2008 Missouri Football Preview - State of the Union

Great read. Thanks from a Missouri Tiger fan… “4 popped collars cool”. Love it.

Like Heidegger in his hut in the Black Forest, TigerFan has been brooding, hating on Matt Davison and the shoeness of shoes.

“They have some very good individual players among their ten returning starters, but unlike say Kansas, they’re not much better than the sum of their parts. Think of them as the Audioslave of Big 12 defenses.”

Top notch!

Maybe the best lead on BC evar.

As an aside, mizzou fans need to get over themselves. Talking smack about being #1 for a WEEK … the ONLY week in the history of their program … AFTER getting beatdown by OU in the Alamo Bowl needs a Bill Little-esque adjective substitution for the word “stupid.” When OU fans can call your fans stupid white trash, well that’s saying something.

Well done as usual. My favorite “To be fair, being an honor student from Jasper usually just means that you understand your Miranda Rights well enough to waive them” That being said these Tigers barring catastrophic injuries to key players will be fun to watch in 2008. Thank God Mack passed on Daniel until it was too late.

“Tight end Chase Coffman is one of the best in the Big 12 and will catch more balls than a mousetrap on Clay Aiken’s chin.”

That’s quality work right there….

I assume he means in a month, as Aiken’s chin must be the career leader in balls caught.

ponderos, I wandered the Riverwalk before and after the Big 12 Championship game. Oklahoma fans do NOT get to call us stupid white trash. They were nice enough, but I still have the images of giant, pear-shaped women with big hair slurring “Bu-loomer Shlooomer” every 30 seconds seared into my retinas. Not a pretty sight.

Fair enough, but those portly, middle-aged, Midwestern women blasting their John Mellencougar in the Alamodome parking lot and yelling drunken smack to us after their booger-eating QB just got b-slapped again was pretty funny.

You people just love slapping Clay Aiken while he’s down. But he’s young and resilient.

You just watch: he’ll be back on his knees in no time!

ponderos, Mizzou has been ranked #1 before, this is not the first time. I don’t know who’s been “talking smack”. Maybe you should get over yourself. We had a good season, we’re happy about it. We’ve been pretty consistently terrible since the late 70’s so we’re excited. Get over it.

Mizzou fans were talking smack, eric. I was there, it happened and it was funny.

So some portly midwestern women hurt your feelings and you decided to judge an entire fan base by it. Bully for you.

ponderos,

Some fan in a parking lot talked smack after a game and that equals “Missouri fans”?

I know I didn’t talk any smack, and didn’t see any other Mizzou fans doing it either. Mostly we were like “Hey, good game. Better team won.” That kind of thing. Everyone I saw was cool. And even though I found the OU folks kinda annoying, I came away with grudging respect for them and their team.

Now, KU fans? ;-)

Before the game on the way to the dome, during the game on one of the concourses, during the game on the row behind me, after the game in the parking lot, my Mizzou cousins before the game … I shouldn’t judge the entire fan base on 20 or so of them at the game, but it was definitely more than one portly midwestern woman. It was several of them.

and my feelings never get hurt against Mizzou. Hell, I wish they were on OU’s schedule again this year. That’s a W.

Chase Daniel wants another cheeseburger.

Such animosity towards a supposedly non threatening team ponderos, did a Mizzou jschool grad bang your girlfriend or something? Believe it or not we actually have a rep as having nice, benign, fans. And while my only real experience with an OU fan is seeing one dressed up as a superhero costume at a Mizzou game, I don’t judge your entire fan base by one loon.

While walking out of the Alamodome a female OU fan lifted a fat roll and a blue-in-the-face MU fan fell out.

G-Moye, baby, I’m so hard, pimpin’ these ho’s on tha boulevard, but I’m not here, to talk about me, I got a lil’ story about a clean-cut, fiery kid from a winning, affluent suburban program of Dallas leading us to a Top 5 ranking.

Mizzou seems to have found the right balance of intelligent leadership and thuginess. Too much of one and you’re Rice. Too much of another and you’re Miami. They’ve done well for themselves, and I think their defense is pretty salty, myself.

Believe it or not we actually have a rep as having nice, benign, fans.

I’ll see your nice, benign fans and raise you The Antlers.

btw, if you see that dude in the Superhero costume again, you pretty much have the entire Sooner fanbase’s permission to slap him.

The team trainer has to blow scopolamine in Moore’s face before each game to control him

A trick he learned working in MKFLEXEAGLE, back in the 50’s.

Ha, I love the antlers, but I’m talking more about the guy you sit by or tailgait with. Personally, I’m not benign, and I’m of the opinion that KU fans don’t have souls, therefore if you hit one with your car, its like hitting a deer: Just move the body to the side of the road and be on your merry way. That said, I’ve never had any problems with the Sooners or their fans (arrogant, but that comes with success), therefore, I don’t understand the animosity. If you were an Nub fan or a KU fan, I could understand, but if we’re really so insignificant in the OU universe, why do you feel the need to talk shit in a Mizzou preview piece on a Texas blog?

In fairness to the Mizzou fans, yelling at ponderos is probably not the best litmus test for fanbase virulency. I’ve done it at my car radio several times and I’m a quiet, refined soul.

The Aiken comment was outstanding. A much needed (and well-executed) update on Don Baylor and Liberace.

eric – if you’re actually taking the time to move ku fans to the side of the road after hitting them, you’re spending too much time on them. They function very well as a speed bump.

Deer however, do merit moving.

I’m just trying to prevent accidents. We should all be neighborly to each other.

Ponderos: We decimated the native population of this fair land by infectious disease and taking pretty much every available scrap of available space, and then we gave those we had not killed Oklahoma. This tells us (at least) two things: (1) Our forebears were pretty much shitheads and (2) even those shitheads hated Oklahoma.

“First Nebraska dominated, then Kansas State and then Colorado had their run.”

Kansas State? I must’ve been asleep all that time. What year was it they won the Big XII? When did they win back-to-back division titles? Oh, they didn’t? But they apparently dominated at some point? I see.

Well, 2003 was the year they won the Big 12.

I’m not sure which is more entertaining: MU and OU fans arguing over who has the fattest fans, or MU and K-State fans arguing over who has the most hillbillies.

OU probably has fatter fans, due to feasting on all of those conference titles.

@Huckleberry: Oh. Once? Okay. The definition of “dominance” in my dictionary must be a little off.

You ask a question, I answer. I am here to serve.

The only downside to KU’s 12-1 fb season last year was losing to Mizzou, the only upside to Mizzou fans is reminding them they are Mizzou fans-bads things can and will happen to every team you have; that and all the fireworks stands, porn shops and meth labs that line your highways and interstates. Discuss

They should do well of course. BUt Kansas is always lurking – and almost always in the end, stabs them in the heart with a stake.

And sprinkles garlic over their carcass while humming ROOOOCKKKKK CHALLLLKKK

Man, kU fans are lame. Glad to hear that you’re enjoying your 1 loss (to MU) season and your Big 12 North Co-Champs trophy (yes, they actually made themselves one).

The porn shops & fireworks stands just prove that we know how to have a good time. And I’d rather live in a meth exporting state than a meth importing one.

KU didn’t make the trophy, it was delivered by the Big 12 on the same day Misery got theirs. Haters

You know your blog has reached the bigtime when random fans from other schools are arguing each other about meth, porn, and fireworks. This is why HF and TexAgs will never go anywhere

Colorado School of Mines SUCKS!!1

OU probably has fatter fans, due to feasting on all of those conference titles.

I don’t know about the fans, but I know the players are fatter..in the wallets from all of those jobs provided by them by all the car dealerships down there….

ouch! BURN!

eh mizzou is going to need to win a conference championship before we can say its their time for dominance, and KSU never dominated they were good for 4 years haha.

Are we supposed to think having porn shops lining our highways is a bad thing? As opposed to what? Edible grass?

Ponderos, sadly, I actually enjoyed the OU fans at the championship last year. Everywhere I looked, I saw MU and OU fans living in harmony, arms interlocked, celebrating the diversity of our different states.

Why can’t we all just get along? Why???

AS far as the actual MU preview, good work (as always). I beg to differ on the defense, by season end, MU, KU and OU had virtually identical defensive stats in conference play, and the defense returns every major contributor sans Lorenzo Williams. I think the defense has the possibility of being dominant this year.

I’m not quite as sanguine as others on our offense, although it will certainly be very good. OU showed twice last year that creative defensive scheming, and a line chock full of future NFL stars, can control the spread. I’m not confident that the o-line play will be as good as last year, and that could spell trouble against OU, UT and Illinois. Fortunately, Nebraska and KU are weaker up front, so we should win those games.

We are painfully thin at WR and OL, and possibly quite deep at DL and certainly quite deep in the secondary. If the OL gels and we avoid injuries to Spoon, Moore or Maclin, we should be very good.

William Moore and Jeremy Maclin are, along with Justin Smith, the three very obviously most talented players I’ve seen at Mizzou since 1989, and Weatherspoon is only a half rung down from those, and Coffman another half rung down. Tallest midget in the circus sort of thing considering we’ve had about 10 NFL players in the last 25 years.

All in all, I think the over/under on regular season wins is 10. Win 11 and it is a great season, win 9 and it is a disappointment.

What will be interesting is whether we are 9 – 3-ish next year, or 6 – 6-ish. Only then will we know for sure that Pinkel has us firmly around the bend of suckitude.

Looking forward to enjoying Austin in October, hopefully you guys have just knocked off OU the week before and are resting comfortably on your laurels.

See, Turner, the idea of “predicting” is that you, you know, guess at the future. If we have seen Mizzou dominate, it wouldn’t be a prediction, now would it?

Do we really have Missouri and Oklahoma fans arguing over who’s more white trash? That’s like trying to divide by zero, it’s just not right and it’ll never go anywhere.

Turner, one does not have to win the conference championship to dominate the North division. And, of course, as vvn8bs noted, HenryJames was making a prediction.

BC, great preview, by the way. I think vvn8bs noted that the offense is stoppable, but I think that’s true of all offenses going against a talented well-coached defense. I will point out that the offense should be different (better?) in one respect – Derrick Washington is going to a) not lose yards like Tony Temple did (and I love Tony Temple) so the Tigers should see fewer 10+ yard downs (we will see if that matters), and b) he’ll catch the ball out of the backfield, something Tony did not do and something that will help make up for the loss of Rucker.

Did a beaker just call Mizzou fans hillbillies? YOUR ENTIRE STATE SMELLS LIKE PIG SHIT.

I know Jason Hervey. I see Jason Hervey every morning at the Peet’s coffee in Westwood. Jason Hervey wears a trucker cap.

Chase Daniel is no Jason Hervey.

And Starbuck’s is no Peet’s.

How can the state of Kansas, yes, the state of Kansas rip on anyone? We have 2 major cities and 6 PRO franchises (Cardinals – one of the most successful and storied franchises in MLB). What in the hell do you, OK, NEB have? It is amazing….Kansas is hell…my brother in law lived in Salina or whatever they call it and could not wait to get out..

Thanks a million for the post. I will be visiting your blog soon! Thanks again!