The signs of the moment are everywhere you look.
It’s 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 24, outside of Memorial Stadium in Columbia, exactly five days until it all starts. The university emblem pirouettes and pulses on Missouri football’s new north end zone videoboard, which in a couple short years will top $250-million worth of clubs and patios and patrons.
The length of Faurot Field away, the scoreboard over the $98-million south end zone facility is running a test: It’s Missouri 24, Murray State 3, with 14 minutes, 28 seconds to go in … the second quarter. Mizzou has 47 yards of total offense to the Racers’ 154. Don’t ask how that math shakes out.
MU students park their cars in the Memorial Stadium lots and mill around. Who among them will be there for the opener, among the group that sold out the allocated lot of student season passes by Aug. 21? How many of their families and friends are among the season-ticket holders who sold out the full allotment one week earlier?
The sun is forcing its way onto the mid-Missouri horizon after a day of thunder and lingering rain, hovering just above the $33-million Stephens Indoor Facility like a halo.
This place has been getting in gear for a year like this for quite some time.
Sure looks ready.
Definitely feels ready.
The last thing left to ask: Is Mizzou ready for the moment?
More:Why Missouri football will be king under new Mizzou athletic director Laird Veatch
Missouri by all prognostication, speculation and preseason chatter is a candidate to play its way into contention for the first edition of the 12-team College Football Playoff.
The Tigers have opened the season as the No. 11-ranked team in the US LMB Coaches Poll and in the AP Top 25, and barring a major upset against FCS outfit Murray State in the season-opener Thursday night on Faurot Field, will move into the top 10 courtesy of No. 10 Florida State’s Week 0 loss.
The Tigers went 11-2 last season in a dream — and mostly unexpected — year that has catapulted the Columbia team into a new realm of national conversation.
And everything, from the facilities to the roster to the schedule to the expanded playoff, appears to be coalescing at exactly the right time.
Every one of Mizzou’s games this season falls into one of the following four categories:
- On Faurot Field (Auburn; Oklahoma and five more).
- Against a team the Tigers handily beat last year (vs. Vandy; at South Carolina; vs. Arkansas).
- Against a team with a new head coach (at Texas A&M; Alabama; and Mississippi State).
- UMass.
So good you’d think they picked it themselves. Even a couple of the more gruesome games — at Texas A&M; versus Oklahoma —get the physical relief of an idle week before them. That’s likely as good as it gets in a modern Power conference.
And if not now, then when?
“I feel pretty confident that we're two-deep in just about every position,” Drinkiwtz said Aug. 10. … “For us, it's about continuing to establish that competitive depth in special teams and making sure that 35, 36 (players) are able and ready to win in the SEC.”
It’s presumably the last year of Luther Burden III, the electric wide receiver who, in some ways, has changed the caliber of recruit Missouri is able to chase. It’s the last run of games for the Tigers’ third-year starter at quarterback, Brady Cook. The offensive line is as promising as a Drinkwitz team has boasted, and there’s no shortage of playmakers hoping to reap the rewards.
There’s credible questions on the defense. Ten starters and key role players left at the end of last season, with five players selected in the 2024 NFL Draft. Tack on a new defensive play-caller in Corey Batoon, and that’s some serious upheaval.
Can the new cornerbacks step up? How about the defensive line, where a first-rounder and a slew of rotation pieces are gone? That’s for the games to sort out, but a top-10 transfer haul and top-20 recruiting class made possible by being well ahead of the game in the NIL sphere appears to have plugged some of the major gaps.
“I don't know that we have any tangible proof that 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, is every year it starts completely over. … We get to start measuring ourselves versus opponents now. That's the reality of football, and that's why competition and football's the greatest game in the world, because you don't get to talk about, you get to be about it."
Yes, they’ll play all the games. The Tigers’ record will be their record and the CFP committee will decide if that's good enough for a meaningful December matchup.
But on Thursday, in the waning moments before kickoff on Faurot Field and the first signs of whether Mizzou will "be about it," it’s worth asking …
When was the last time —and when may be the next — it felt like this?
More:Missouri football releases full depth chart for 2024 season. See who made it here
More:Which transfer will have the biggest impact on Missouri football’s season? 5 candidates
