By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(MIZ)—The catchy lyrics are from a Broadway musical show decades ago:
Hooray for Big D
My, oh Yes
I mean Big D, little double l-a
Big D, little a, double l-a
Big D, little a, double l-a-s!
We saw a lot of Big D in the Cotton Bowl Friday night in the big stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play football. Missouri and Ohio State waged a defensive trenth war for three quarters before Missouri broke through with two long, time-consuming scoring drives in the last twenty minues to claim a 14-3 win, their first bowl win against a top-ten team since the Tigers beat fourth-ranked Navy and Heisman Trophy winner Joe Belino in 1961.
The win was a statement victory for Missouri. The coaches and the players alike look at the win as an indication that Tiger football is back as a legitimate contending program with a solid core for 2024 that will be strengthened by new recruits and portal players.
How important a statement was this game? For Missouri, it was a huge national story. Here’s what The New York Times senior college football writer, Ari Wasserman, said:
Mizzou was the program that walked off the field at AT&T Stadium as winners. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t an aesthetically pleasing game, a win in a New Year’s Six Bowl over a blue-blood program was the chef’s kiss for a Tigers football program that is trying to build something special.
This Mizzou win was proof that there was nothing flukey about this season, not even the close loss against Georgia in which the Tigers had a chance to win in the fourth quarter.
The best part? Cook is coming back. Wide receiver Luther Burden III, who made a game-clinching touchdown catch with 5:12 remaining, is coming back. And the Tigers had a handful of big transfer portal wins in December to ensure this roster is athletically equipped to do it again next year.
Imagine that. From The New York Times no less.
Coach Drink was over the top in the post-game interview:
“We scored 14 points in the fourth quarter! We put our fist up, and we said we’re not givin’ in! We’re faster, stronger, tougher than you in the fourth quarter! And we got an elite edge, and we’re not gonna be denied! Now we’re the Cotton Bowl champs! M-I-Z!”
And the large Missouri crowd roared, “Z-O-U!”
Missouri’s defense was so fierce that the Buckeyes never reached Missour’s red zone. They punted eight out of the eleven times they had the ball. Missouri, the number one red-zone offense in the country with conversions 54 of 55 times there, finally reached the OSU red zone three times but waited until the fourth quarters to score twice. The teams went six for 31 on third downs but were four for four on fourth downs.
Yes, Ohio State played most of the game with a third-string freshman quarterback and without their leading receiver. But the Buckeyes could never spring their strongest running back nor could the offensive line keep black shirts out of the backfield. Missouri, which averaged more than 400 yards a game, couldn’t do much offensively either until the last twenty minutes. The Dallas Morning News correctly labeled the game a “slugfest.”
The two teams combined for only 104 yards in the first quarter, 188 in the first half. The defenses recorded eight tackles for losses. At game’s end, Ohio State had only 203 yards of total offense, only 97 on the ground. Missouri got most of its yardage in the late third quarter and in the fourth, starting with an eight-play 95-yard drive culminating in Cody Schrader’s seven yard power run into the end zone, and finishing with a bullet pass from Brady Cook to to Luther Burden III after a 91-yard drive.
It is somehow appropriate that Schrader and Cook both finished with 128 yards, Schrader rushing and Cook passing. Schrader finished his career with 1627 yards, a Tiger record that broke Tyler Badie’s mark set in 2021. Cook’s passing for only 128 yards was uncharacteristically low. But Ohio State allowed only one quarterback to throw for more than 200 yards this year and had allowed only 13 touchdowns and only 1,769 passing yards (the fewest in the nation) all season. Cook’s pass to Burden stretched his number of games with at least one TD pass to seventeen.
Missouri held Ohio State to its lowest point total in the Brian Day era—Day is 56-8 in his career at OSU but he has some fans barking about the Buckeyes’ losses to Michigan in the last game of the last two years and following disappointing bowl games.
Drinkwitz joins Warren Powers as the only two coaches in Tigers history to take their teams to bowls in their first four years, with Powers doing it 1978-1981.
(BIG DRINK)—He came into this season on the brink. At the end of the year, MU has decided it wants to keep Drinking. The University has extended Eliah Drinkwitz’s contract through 2028. He became the first Tiger to be SEC Coach of the Year since Gary Pinkel in 2014. He finished third in balloting for the AP national coach of the year. (ZOU!!!)
(Basketball)—The pre-conference season time for sorting out the core lineup has ended for Dennis Gates and his Tigers basketball players. Now it’s conference time. They’re 8-5. Only Vanderbilt (5-8) had a worse pre-conference record. Ole Miss was undefeated in 13 games. South Carolina went 12-1. Eight teams scored more points than the Tigers did. Nine teams gave up fewer points that Missourl.
The Tigers polished off Central Arkansas 92-59 Saturday. They open conference play next weekend against Georgia.
(CHIEFS)—It’s been a struggle they’re not used to, but the Chiefs have clinched their division title again with one game left—aganst the Chargers next weekend. It’s their eighth straight division title.
Again, they started slowly, trailed 17-7 at one point before scoring 18 second-half points to beat the Bengals 25-17 while a ferocious defense shut down Cincinnati. Crossing the goal line remains a problem, however. The game was won on the toe of Harrison Butker, who hit six field goals (the record is eight by Rob Bironas of the Tennessee Titans, in 2007).
We finish with a little racing.
(CHECKERED FLAGS)—NASCAR and IndyCar have lost two champions in the last week.
Cale Yarborough ran in both series. He was a three-time NASCAR Cup champion, the first to win three titles in a row. He was 84.
He won the Daytona 500 four times and the Southern 500 five times. His 83 career victories are tied for fifth on the all-time win list. He won 69 poles, fourth on the all-time list and holds the modern era record with fourteenof them in a row. In his younger days he was an unusual three-sport athlete who had a football scholarship to Clemson, was a Golden Gloves boxer, and a racer. He gave up his Clemson scholarship one weekend when a race conflcted with a football game and he decided to race.
He also competed in four Indianapolis 500s. His first 500 was in 1966 when he qualified 24th in the 33-car field only to become one of 11 drivers eliminated in a first-lap crash and was awarded 38th place. He was 17th the next year and did not race at Indianapolis again until 1971 when he finished 16th. His last race at IMS was in 1972 when he started next-to-last and came home tenth.
The winner of the 2003 Indianapolis 500, Gil de Ferran, died of an apparent heart attack while driving in an event in Florida with his sone. De Ferran won the European Formula Thee title in 1992. Although he tested for the Arrows and Williams F1 teams, he was never signed.
He came to the United States and won championships in one of the IndyCar series in 2000 and 2001. In the 2003 Indianapolis 500, he outdrove Penske teammate Helio Castroneves, finishing 2.29 seconds ahead of his Brazilian countryman and denying Castroneves a chance to win three 500s in a row.
DeFerran retired from open wheel racing after that win and drove in the American LeMans’ Series for a time.
In qualifying for the California 500 in October, 2000, DeFeran set a world’s closed-course speed record of 241.428 mph. The record still stands.
de Ferran was just 56.
(Photo Credits: Drinkwitz, The Spun; Yarborough, WRTH;; de Ferran, IMS)