Mizzou Football 2013

Mizzou Links, 8-28-13: Hearnes exhibitions, another commitment, and the tutoring program

They're celebrating the 1994 team at the Hearnes Center over Homecoming (and in front of Devin Booker, no less), Mizzou apparently scored yet another commitment (No. 20), and we might be burying the lede with the tutoring program story.

By Bill Connelly@SBN_BillC Aug 28, 2013, 5:21am CDT

1. YES. THEY LISTENED.

The Trib: Tigers will play exhibition at Hearnes as part of '94 reunion
KC Star: Booker and son excited for throwback game at Hearnes
KC Star: Althetic director Mike Alden discusses future of MU’s Hearnes Center

Pretty sure we were begging for this in about 2009. This is fantastic.

Hey, Speaking of Devin Booker...
ZagsBlog: Devin Booker Breaks Down His 5 Schools

Hey, Speaking of players from the 1990s...
Niners Nation: Justin Smith appears recovered and ready for the 2013 season

2. Wait, we got another commitment? I can't keep up...

Hello, #20! Georgia athlete Tavon Ross committed, apparently. A (stop me if you've heard this before) diamond-in-the-rough type from Bleckly County high school, Ross is a QB/DB who is apparently being recruited to play safety in Columbia and likes hitting people. That's almost literally everything we know. At some point we're going to have to step back and figure out what we've got here with all of these recent under-the-radar guys, but we've got present-tense football to talk about right now, I guess.

PowerMizzou: Ross talks decision

Okay, we also know this: a) Ross is faster than his opponents, and b) these announcers are awesome/awful/awesome.

So I haven't really talked about this yet because I haven't been sure what to say yet. My two opinions thus far:

1. If tutors were doing work for players, that should be the major piece of this story. I don't want to make light of "rampant sex" or whatever, but that's the part of this that is most disconcerting to me (to put it mildly). The sex part makes me wince a bit in an "I wish that wasn't happening" kind of way, but if it's consensual, it's consensual. Hpefully the chapter in question details the "doing others' work" item properly instead of just passing along a "Someone said that someone was doing someone else's work" kind of thing. We might be burying the lede a bit here.

2. Again, we'll see how it's spelled out in the book, but if this is going to tie the Derrick Washington case to the tutoring program itself, as if the latter led to the former in some way, I might have an enormous problem with that. But I haven't read it, so I'm going to wait to say more.