The story of my decade covering Mizzou athletics begins with vomit. In the first hours of 2010, a photographer coworker — name withheld — hit the complementary Grey Goose hard in the Texas Bowl media hospitality room. His body reacted to that vodka about as well as Dave Steckel’s defense fared against Navy’s triple option.
As our morning flight from Houston descended into St. Louis, my coworker wretched violently into an air sickness bag. On the shuttle bus to the parking lot, he lurched from his seat, staggered toward the front, and, through clenched teeth, implored the driver to “OPNDADRRR!” But it was too late. If you’ve ever wondered what sound a group of weary travelers makes when exposed to roughly two quarts of stranger vomit, it deserves its own branch of the groan family.
I suppose the compassionate thing for me to do, once we made it back to my vehicle, would have been to drive this poor man home as fast as possible. But I could only be reimbursed for lunch if I purchased it outside of Columbia’s city limits and had the receipt to prove it, and six bucks was six bucks, so my first stop was the McDonald’s drive-thru. The photographer, slumped against the passenger door, his pallor as grey as the goose that felled him, got one whiff of my Big Mac, opened the door and relieved himself of what little remained in a digestive tract dried to the consistency of jerky.
The decade was not yet 12 hours old, and I had seen the toll covering Mizzou athletics in the 2010s could take. It was not for the faint of heart nor weak of stomach.
The next football season included two of the most memorable moments in program history. T.J. Moe rescued the Tigers against San Diego State with a 68-yard touchdown reception, a play that would be known as the “Moe Miracle.” Gahn McGaffie helped Missouri upset No. 1 Oklahoma by returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown, a play that would be known as “That time Gahn McGaffie returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown against Oklahoma.”
My favorite moment of the 2010 season, though, came in the quiet dining room of a bed-and-breakfast in Ames, Iowa, the morning after the Tigers defeated Iowa State. We weren’t quite sure why we were in a former fraternity house converted to a bed-and-breakfast, since the woman who booked our travel had never failed to place us in the sketchiest budget motel available in any college town of the Midwest. We weren’t thrilled about this lodging initially, but we quickly brightened upon hearing we would have separate rooms and access to unlimited free wine. The next morning, as we enjoyed fresh blueberry crepes, I sheepishly acknowledged that I had wound down after the game by soaking in a lavender bath with a lovely glass of merlot. Our photographer, Josh Bickel, noted that he also had enjoyed a lavender bath and merlot. Beat writer Dave Matter chimed in that he, too, had luxuriated in a lavender bath with a merlot.
I have never felt so close to two men.
My best trip to Ames turned out to be my last trip to Ames. The background noise of the period was conference realignment rumors. Missouri was always in the middle of it. Mike Alden chafed about the University of Texas running the show in the Big 12 and hinted that if the Big Ten were interested, Missouri would listen. Dan Beebe, the perpetually flummoxed commissioner of the Big 12, tried to glue the league together with loyalty oaths, but his cat-herding was no match for the market forces that enticed and frightened administrators into acting in their own interest. I do not care to recall the hours spent attempting to verify rumors, nor the time slumped against hallway walls outside closed conference rooms where curators discussed much and explained little.
One-third of the Big 12 bailed. After a snub from the Big Ten, Missouri landed in the Southeastern Conference. It was formally announced the day after Missouri lost to a Robert Griffin-led Baylor team in November 2011. After the game, the press box in Waco shook with the tremors from an Oklahoma earthquake, which seemed fitting considering the number of times sportswriters had referred to realignment as “seismic.”
Alden and chancellor Brady Deaton did a nice job building consensus among Missouri fans that the move to the SEC was necessary, but there was fear at the time about joining a league at the height of its football powers with a reputation for bloodthirsty recruiting and flexible ethics. Those fears were mostly unfounded. When the teams of Gary Pinkel and Barry Odom struggled, it was because they were bad teams, not because the competition was unbeatable. And Missouri fit right in with its peers in frequency of visits from NCAA investigators.
Pinkel proved his formula could still work with a magical 2013 season. He began on the hot seat and ended with a confetti shower. The breakout star, defensive end Michael Sam, had come out to his teammates as gay before the season. All the reporters knew but didn’t want to write about it without his permission, and Sam never spoke to reporters. We all lived in dread of turning on ESPN’s “College GameDay” on a Saturday morning and seeing Tom Rinaldi break the biggest story in sports with an exclusive emotional interview, but the news didn’t get out until Sam spoke to The New York Times in February 2014.
This led to the Kumbaya moment of the decade. On Feb. 15, the Cotton Bowl champion Tigers would be honored at halftime of a basketball game against Tennessee. The trolls at the Westboro Baptist Church got wind of this and announced they were on the way. Fourteen of them posted up on the southwest corner of Stadium and Providence holding their charming signs. Hundreds of Missouri fans created a “Stand with Sam” counter-protest. They stood in the snow, forming a human chain that blocked passing cars from seeing the Westboro wackos.
It was a moment when every Missouri fan could agree on the good and bad guys … and agree that the good guys won. If that was the groovy Woodstock event of Mizzou’s sports decade, November 2015 was its ugly Altamont.
I will address this matter in the style of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
“I Need Some Muscle Over Here”
Racial Threats, Cops Called, Poopy Symbol on the Stall
Tim Wolfe, Bowtie Man, Jonathan Butler Has a Plan
Homecoming, Parade Delay, Locktober Gone Astray
Concerned Students, Hunger Strike, J’Mon Moore Happens By
I Need Some Muscle Over Here
BYU, We Might Not Play You
I Need Some Muscle Over Here
We Want Equality, Not Photography
Players Meet, Sherrils Tweets, Media Overheats
TV Trucks, Pressure Mounts, Gary Pinkel Twitter Account
Mack Rhodes Shitting Bricks, Not Shaped Like Swastikas
Closed Meetings, Curator Fits, Wolfe and Bowtie Call it Quits
I Need Some Muscle Over Here
BYU, I Guess We Will Play You
I Need Some Muscle Over Here
We Want Equality, Not Photography
Butler Eats, Doesn’t Die, Melissa Click, Tim Tai
Death Threats, KKK, Anyone Else Fired Today?
Offense Stinks, Points are Few, Tigers Need Some Muscle Too
Pinkel Retires, Blockbuster News, Wonder if I’ll Ever Snooze
I’ve made it this far without much mention of the sport of basketball, so I should rectify that. To the surprise of younger readers, that sport was a big deal when the last decade began. The 2011-12 men’s basketball team inspired Caucasian college students to create a rap song, which critics agreed was among the 100 best rap songs ever recorded by Caucasian college students about their favorite basketball team. That team was so much fun to watch, fans forgot how much they hated the hire of Frank Haith.
The season built to two climaxes, one on Feb. 4 at Mizzou Arena and the other on Feb. 25 at Allen Fieldhouse. These were the “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” basketball games of the decade. Marcus Denmon cemented his place in Missouri lore. Thomas Robinson cemented Phil Pressey’s place in the front row of the bleachers. Every play dripped with tension. The passion of the fans — stoked by conference realignment on top of the usual distaste for a blood rival — was so high that even the most obvious call against the home team threatened to cause 15,000 aneurysms. I’m pretty sure half the crowd at Allen Fieldhouse was incensed that Pressey wasn’t whistled for a charge.
And then there was the Norfolk State game, which was pretty much “The Godfather Part III.”
More basketball things happened in front of fewer and fewer fans for the rest of the decade, but I mostly remember Kevin Puryear dutifully trudging into postgame interview rooms. Even the Iraqi information minister who assured us victory was nigh as American tanks closed in on Baghdad would have struggled to put a good spin on Missouri basketball from 2015-17. There was a brief break for some Michael Porter Jr. Instagram posts and then more solemn Kevin Puryear postgame debriefs. They really ought to name the Mizzou Arena interview room in his honor. It’s easy to be pleasant on the topic of your buzzer-beating 3-pointer, but the real measure of a mensch is your response when asked if you thought there was hope after cutting the Commodores’ lead to 12 midway through the second half.
At the time of their hires, I thought it was nice that Kim Anderson and Odom — good men I knew and liked — got their chances to lead their alma mater. What I learned is, from a columnist’s perspective, the best coach is an aloof stranger. You can criticize him and not care how sad it might make him feel. So, Eli Drinkwitz, I guess I’m hoping I never get to know you.
In the 2010s, the greatest athletes in school history in five sports plied their trade: Chelsea Thomas (softball), Molly Kreklow (volleyball), J’den Cox (wrestling), Karissa Schweizer (track) and Sophie Cunningham (women’s basketball). Brian Smith (wrestling), Ehren Earleywine (softball) and Wayne Kreklow (volleyball) coached so well that they created cult followings for what had been niche sports.
Missouri made it through the 2000s with one athletic director, Alden, but the ’10s brought frequent changes that sometimes left me wondering who, if anyone, was in charge. My favorite period was the late summer of 2016 when MU bridged the gap between Rhodes and Jim Sterk with three interim ADs. If you can name all three, you are probably one of the three.
Wren Baker, Hank Foley (who double-dipped as interim chancellor) and Sarah Reesman, your tenures were brief, but I hope you enjoyed the short period in which your parking space was closest to the south door of Mizzou Arena.
Just as change swept through Mizzou, it also upended the newspaper industry. When the decade began, my employer, the Columbia Daily Tribune, still had seven full-timers in sports. The roster was so stacked, Ross Dellenger, now the national college football writer for Sports Illustrated, was covering Mizzou non-revenue sports. But when the paper was sold, the days of lavender and merlot were over. I exited the daily sports journalism hamster wheel in June 2017.
What I found is that doing a job with normal hours, weekends off and no expectation to spring into action at every smear of a poop swastika is a way better way to live. In my free time, I still get to dabble in covering Missouri athletics, including this weekly gig offered by Gabe DeArmond. If this were a serious, comprehensive look back at the decade in Missouri athletics, it would include analysis of the increasingly powerful role this website played in breaking big news and shaping opinion. That’s 100% a testament to Gabe, who has thrived in an era when traditional media outlets have struggled.
I can say with conviction that I ended the decade in a better place than I began it. Probably not that great of an accomplishment, considering I began the decade on a vomit-drenched shuttle bus, but I never apologize for a win.
