I'll be making the trip to Columbia this weekend to watch the Tigers take on Georgia.  I have no idea what to expect.  For years Missouri has scheduled a fairly mediocre to bad group of non-conference opponents (sorry Artie, I know ASU was in there), so whenever they played an unfamiliar team at Columbia, it felt like an easy win.  Then when it came time to play conference games, you had a pretty good idea where you stood because you probably played the team the year prior. 

With the conference switch, the entire conference season is simply one fat question mark.  Will Missouri's spread work against the SEC teams?  Where does Missouri fit in terms of the other teams within its division?  Can they beat a top-10 opponent at home?  Can they steal one of the road games against Florida or Tennessee?

Coming into the season, I honestly felt like I could accurately predict 5 games.  Se. La. at home was and should have been an easy win.  I think they beat Arizona State and Kentucky at home.  And I'm fairly confident that they'll get pounded by Alabama and South Carolina.  That means I have Missouri going anywhere from 3-9 to 10-2 and most likely falling somewhere in the middle (7-8 wins and a bowl game).

"So if ASU falls somewhere between fairly mediocre and bad, and ASU beat Mizzou last year, that makes Mizzou ... what???"

The victim of a bad game???  I seem to remember Missouri had that game won until Pinkel decided to twice freeze his own kicker assuming that Vontaze Burfict would jump offside.  ASU finished the season 6-7 last year.  But I digress.

ASU was a significant upgrade over what Missouri had been playing both in terms of talent and in terms of location.  For several years, Missouri played Illlinois in St. Louis and then played three non-conference games that usually consisted of an FCS team, a team from the MAC (Pinkel's old conference) and another non-BCS school.  And they almost unfailingly played these games in Columbia.  I think one exception may have been Nevada with whom I think they did a 2 for 1 (2 in Columbia, 1 in Nevada) which happened to coincide with the years Colin Kaepernick was Nevada's QB.

I just looked back at Mizzou's schedules.  As I suspected, the non-conference schedule has been pretty bad.  In fact, the loss to ASU ended a 22 game non-conference winning streak (not including bowl games).

2006- Murray State, Ole Miss, @ New Mexico, Ohio
2007- Illinois, @ Ole Miss, Western Michigan, Illinois State
2008- Illinois, SE Missouri State, Nevada, Buffalo
2009- Illinois, Bowling Green, Furman, @ Nevada
2010- Illinois, McNeese St., San Diego St., Miami (Oh)
2011- Miami (Oh), @ ASU, Western Illinois

That's 23 non-conference games, 19 of them at home.  Which goes back to my original point--the Georgia game has a weird vibe.  Missouri hasn't played a Top 10 non-conference team in a long time.  I know Missouri is now in the same conference with Georgia, but because there isn't any history between the schools, it doesn't have the same feel as playing someone like Oklahoma.  On the other hand, there's so much hype around the move to the SEC, there's people who believe the crowd will be more amped than it was for the last Oklahoma game when ESPN Gameday did its show from Columbia.

Last edited by forsberg_us (9/07/2012 5:20 pm)

#3 now, thanks to USC losing to Stanford.

Still though, nothing else matters but Arizona, who completely shelled their nonconference opponents, and should be a game. I'll worry about Stanford and USC when we play them.

I dont really get into college football but why does this board care so much about Oregon?

Interesting week of college football to say the least. Florida State should be ashamed of themselves. Losing to NC State under any circumstances is simply attrocious. Georgia was probably overrated a bit, and South Carolina is actually a fine football team (as much as I don't care for Stever Spurrier, he's building a solid program).

A friend of mine is a massive LSU fan, and I've listened to nothing but him tell me that they suck ass this year. I wasn't completely surprised when they lost to Florida though I thought they would hang in there and stay perfect until Alabama wrecked them. Florida jumped all the way to number 4 with that win.

Alabama still the clear number 1
Oregon is as clear a number 2 as they come.
South Carolina controls their own destiny and will play for the crystal football with a perfect season.
Florida is the same as south caronlina
West Virginia is Oregon in a lot of ways last season. Better QB at the reins, but eventually they are going to hit a defense that will destroy them. You can't be that one sided of a football team and win everything.

That's the new top 5. Kansas State and Notre Dame are both sitting high and will likely finish with great records at this point. Oregon and Alabama still have a strong bulk of their season coming up and it's strong competition on both sides. Perfection by either teams will lock a title game.

(Trying not to be overly-Oregon with this, because AP seemed pissed).

Oh a small followup... Marcus Lattimore... Jesus Christ a dislocated knee makes your leg do all kinds of nasty shit... That was nauseating... Glad it wasn't a destroyed knee like I thought it was.