Powered Up: The Intrigue of 2016

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It’s the annual June/July question and, it being June/July, one I’ve been asked a few times of late: Is this the most important football season ever for Mizzou?

This year, you can honestly make the argument that it might be. Coming off a bad season, new coaching staff, trying to rid the program of the stench of the events of last November (if you think that isn’t still a daily topic of conversation, take a break for 30 seconds here and look at the most commented on topics on our message board or just do a Twitter search of “Mizzou”). A lot of factors would certainly point to the importance of the 2016 football season.

But like I said, it’s a question that is asked every summer. Is it more important than 2013 when many of the same factors were in play and Missouri was trying to prove it should be allowed to play football in the big, bad SEC? Or than 2008 when Missouri started as a legitimate national title contender? Or 2005 when most assumed Gary Pinkel’s job was on the line?

In this day and age, they’re all important. And not just every season, but every game. Hell, every quarter. The Internet makes snap judgments on every team in every sport every few minutes. (See: Warriors, Golden State. Dynasty, greatest ever, fraud, dead and buried against OKC, dynasty, chokers, 2017 NBA champs—I think that covers the last month or so).

I don’t know if this season is any more important than any other for Mizzou (it’s more important for Barry Odom certainly, but maybe not the program as a whole). What I do know is I’ve never gone into a season of Mizzou football with less of an idea what to expect. There’s simply no way that anyone could say they have any idea if Missouri is going to be good, bad or indifferent with any level of confidence.

First off, yes, most are going to say Missouri is going to be bad. That’s the easy answer. It’s the safe one. They were bad last year. There aren’t major personnel changes or five-star recruits coming in on offense, so they’re going to be bad again. That’s the safe play. Very few prognosticators will pick any team that finished last in its division to be any good the following year. In any sport. Predictions are based almost entirely on our most recent impressions. And Missouri most recent impression had all the appeal of the egg salad sandwich that fell under your refrigerator and stayed there for a year until your dog drug it out (Side Note: I wouldn’t eat an egg salad sandwich that was made fresh ten minutes ago and had been refrigerated the entire time, but I am told there actually are people that like it).

So for the next two months, Missouri fans, you’d probably best brace yourself for a steady stream of predictions that your favorite team is going to suck. They may be right, they may be wrong, but they don’t mean anything except that the last time we saw Missouri, they did suck. Work yourself into a lather over these predictions if you must, but you’re going to waste a lot of energy and bandwidth doing so.

But the point is, I have no clue what to expect out of the Tigers in Odom’s first year. Starting with the most basic reason: We have no idea what to expect out of Odom as a head coach. He’s never been one. He could be the next Ron Prince or the next Bill Snyder. Likelihood is he’s somewhere in between, but we don’t know.

Next, there’s that Missouri offense. When people have asked me if it’s going to be better, I’ve given a fairly standard response: Sure it’s going to be better because it can’t be worse. Technically it could be worse. The Tigers finished 127th out of 128 Division One teams last year in points per game. They were a dazzling (by comparison) 124th in total yards. So there is room to fall further. But not much.

Kentrell Brothers and his 5235 tackles (number is unofficial) are gone. We don’t know if Harold Brantley will play or how good he will be if he does. We’re also not sure the prognosis on Terry Beckner’s return to the defense. The questions are fewer on that side of the ball, but they do exist.

But ultimately, there are two reasons I have no clue what to expect out of this team and neither one of them has to do with scheme or personnel or anything actually on the football field.

First, none of us has really seen this team. Our viewing of spring practice was incredibly limited. What we saw was the equivalent of having the curtain pulled back to glance out your window for almost a full second. You would be able to say “It’s sunny outside today…I think” but not much more. That’s about how much we know about this team. No depth chart has been released. When asked after the spring game how much of the playbook they used, players and coaches seemed borderline giddy in telling us not much. As far as the scheme on offense, we are told it’s going to be fast, and that’s about it. On defense, they’re going to do some of what Missouri was successful with last year and some new stuff. Insightful, I know. So what do we know about this team? Nothing at all.

The other reason we don’t know what to expect is that we still don’t know all the details of what happened at the end of last season. Now, look, I’m not making the argument Missouri was a good football team prior to the chaos of the protest that preceded the BYU game. It wasn’t. After those events, Missouri won one game, lost one in which it was never competitive, changed coaches and more or less went into a bunker for the better part of the last seven months.

Has the program dealt with and moved on from all of those events? You’d have to assume so. But it's relatively obvious the fanbase and the national media haven’t. The specter of the whole thing is going to linger over this program much of the year (brace yourselves for the weeks before the Tennessee and Arkansas games when we get to morbidly relive the one-year anniversary of all of it on a daily basis).

But my point is this: Does Missouri have a brand new program full of everyone pulling in the same direction? Was last year a simple result of a team that didn’t have enough talent (oh, by the way, we haven’t even mentioned the fact that the starting quarterback for that team was the star of the most bizarre sports-related viral video we’ve perhaps ever seen)? Or was it a team that was fat and happy coming off back-to-back SEC championship game appearances that didn’t work hard enough and then fractured down the middle due to reasons that had nothing to do with football?

And which one of those is better? If Missouri didn’t have enough talent to win last year, does it this year? It’s very, very difficult to overhaul a roster in college football in less than two-and-a-half years. If the Tigers weren’t good enough last year, barring everyone simply being a lot better than he was eight months ago, they’re probably not good enough this year. The hope of fans (even though it’s nothing anyone wants to talk about or will ever be able to know) had better be that the reasons Missouri sucked on the field last year were largely due to things that happened off the field (and I’m not just talking about the protests either).

The Tigers will take the dais at SEC Media Days in Hoover, Alabama one week from Wednesday. Frankly, we’re not gonna know any more about how good they’ll be then than we do now (we might, however, actually have a tangible depth chart for the first time). We probably won’t be able to tell during fall camp, which opens in about a month, either. The answers to those questions are going to take another few months.

Most important season ever? Nah. Most intriguing? Almost without a doubt.