Considering Missouri’s “consistency of winning at a high level” at a high level across most observers’ adult lifetime, coach, you can understand their doubts — this is, after all, the same program that had put together back-to-back winning seasons exactly once, with 7-5 and 8-4 marks in 1997-98, in the 25 years before Daniel took over as the starting quarterback in 2006. Pre-Daniel, Pinkel’s record through five seasons at MU was 28-30. All of this is quite different from the track record at Nebraska, which — recent struggles under Bill Callahan notwithstanding — has survived losing star players on a regular basis, to say the least; Nebraska remains one of the country’s few legitimate factories. Why should Missouri, minus the core of by far its most successful run in 40 years, get the same benefit of the doubt?

Is he pretending to speak for the people picking MU 4th-5th, or is he actually trying to justifiably say that himself? I hope the former, but I think it’s the latter. Is it really the fault of Gary Pinkel, Blaine Gabbert, Derrick Washington, etc., that Mizzou sucked for the good majority of 1984-2002? And is it some aid to Zac Lee, Roy Helu Jr., and Menelik Holt that Tommie Frazier was awesome? I mean…since 2002, Nebraska has been under .500 in conference and has a worse conference record than Mizzou. That’s SEVEN years. Not two, not three…SEVEN.

Sure mizzou has question marks (?) but so does everyone!!!!! I mean everyone has questions about the up coming season.

Roles need to be evaluated, holes need to be filled (TWSS)…ect. But this is true for all teams.

I guess this is where I take a deep breath and relize, I don’t care what ‘experts’ think about pre-season. This is why we actually have to play the game.

But I’m still pissed though.

“I think we’ll go 10-2 this year. Seriously. We lose to Nevada and Okie Light. Texas destroyed us last year, but this time we’ll be at home, it’ll be homecoming, and we’ll be looking for revenge.

D-Wash will have Walker-type year (it’ll go to Jahvid Best, though) and Gabbert will have a CD10-in-2007 [EDIT: probably not that good] type year.

I’m even more optimistic about 2010-11."

Also, I think the Nevada and Okie Light games will be really close. It wouldn’t surprise me to win either one, but it would surprise me to win both.

I couldn’t tell.

…and I am not impressed.

I know there’s not that much to talk about now, but articles like this only serve to rile readers up. There’s nothing in there that Mizzou fans haven’t heard the last 3 years.

If we keep proving them wrong, eventually they will shut up. Until then, if you can’t read this stuff without getting upset, don’t read it. Unless you WANT to get upset.

“Your recruiting classes have only been slightly better than before, so good luck replacing those great players you had from those old recruiting classes!”

It’s one thing to use recruiting to show you’re not on the same plane as OU/Texas, you know, teams that you also lost to on the field. It’s quite another to use them to show that you’re going to struggle to stay in front of NU/KSU/CU, teams you have beaten by an average of FIVE touchdowns per game the past few years

“There are people out there that still, apparently, they kind of view us as a program where consistency of winning at a high level is a question mark,” Pinkel said. “Obviously, there’s a lack of respect.”

ok lets face it everyone in the sports world doesnt respect mizzou. no matter what we do they wont. the team uses it as a driveing force to make the skeptics eat crow. and yes we have a new QB taking the reins but come on people said daniles wouldnt be much good after smith but looked what happened. yes we did lose some great players maclin,coffman and so on but gary pinkel is the best recuiter mizzou has ever had. my point DONT COUNT US OUT!!!!!! we are going to come out and shock a lot of people. next year is going to be even better only 4 senoirs on the offense only 5 on defense so because were not texas or ou or usc we lose some great players and were old mizzou again NOT TRUE pinkel is getting top players comeing in to mizzou to take their place. so all you naysayers keep talking