Cale Garrett isn’t dead, but the torn tendon in his pectoral that all but ended his Missouri career has hit the fanbase harder than any injury in recent memory.
You’ve got to go back to Pig Brown’s popped Achilles tendon in 2007 to find something similar. While Garrett had a longer track record of success (three-year starter vs. JUCO transfer in his first year as a starter), both Brown and Garrett were getting national attention before their injuries because of their stellar and opportunistic defensive play:
Brown had five forced turnovers in eight games with one touchdown return; Garrett had four forced turnovers in five games with three touchdown returns.
These certainly aren’t the only two high-profile career-ending injuries for Missouri. A year before Brown, defensive end Brian Smith broke his hip in Missouri’s eighth game; 7-1 at the time, the Tigers went 1-4 without Smith. More recently, Michael Scherer saw his senior season cut short after a knee injury against Middle Tennessee State in 2016. The legacy of those injuries, for whatever reason, hasn’t reached the same familiarity as Brown’s and, potentially, Garrett’s.
So what’s the difference?
Brown and Garrett were able to elevate themselves to folk heroes around Missouri because of their rise to stardom, their media persona and a bit of fortunate timing.
Both Brown and Garrett rose to stardom from unlikely situations. Brown was a lightly-recruited three-star recruit out of junior college in California; Garrett was a lightly-recruited three-star recruit out of Kearney, Mo. In fact, Garrett’s Missouri career may have never happened if anyone other than Barry Odom became head coach in December 2015.
From Garrett’s commitment article in January 2016:
Missouri’s interest picked up almost immediately after Odom was hired as the Tigers’ new head coach.
“At the Simone Awards [Andy] Hill said he might have an offer for me. That got my hopes up, but then I waited for a while. That’s in early December so after a week I gave up hope,” said Garrett.
In an alternate universe where Matt Campbell is Missouri’s coach, Garrett is likely staring at Navy, where he was originally planning to sign. In this one, though, Odom’s hiring re-opened the door for Garrett at Missouri — remember, he had been evaluated by Gary Pinkel’s staff (which included Odom) and that group couldn’t reach the required collective agreement to offer the productive in-state player.
Garrett had the unlikely road to stardom, and like Brown, he also became a media favorite. Brown was a vocal leader of Missouri’s defense with a catchy nickname — Pig — created by a funny backstory (his mom’s description of his eating habits as a child).
Becoming a media favorite is a quick path to becoming a fan favorite, and that’s what Garrett has done. He’s been branded as a delightful weirdo in the same vein as Max Copeland, arguably more accessible and inarguably more talented. It’s actually illegal for a Cale Garrett feature to be written without focusing extensively on hiking.
In the most recent hiking feature, written by Bennett Durando of the Columbia Missourian, Garrett leaned into his delightful weirdo persona:
As we leave the parking lot behind, I try to start a conversation and instead stumble on my words.
“Cale, you’ve been written about a lot…”
“Because I’m weird,” he finishes for me, grinning. “People like to write about me because I’m weird.”
The final aspect of their status in Missouri’s mythos is something out of their control. Their final seasons, their injury-shortened seasons, happened to come at a time when the Tigers were very successful.
Brown’s was that transcendent 2007 season that’s now one of the two best seasons in Missouri history (along with 2013). While the final punctuation on the 2019 seasons has yet to be penned — and it started with a thud — Missouri is looking like a legitimate SEC East contender. Coupled with the ongoing battle with the NCAA, and this is a season that likely won’t be forgotten either way by Missouri fans for some time.
What stings most about both these injuries, from a fan perspective, is that we never really appreciated just how good they both were until they were on the cusp of national accolades. Both Brown and Garrett had just begun to have first-team All-American-type seasons before the went down. Garrett’s injury happened before his two interceptions against Troy (again, more fodder for his folk hero status). Had he avoided that injury, the narrative this week would have been breaking down his candidacy as an All-American and as SEC Defensive Player of the Year.
Instead, we’re all trying to find a way to write a eulogy for the career of Missouri’s latest folk hero.
