GP! GP! GP! GP! GP! GP! GP! GP! GP! GP! GP! GP! GP!

What a day and honor for our former beloved Mizzou Football coach, Gary Pinkel, who was officially inducted into the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame in Las Vegas on Tuesday alongside such figures as Stanford QB Andrew Luck, Oklahoma DB Roy Williams & RB Terry Miller, Georgia DB Champ Bailey, and TX Tech WR Michael Crabtree. He was joined, per Dave Matter, by former Mizzou coaches/staffers Dave Christensen, Dave Steckel, Barry Odom, Brian Jones, Bruce Walker, Cornell Ford, Kat Lucchesi, former MU HC Bob Stull, current HC Eli Drinkwitz and AD Desiree Reed-Francois, former TE Chase Coffman, and the last Tiger to be inducted, Roger Wehrli.

Some highlights from the event:

Dave Matter, who is well acquainted with GP after covering the team and working with him on his book, The 100-Yard Journey, has been providing readers with some extra Pinkel-related coverage recently, including a great story about his sustained, and really, unprecedented success once coming to the SEC. From the story:

Pinkel guided the Tigers to 23 combined wins and back-to-back championship game appearances in MU’s second and third seasons— the SEC’s most treasured patriarch gave Pinkel the Manning Family seal of approval.

“Nobody though they’d come into the SEC like that,” Archie Manning, former Ole Miss quarterback, SEC legend and NFF executive director, told the Post-Dispatch here Tuesday. “The SEC’s a pretty proud bunch, but it just shows you what kind of program he had and what kind of stabililty they had…”

ABC 17 Sports Director Nathalie Jones was there in Vegas to cover the ceremony. Here’s her 1:1 with him:

Recent J-School grad, and my bud, Kayler Smith, had some words to say about GP:

On to the Links!

Side Note: I have this song stuck in my head… I can’t imagine why ;)

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Yesterday at Rock M

• Brandon attended the newest zoom presser: Gasparilla Bowl Presser Notes: Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson previews Mizzou Football matchup
• Parker gave us 5 Early Keys to beating Wake Forest.
• Matthew Smith recapped Mizzou’s recent wins: Mizzou Wrestling Dominates West Virginia
• IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: I published volume 3 of the Rock M Digest | Matt Harris wrote a cool piece with the release of the NET rankings— NET Gains: Mizzou has met early expectations. Can it exceed them?

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More Links:

Football

• Columbia Tribune: UNLV tabs former Mizzou head coach Barry Odom as the Rebels’ next head coach | DJ Coleman declares for 2023 NFL Draft, won’t play in bowl; Tigers land on All-SEC teams (Staff Reports) | ‘Supply and demand’: Mizzou football faces addition and subtraction with transfer portal (Matt Stahl)
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Lovett, McGuire earn AP All-SEC honors (Matter)
• Columbia Missourian: Pinkel reflects on historic career before Hall of Fame induction (Kenny Van Doren) | Wake Forest coach Clawson: QB Hartman intends to play in bowl game (Van Doren, Pinnell, Soble) | UNLV hires former Missouri coach Barry Odom to head program (Mark Anderson)
• The Athletic: From Michigan (A+) to Texas A&M (F), grading every P5 team’s season

Missouri: B- The reality of college football is that how a team finishes often outweighs how it starts. That’s been true in Missouri’s case. The Tigers finished the season with four wins in six games, including victories over Arkansas and on the road at South Carolina, which went on to beat Tennessee and Clemson in its final two games. A 6-6 record won’t satisfy Tigers fans long-term, but Eli Drinkwitz’s recruiting success and strong closing argument to reach a bowl game will help calm the complaints of an average season. — David Ubben

• PowerMizzou/Rivals: Reed-Francois: “We did not refuse to play Kansas” (Gabe DeArmond) | Listen to Mizzou, That’s Who Ep. 18 (DeArmond et. Al) | Check out the Tuesday Tiger Recruiting Show (DeArmond & Sean Williams)
• Our very own @Keegsdotcom (Dan Keegan) wrote about the top transfer portal QBs (something to keep an eye on, as it appears Eli may be in search of one)
• Saturday Down South: 3 things to know as Tigers prepare for Gasparilla Bowl (Crissy Froyd)
• Congrats, Ty’Ron!

• Congrats to former tiger HC (and now-former Arkansas DC) Barry Odom, who was announced as the new head coach at UNLV.

Hoops

• Columbia Missourian: SEC men’s basketball power rankings: A look into the conference a month in (Jaden Lewis)
• OKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

• Now three days. But the countdown videos are important.

• Listen to Columbia native and SEC announcer Tom Hart, who spoke with The Big Sports Show on Tuesday night

Some early bracketologies were released on Tuesday, and BOTH men’s and women’s teams found themselves among those listed!!! First up, the men:

**Brandon and I had to have a little chat about his weird capitalization of that school to the west. Don’t worry folks, we’ve corrected the error. **

And the ladies, fresh off their great season start, are an 8-seed!

• This is tough, Kobe.

• THIS is why this rivalry means something. Its history. Mizzou legend Doug Smith remembers it well:

• And from Norm himself:

Mizzou in the Pros- back on Friday

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