe said after the win over Ole Miss. “We have our head down right now and we just want to work. We know people are still doubting us.”
All good. Exactly what they have to say. But while Missouri’s players and coaches have to keep their heads down, any fan who says he isn’t allowing a peek at the standings is either a liar or not much fun. Before Saturday, Missouri seemed like a long shot to end up as the SEC East’s best team. The shot doesn’t seem so long now.