Mike Alden, then Missouri's athletic director, hired Toledo head coach Gary Pinkel as the Tigers' new football coach on Nov. 29, 2000.

Pinkel was a hot-name on the coaching circuit, after compiling a 73-37-3 record in ten seasons with the Rockets which included an undefeated year in 1995. He was tapped to replace Larry Smith, who went 33-46-1 as Missouri's coach between 1994 and 2000.

Missouri had five bowl appearances between 1980 and 2000, when Pinkel was hired.

"…What I saw when I came here was a tremendous commitment," Pinkel said in his inaugural press conference. "I see tremendous potential. There is a lot of work to be done, but we have a plan of what we're going to do and how we're going to do it, and we're going to be very diligent at getting it done."

That potential took a few years to manifest itself, but the the seeds became apparent for a breakthrough. Pinkel went 9-14 over his first two years, but in 2003 - with redshirt sophomore quarterback Brad Smith - Missouri broke through for an 8-4 regular season record and a trip to the Independence Bowl, which the Tigers lost to Arkansas 27-14.

With expectations high entering 2004 in Smith's redshirt junior year, Pinkel suffered his first set back in Columbia. The team, ranked 17th in preseason polls, fell flat. First came a deflating upset loss on the road to Troy State on a Thursday night; then, even after a 4-1 start, five straight conference losses derailed any hope of a second-consecutive bowl game.

An offensive change brought headlines in 2005, as Pinkel went to a hurry-up no-huddle spread offense. The season was inconsistent at best, but the team became bowl eligible with a 31-16 home win against Baylor in the penultimate regular season game - which was senior day for Brad Smith.

Smith had his true send-off under Pinkel in the Independence Bowl against South Carolina, where he helped Missouri overcome a 21-point first-half deficit to win 38-31. That win brought momentum into 2006, as Missouri turned to a sophomore quarterback named Chase Daniel.

Daniel's first year as starter under Pinkel ended in an 8-4 record and a last-second Sun Bowl loss to Oregon State on a two-point conversion. But that didn't temper expectations going into 2007, the year that Pinkel officially turned Missouri's program into a national contender.

With a slew of stars on both sides of the ball, Missouri rolled to an 11-1 regular season, moving to No. 1 in the polls after 36-28 win over Kansas, then ranked second, in Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium. Missouri would make its first Big 12 Championship game appearance the next week, and the Tigers were tied with Oklahoma at halftime, the Sooners outscored Missouri 24-3 in the second half to end Pinkel's national title aspirations.

Still, Missouri rebounded for a 38-7 romp over 25th-ranked Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl. That performance capped a 12-2 year and a top-five finish in both major polls and made the Tigers a national title contender prior to the 2008 year.

Led by most of its returning skill-position players, Pinkel's 2008 offense - coordinated by Dave Christensen - drew heaps of praise, and that group didn't disappoint. They scored at least 52 points in four of the first five games, and the low-scoring affair was a 42-21 win over Buffalo. But, coming off a 52-17 throttling in Lincoln, Neb., Missouri stumbled in a prime-time showdown with 17th-ranked Oklahoma State, 28-23.

The next week saw a 56-31 blowout at then top-ranked Texas, and officially ended Missouri's chances at a national title. Missouri would finish the season 9-4, with another Big 12 Championship game loss to Oklahoma and an Alamo Bowl win over Northwestern.

With most of its stars departing after 2008, along with both Christensen and defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, Pinkel looked to reload under another highly-touted sophomore quarterback, Blaine Gabbert. The 2009 season played out in a similar fashion to 2006, Daniel's first year as a starter. Missouri finished 8-5 with a loss in the Texas Bowl to Navy and a befuddling loss to Baylor - which had not yet made its ascent into a national power. The other three losses were all to ranked opponents.

In 2010, Pinkel had his best start to a season as Missouri won its first seven-games including a 36-27 win over No. 1-ranked Oklahoma on homecoming. However, that hump that Pinkel never could quite get over reared its head, first in a 31-17 loss to Nebraska in Lincoln and then in a frustrating 24-17 loss to unranked Texas Tech on back-to-back weekends.

Missouri would finish 10-3 after a 27-24 Insight Bowl loss to Iowa.

At the time, 2011 looked like the most unique year in Pinkel's tenure. Under another first-year sophomore quarterback, James Franklin, Missouri went to an 8-5 season and another Independence Bowl win, this time over North Carolina. But what happened in-between changed the face of Missouri's program.

In early November, Missouri announced its move to the SEC, beginning the following academic year, joining Texas A&M as the SEC's 13th and 14th teams. Then, prior to Missouri's final home game of the year against Texas Tech, Pinkel was arrested for driving while intoxicated.

He missed that game, which was a 31-27 last-gasp win over the Red Raiders. His defensive coordinator, Dave Steckel, was the interim head coach. It was the only game Pinkel missed in his 15 seasons as Missouri's coach.

"I think that we came together because of the foundation that Gary Pinkel has built here," Steckel said. "He has built it on a rock. If you build your foundation on a rock, and the storms come, it will survive."

After an offseason of pomp and circumstance, Missouri played its first conference game in the SEC on Sep. 8, 2012. It ended in a 41-20 win by seventh-ranked Georgia, and the story line for the rest of the season was laid out. An injury to Franklin kept him out of Missouri's next game and began a season of missed games for the star quarterback.

More injuries piled up as the Tigers fell to a 5-7 record. It was the first year since 2004 that Missouri wouldn't go bowling. A 59-29 blow-out at the hands of soon-to-be-crowned Heisman winner Johnny Manziel ensured that.

The narrative before the season - that Missouri and Pinkel couldn't compete in the SEC - seemed to come true. During SEC Media Days in July 2013, Missouri was picked to finish sixth in the Eastern division.

Pinkel had to break in a new offensive coordinator in 2013 after the resignation of long-time assistant David Yost following the 2012 season. Quietly, Pinkel and Josh Henson led an attack that became the most balanced and explosive of Pinkel's Missouri tenure.

That team won its first six games and finished 12-2 with a top-five finish. Its lone regular-season loss came in double-overtime to 20th-ranked South Carolina. That season also saw a two-year streak of going undefeated in November begin, as the Tigers had to win out after the loss in order to win the SEC East.

It did just that. A 28-21 home win over the Manziel-led Texas A&M Aggies sealed a trip to Atlanta, and fans stormed the field around Pinkel and his team as Ray Charles' crooned 'Georgia' from the stadium speakers.

The next week, however, the proverbial hump reared its head. In another de factor play-in game for the national title, Missouri lost 59-42 to Auburn, despite trailing by just three points at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

The season ended in a thrilling 41-31 Cotton Bowl win over 13th-ranked Oklahoma State, capped by a sack-strip by Michael Sam and a touchdown return by Shane Ray.

Gary Pinkel's reputation as a player's coach seemed to grow following the death of linebacker Aaron O'Neal prior to the 2005 season. Known before as a hard-line coach, players say Pinkel loosened up and started to develop more of the family atmosphere for which Missouri's program is now known.

The reality of that statement was proven greatly following the 2013 season, when Michael Sam announced he was gay prior to the NFL draft.

"Michael is a great example of just how important it is to be respectful of others," Pinkel said in a statement after Sam's announcement. "He's taught a lot of people here first-hand that it doesn't matter what your background is, or your personal orientation, we're all on the same team and we all support each other.

"We talk all the time here in our program about how one of our core values is to respect the cultural differences of others, and this certainly applies. We view ourselves as one big family that has a very diverse collection of people from all walks of life, and if you're part of our family, we support you."

After Pinkel announced his resignation on Friday because of his on-going battle with lymphoma, Sam tweeted this message to Gary Pinkel's personal account:

"Thank you for everything you have done for me. You gave me a family that I so desperately need and for that I am grateful."

Missouri followed up its 2013 SEC East title with another seemingly improbable run in 2014. Even after an embarrassing non-conference loss to Indiana and a 34-0 home shut out at the hands of Georgia, Missouri ran the table to finish the regular season 10-2 and winning the East.

There was another big loss in the championship game, however, this time at the hands of Alabama.

Pinkel announced his resignation on Friday afternoon, explaining in a release that a lymphoma diagnosis in May made him start to assess the end of his career. After the bye week following a loss to Vanderbilt, Pinkel said he made the determination that this would be his final season.

"After we played Vanderbilt, I had a scheduled PET scan on Oct. 26th for reassessment, and then visited with my family and came to the decision on October 27th that this would be my last year coaching," Pinkel said in the release. "I still feel good physically, but I decided that I want to focus on enjoying my remaining years with my family and friends, and also have proper time to battle the disease and give full attention to that."

His resignation, effective at the end of the season, capped a tumultuous week in Columbia that began with members of his football team boycotting team activities in support of Jonathan Butler, a graduate student on a hunger strike to force the removal of system president Tim Wolfe.

Wolfe was under fire after a series of racially-motivated issues over the last few months.

Pinkel supported his players in a tweet sent on Sunday, and Wolfe (along with chancellor R. Bowen Loftin) resigned on Monday. Pinkel said the tweet erroneously contained a hashtag for the group protesting Missouri's racial issues, Concerned Student 1950, and while Pinkel distanced himself from the resignation of Wolfe and Loftin, his handling of the situation divided a fan base.

His resignation, however, did not stem from those events. He was diagnosed with lymphoma last May.

"I made the decision in May, after visiting with my family, that I wanted to keep coaching, as long as I felt good and had the energy I needed," Pinkel said in the release. "I felt great going into the season, but also knew that I would need to re-assess things at some point, and I set our bye week as the time when I would take stock of the future."

Now Missouri has at least three games remaining to say goodbye to a coach that rebuilt a program after decades of dormancy. A coach that is already the program's all-time winningest, with a current 117-73 mark in Columbia. A coach that, for whatever missteps, is known as a player's coach, who has graduated 97-percent of his seniors in the last five years.

Pinkel's tenure was marked by ups and downs, by a dramatic athletic shift from the Big 12 to the SEC, by key cultural moments off the field. But, make no mistake - for all those moments, he's left Missouri a better program than it was before.