Ten Thoughts on Missouri's 50-48 win over Arkansas
1) "'Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." --Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption.
Missouri fans have been missing a lot of things the last few years. But mostly what you've been missing is hope. You've had it in spurts.
There was the video when Barry Odom got hired that made you want to believe...followed by a 4-8 season.
There was the first 3 1/2 quarters against Georgia...followed by the final five minutes
There was a six-game winning streak...followed by the no-show in the Texas Bowl
There was the initial excitement of the Tiger ten....Followed by the recruitment of the Tiger ten.
There was the win at Florida...followed a few weeks later by a loss in the Liberty Bowl that seemed to zap a lot of excitement.
There was the recruitment of Kelly Bryant...followed by the season of Kelly Bryant.
Simply put, every time you've had hope in the last six years, it has been almost immediately ripped away. But now? Now you've had LSU. And then Kentucky. And then South Carolina. And a shutout over Vandy. And a comeback thriller over Arkansas. I've said many times in year one that what a coach needs is one data point he can show that says "What we're doing is going to work even if we're not all the way there yet." Eli Drinkwitz has three or four data points. I think it's fair to say the general feeling of Mizzou fans is that they haven't been this excited about football since the day after beating Arkansas in 2014 to clinch the SEC East. It's been a long road. You're only a little way down it. But there's hope that the road is leading somewhere.
Remember, Red, hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things.
2) I've told you guys 100 times that my role is to be the voice of reason. To tell you it's never as bad as you think and never as good as you think. What that often means is that I'm the wet blanket on your fire, the rain on your parade. When a new coach is hired, there's this huge tidal wave of "Everything he does is so much better than the way the last guy did it. I can't believe we ever thought that guy was good. This guy is great." It happens with pretty much every coach. For the love of God, there were some that convinced themselves Kim Anderson was the right hire. And, so, my role is usually to be the ---hole saying "Hold on guys, he hasn't really DONE anything yet."
Well, I was quietly skeptical for a few months. You guys were over the moon in love with Eli Drinkwitz and I was thinking to myself "But is the recruiting really that much better? And he's never actually had a program with his own players. And I know he gives funny quotes and a great press conference, but is there substance to it?"
I'm not gonna be the wet blanket about this. Every single thing I've seen tells me the guy is a hell of a football coach. He's recruiting at a level I didn't think he (or maybe anyone) could recruit here. He gets the PR. He's got a team full of another guy's players fully bought in. He's taken a team with 60-ish scholarship players to a 5-3 record in the SEC, which is at least one more game than pretty much anyone on planet Earth predicted them to win in a full 10-game schedule.
Carry on. Start building the statue. I'm not gonna be the one to tell you it's too soon.
3) That said, maybe the cupboard wasn't quite as bare as we thought.
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