The signs of the moment are everywhere you look.
It’s 7 p.m. on Saturday, August 24, outside Memorial Stadium in Columbia, exactly five days until it all begins. The university emblem spins and pulsates on the Missouri football team’s new north end zone video board, which in a few years will surpass $250 million worth of clubs, terraces and visitors.
Across Faurot Field, the scoreboard atop the $98 million south end facility is testing the waters: Missouri 24, Murray State 3, with 14 minutes and 28 seconds left to play … in the second quarter. Mizzou has 47 yards of offense, the Racers 154. Don’t ask how that math works out.
MU students park their cars in the Memorial Stadium parking lots and mill around. Who among them will be there for the opening game, from the group that sold out all of its allotted student season tickets by August 21? How many of their families and friends are among the season ticket holders who sold out all of their tickets a week earlier?
After a day of thunder and persistent rain, the sun is making its way to the central Missouri horizon, hovering like a halo over the $33 million Stephens Indoor Facility.
People here have been preparing for a year like this for some time.
It definitely looks finished.
Definitely feels ready.
The final question is: Is Mizzou ready for the moment?
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According to all preseason predictions, speculations and rumors, Missouri is a candidate to play its way into the first 12-team College Football Playoff.
The Tigers entered the season ranked No. 11 in the US LMB coaches’ rankings and in the AP Top 25, and barring a major upset against FCS team Murray State in Thursday night’s season opener at Faurot Field, they will move into the top 10 thanks to their loss to No. 10 Florida State in Week 0.
The Tigers went 11-2 last season in a dream – and largely unexpected – year that catapulted the Columbia team into a new realm of national conversation.
And everything, from the facilities to the team roster to the schedule to the expanded playoffs, seems to be coming together at just the right time.
Every Mizzou game this season falls into one of the following four categories:
- At Faurot Field (Auburn, Oklahoma and five others).
- Against a team the Tigers easily beat last year (against Vandy, in South Carolina, against Arkansas).
- Against a team with a new head coach (at Texas A&M, Alabama and Mississippi State).
- University of Massachusetts.
So good, you’d think they chose it themselves. Even some of the more gruesome games – at Texas A&M and against Oklahoma – will be made physically easier by a week’s rest before the game. That’s probably the best thing you can do in a modern power conference.
And if not now, when?
“I’m pretty confident we’re two-strong at basically every position,” Drinkiwtz said on Aug. 10. … “For us, it’s about continuing to build that competitive depth on special teams and making sure we have 35, 36 (players) capable and ready to win in the SEC.”
It’s likely the final year for Luther Burden III, the electrifying wide receiver who in some ways changed the caliber of recruits Missouri can attract. It’s the final set of games for Brady Cook, the Tigers’ third-year starting quarterback. The offensive line is as promising as Drinkwitz always said it would be, and there’s no shortage of playmakers hoping to reap the rewards.
There are legitimate doubts about the defense. Ten starters and key players left the team at the end of last season, five players were selected in the 2024 NFL Draft. Add in Corey Batoon as the new playmaker for the defense, and that’s a serious shakeup.
Can the new cornerbacks step up? And what about the defensive line, missing a first-round pick and a ton of rotation players? That’s something the games will have to tell, but a top-10 transfer haul and a top-20 recruiting class made possible by the significant lead in the NIL division seem to have filled some of the biggest gaps.
“I don’t know if we have any tangible proof of whether we can be good or not. I think you’ll find out if you’re good when you play. I mean, that’s the thing about football, every year it all starts again. … We can now start to compete with our opponents. That’s the reality of football and that’s why competition and football is the greatest game in the world because you can’t talk about it, you have to do it.”
Yes, they will play all the games. The Tigers’ record is their record and the CFP committee will decide if it is good enough for a meaningful game in December.
But on Thursday, in the final moments before kickoff at Faurot Field and the first signs of whether Mizzou will “be there,” it’s worth asking…
When was the last time you felt like this – and when might it happen again?
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