Jordan Barnett: "What better place to come back to than Missouri?"

What's On

This was posted 24 hours ago, and as far as we know, Cornell Ford is still at Mizzou!

University of Missouri Athletics - A Championship Vision: Meet #Mizzou's Cornell Ford

"This is a second home to me. I have set roots here and obviously, with Coach Odom we go way back," Ford said. "Not only is he a great coach, but also he is great person. I was thrilled that he wanted me to be a part of his staff.  This is a special place, I think we have done some great things here and I just want to continue that. Our goal is to win an outright SEC championship and hopefully get into the playoff."

Football

Catching up: Mizzou got good news in the form of Alabama grad transfer Chris Black, who will be eligible to play immediately.

Reports also surfaced that Barry Odom has righted the Shipp, filling the vacancy Chris Wilson left when he took the Eagles' job. Since this is so close to National Signing Day, the news probably won't be made official until Thursday or Friday.

Reports: MU targets Jackie Shipp to be DL coach | David Morrison

Wilson was set to make $395,000 annually at Missouri. Shipp made $266,585 at Arizona State last year, according to the USA Today assistant coach salaries database.

Dave Matter had his annual chat with Danny Heitert. They break down Mizzou's current 2016 class. One interesting note was that perhaps Mizzou was already moving toward bigger running backs before Barry Odom became the head coach.

Q: Missouri does appear to be targeting bigger running backs. Is that a new trend you’ve noticed?

A: Morgan Steward was a harbinger of maybe a change in thought. At the time I was told they were looking at a bigger back. All things being equal, bigger is better. If you don’t have to marginalize change in direction and burst, because that would not be an equitable deal, bigger is always better. Then when I saw them get (Chase) Abbington, although I had mixed evaluations on him for yards after contact, I thought, well they are starting to look that way. Then you have (East St. Louis running back) Nate Strong, too. I wouldn’t say it’s a total sea change of Barry Odom. I think that was a change that was already under way.

They confirm a lot of what we have already told you about which positions certain athletes will likely end up once they're at Mizzou, but it's always good to hear it from Heitert, so check it out.

Here's ESPN re-grading Mizzou's 2012 recruiting class. They were high on its potential, but unsurprisingly waiting to see how it finishes.

This class, signed by Gary Pinkel, had "A" potential early on, but two of the top three signees were dismissed after starting their Mizzou careers well: Five-star receiver Dorial Green-Beckham was gone after his sophomore season, and quarterback Maty Mauk was kicked off the team last week. Boehm lived up to his ESPN 150 status, becoming an All-SEC performer and setting a school record for starts. Golden was a gem from the junior college ranks before going on to the NFL. The class’s ending is still to be written -- six players have eligibility remaining for 2016: Scherer, Harold Brantley, Sean Culkin, John Gibson, Rickey Hatley and Donavin Newsom.

247 Sports already has Barry Odom on the hot seat?

5. Barry Odom –

Missouri It is very hard to imagine a first year head coach being this low on the job security ranking, but he is only at this spot because he inherits something of a mess offensively. Not many people who played Mizzou last year would be able to say that Odom has not cut his teeth when it comes to defense, but it will be interesting to see if the first time head coach can fix an offensive issue that Gary Pinkel could not. The other thing standing in Odom’s way is his recruiting position relative to the rest of the conference, in a state that does not often produce top of the line high school talent. If Odom is able to succeed, it will be a testament to his coaching ability, and I have no reason to doubt it yet. I am just not totally convinced that many inexperienced head coaches would find success right now at Missouri.

Here's an interesting story from MMQB's Peter King with Mike Jones, the former Mizzou running back turned St. Louis Rams linebacker who made the game-winning tackle in Super Bowl XXXIV.

Contrary to popular assumption, their Super Bowl wasn’t decided by a whim—it was all part of the defensive assignment. Jones, who was originally covering Wycheck on the play, kept an eye on Dyson as he sprinted from the sideline to the center of the field. Though Jones had rolled an ankle when Titans fullback Lorenzo Neal thumped him earlier in the game, he still switched to cover Dyson, per his zone responsibilities.

"Kevin and I have talked about this," Jones says. "I thought I was going to kill him, because he didn’t know I was coming—but Kevin actually knew that I was in that coverage. So I went from killing him to just trying to tackle him, and he hits the ground and sticks the ball out. It was a little too close for comfort."

Remember the good old days, Rams fans? When Jeff Fisher being mediocre actually helped you?

Basketball

Anderson prescribes more shooting, less video games : Dave Matter

We have a core group of guys who are in here, I’m not going to say every night, but if you come over here at 2 in the morning, K.J. Walton will be in here shooting. I’m not over here with him. And God bless Cullen. He’s struggling shooting. But it isn’t because a lack of effort. He’s over here working on it. Terrence, Kevin, those guys are in the gym working. Everybody needs to get in the gym working.

Does that automatically mean you’re going to make shots? No. But you’ve got a better chance than you do being on Twitter or playing video games. At least you’re shooting."

Anderson didn’t stop there. "If you’re really sincere about being a good basketball player, then when you don’t do well or your team doesn’t do well, then you should come into the gym and try to get better," he said. "If you want to blame somebody else and say, ‘Well, it ain’t me,’ then you stay home and point fingers and play Xbox and watch TV or whatever it is you do. Playing at this level is not easy. It’s not easy, especially when things don’t go your way. That means you have to come in and work that much harder."

Recent transfer Jordan Barnett met with the media yesterday and was a hit.

"For the most part honestly it was pretty much just come back home," he said. "I was thinking, what better place to come back to than Missouri, where it seems like I should have been all along almost."

In case you missed it, Jordan Barnett spoke to the Mizzou Network last week.

Terrence Phillips talked to the Mizzou Network's Ben Arnett

Maybe you saw that someone left a note criticizing Mizzou Women's Basketball coach Robin Pingeton?