It's Mizzou 25, the tournament to decide the best, most influential, most likable Mizzou athlete of the past 25 years! It's like Who's Now or The Greatest Highlight, only, uhh, cool.
Mizzou 25 is set up in four 8-athlete regions: the Norm Stewart Region (basketball), the Larry Smith Region (football), the Joann Rutherford Region (all sports), and the Spider Region (fan favorites). Over the next month or so, we'll be setting up a poll a day to run through each regional, but first we have to finalize the participants.
Congrats to Christian Cantwell and Nikki Thole, who finished first and second in yesterday's poll and qualified for the final two slots in the Joann Rutherford Regional. Something interesting has been happening, though, in regard to the polls whose winners I've announced. I can't turn the polls off, and people keep voting...so after I announced that Jason Sutherland had advanced to the Norm Stewart Regional, Rickey Paulding overtook him. And after I announced that William Moore made it to the Larry Smith Regional, Devin West went zooming by. But I figure it's only fair to keep the original names in the bracket. Sorry Mr. Paulding and Mr. West. And when Dave Silvestri inevitably catches and passes Thole, I'll apologize to him too.
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No polls today as we finalize the Harold "Spider" Burke Regional. Since it's the fan favorites bracket, it's time for you, the loyal RMN readers, to make the nominations and tell us why we should care.
So far, here are the Spider Region participants:
- Mark Atkins (Basketball, 1992-94, The Boy's nomination)
- Christi Myers (Volleyball, 1999-02, The Beef's nomination)
- Pig Brown (Football, 2006-07, rptgwb's nomination)
- Brian Grawer (Basketball, 1997-01, Michael Atchison's nomination)
- ?
- ?
- ?
- ?
That's right, the field's wide open. Tell us who should be in the Spider Regional, then tell us why. The Spider Regional is for all the players for whom fans developed an attachment, rational or irrational. They played the game the right way, or they were super fun to watch, or they made you think "Man...if I were 6'4, I could sooooo be just like him." Whatever the reason, players in this bracket represent your favorites.
Here's how the final four nominations will be chosen: 1) most nominations, 2) best nominations. If somebody's nominated multiple times, they probably get in. After that, remaining slots will go to the participants with the best blurb. So there you go. Hop to it. And strap on your literary shoes.