Farewell to an impostor
The 2008 Missouri Tigers are in our rear-view mirror, and who will remember them fondly? The club is small.
Mizzou beat Northwestern 30-23 in overtime Monday night in the Alamo Bowl, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. With the reputation of the Big 12 on the line, Mizzou bumbled all night and flirted with defeat before a late rally.
It’s time to admit that Missouri ’08 was nothing special. It was not a talented that just caught up in the Big 12 South whirlwind, losing to Texas, OU and OSU.
Missouri was the best, by a fraction, of a mediocre lot in the Big 12 North.
OSU’s road win at top-five Mizzou in October? Still a solid victory, but not as epic as we thought at the time. OU’s defensive shutdown of the Tigers in the Big 12 title game? Nice, but nothing special, since Northwestern did largely the same thing.
Truth is, when you go to figuring out how the Big 12 will fare in the rest of its bowls, starting with OSU tonight against Oregon and continuing with the Sooners in the Big Bowl against Florida, I wouldn’t put much stock in those victories over Missouri.
Chase Daniel threw three interceptions, and it’s time to say it clearly. Daniel is no better than sixth in the Big 12 quarterback pecking order. Maybe as low as eighth, if you want to bring Baylor’s Robert Griffin and K-State’s Josh Freeman into the discussion. And I haven’t even considered Nebraska’s Joe Ganz.
Either way, that’s a mighty fall for a guy who was a Heisman Trophy finalist last year. I don’t know; maybe Daniel is hurt. The Missouri offense looked short-handed. Lots of horizontal passing; lots of 25-yard passes that could pick up only 6-7 yards.
Even usually-stout Missouri coach Gary Pinkel was off his game. In a 23-23 tie, Mizzou crossed midfield in the final minute, and from just inside the Northwestern 30-yard line, Pinkel started playing for a field goal.
If you have a 44-yard field goal for victory, and you’ve got 30 seconds and a timeout or two to play with, you try to turn that 44-yarder into a 33-yarder. Sure enough, Missouri’s excellent kicker, Jeff Wolfert, missed, the ball barely floating right of the goal post. Put that kick five yards closer, and it’s in.
Anyway, good for Missouri. A loss would have embarrassed the Big 12. Northwestern is a nice, scrappy team that finished 9-4, but the Wildcats lost to Indiana. The Big Ten was awful this season, yet Missouri didn’t put away a middle-of-the-road Big Ten team until overtime.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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Comments
Talk about misleading. The title of the blog had me believing that Trammel and/or Rhode were finally being stripped of their “Professional Journalist” titles.
How’d that Fiesta Bowl go last year for OU? 48-28 to West Virginia?!!!!
Thanks for not embarrassing the Big XII!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OU recruits in Texas to widen the gene pool. The Stoops brother left the state for some genetic diversity. Brains may evolve soon, I hear …
“Missouri has been almost as good as anyone in the country the past couple of years” has only been true to Tiger fans. The fact is that Missouri was completely overrated this year and that was proven as the year went on. Last year was perhaps the best year ever for Mizzou football…the best win they had was against Kansas and they lost to OU twice. Fantastic!
“how about Boise state?” “what about west Virginia?” haha- the truth is you would have given you arms and legs to be playing in the fiesta bowl last year, or the year before that, or the year before that, or the year before that…you just weren’t given the chance to embarass the conference. You know what the difference would have been? That all the talk would have been about how you didn’t belong there.
“agree with everything you say. Mizzou is a pretender and will return to normal suckage next year.”
And OU will return to paying off players. Billy Simms was quoted as saying he had to take a pay cut when he was drafted into the NFL.
Cheat much?
Mizzou was exposed as a fraud. A national joke! The Alamo Bowl should have been on the Comedy Channel!
When you say imposter, do you mean OK lite losing to a weak Pac-10 team, or the next Sooner bowl choke job?
Trammel, thought you were talking about the OK-light bunch losing to the Ducks. I’d enter into a debate but, it’s like arguing with a child. At least they were able to pull out a win despite an awful performance. I’m sure the Cowgirls wish they could say the same.
Barry, what ever happened to “tackle football”? Do you rember back when a defender grabbed a ball carrier with both arms and brought him down? I rarely see tackle football these days. What I see is a defender lay down in front of the ball carrier hoping the carrier will trip over him. I mostly see defenders try to bring the carrier down with a body block. I see that both attempts fail regularily.
Perhaps the next time you interview a football coach, maybe Bob Stoops, you can ask him why they don’t teach tackle football at Grade, Jr. and Sr. Highschools anymore and why College coaches fail to correct this oversight.
Richard
You are right on about MIzzou. For awhile I thought the bookies had gotten to Chase, he was so bad!! I am now fearful of the big 12 winning more bowl games. I did pick Mississippi over Tech.