(MIZ)—The Missouri Tigers are a come-from-behind team this year, winning games after trailing, and moving incrementally higher in the rankings after starting the year outside the top 25.
Missouri won again with a strong fourth quarter for a 29-20 win over a team that has shown it was clearly overrated in preseason polls that listed the Gamecocks as number eleven.
The Tigers went into the South Carolina game with another of their players being nationally recognized.
Ahmad Hardy was named the Doak Walker Offensive Player of the Week for his 250-yard rushing performance against Louisiana-Lafayette. It was the second week in a row that a Tiger had received national recognition. Quarterback Beau Pribula was named the Maxwell National Player of the week for his performance in the win against Kansas.
Hardy racked up another 138 yards against South Carolina and now is number two on the national rushing list and leads all running backs in the number of broken tackles a skill he demonstrated in scoring his only touchdown after it appeared he had been bottled up.
South Carolina’s attack showed some holes in the Tigers pass defense but the Gamecock’s running offense did nothing. Less than nothing, actually, finishing with minus=9 rushing yards while getting 302 through the air.
The AP sportswriters poll ranks Missouri 20th this week, six points behind Michigan. Vanderbilt is 18th. The tigers are 19th in the coaches poll, behind Michigan but one position higher than Vanderbilt.
UMass is next.
(MI|ZHONORS)—Four Tigers earned SEC player of the week honors for the game. Hardy was named the offensive player of the week. Freshman of the week is Robert Meyer, who shares the honor with Vanderbilt linebacker Jamison Curtis. Meyer missed his firsts kick of the game—an extra point—but he nailed a 40-yard field goal, his longest of the season, to make Missouri’s fourth-quarter lead a two-possession affair.
The Defensive Lineman of the week is Zion Young, who splits the certificate with Oklahoma’s rusher Mason Thomas. Young had three tackles, a sack and two tackles for loss. Keegan Trost, who helped open the holes for Missouri running backs, is the offensive lineman of the week.
(XMIZZ)—-Former Tiger Luther Burden III has arrived big time in the NFL.
It was a breakout game for Burden, had three receptions including a catch-and-run 62-yard flea-flicker play that put the Bears up on the Dallas Cowboys 14-3 in the first quarter. His 29-yard reception late in the first half led to another touchdown and a 24-14 Bears lead at the break. He also gained seven yards on a running play to run his total yardage for the day to 108 yards. (ZOU)
(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs won a generally boring game against a weak New York Giants team 22-9 Sunday night. The win ends a three-game losing streak, including last year’s Super Bowl. The running game showed some fresh spark; the passing game was adequate. But the kicking game was uncharacteristically a mixed bag as Harrison Butker missed a field goal and a point-after. The Chiefs defense kept the Giants’ offense under control, including interception of two Russell Wilson passes.
The Chief play the Baltimore Ravens next weekend.
(KC RICE) Suspended Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice is back with the team although he won’t play until three more games are in the books and he can’t practice with the team or be on the field. He can be at the training facility, though.
Xavier Worthy had three limited practice sessions before the Giants game but was not activated. Coach Andy Reed told reporters yesterday that Worthy “practiced and did the best he could but it just wasn’t right…We thought it best if he didn’t play.”
(ROYALS)—Kansas City Royals founder Ewing Kauffman was born 109 years ago Sunday, and his team still has a fain hope of making the playoffs as they go into the last week of the regular season.
The Royals got in a 3-0 hole in the second inning and gave up three more in the fifth before rallying back to 5-5 only to see the Blue Jays pick up two runs in the eighth to win 8-5.
The Royals staved off elimination by taking two of the three weekend games against the Toronto Blue Jays. But that’s more a matter of whistling past the graveyard than thinking they have a chance to extend their season.
The Royals are 78-78 with six games to play. They are six games behind Cleveland and Houston, who have identical 84-72 records coming down the final stretch of the regular season. The Royals only hope is that they win all of their games and Cleveland and Houston lose all of THEIR games for the wild card race to end in a three-way tie.
Sports Illustrated writer Jackson Roberts says the Royals have to beat odds of one in 262,144 to one for that to happen.
The Royals wrap up the season, starting tonight, with six games against the Angels and the Athletics. If they win four of those games they’ll have back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in a deca
(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals have to win all of their remaining games to finish at .500. They wrap up the year with three games against the Giants and three more against the Cubs.
The Redbirds used their final home game Sunday to say goodbye to President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak, who’s retiring from the team after six more games. And their calling back to the dugout for Nolan Arenado after he’d taken the field for the first inning has fueled speculation that they wanted the fans to have a chance to say goodbye to him, too.
He still has a couple of years left on his contract and has a no-trade clause that will have to be worked out if, indeed, St. Louis fans have seen him for the last time in a Cardinals uniform.
(EMPTY SEATS)—Three seasons of increasing mediocrity have caught up with the St. Louis Cardinals who had their lowest per-game attendance in thirty years this year.
Their average attendance this year was 27,778, the second year in a row that per-game attendance has fallen below 40,000. Until 2024, the Cardinals had averaged 40,000 people per game for a decade (not including 2020 and 2021, the pandemic years).
The Post-Dispatch reports the five-game rolling average attendance had fallen to less than 20,000 earlier this month for the first time since the present Busch Stadium opened twenty years ago. Ticket sales have dropped by almost one-million (991,084) from 2023.
In total, 628,108 fewer tickets were sold for Cardinals games in 2025 than a year ago. It’s down 991,084 from the 2023 total.
St. Louis has ranked in the top ten in attendance for more than forty years. The last time they were in the bottom half of major league baseball attendance was 1980.
Well, let’s move on to something else…..
(NASCAR)—Ryan Blaney has guaranteed will be among the final eight drivers chasing the NASCAR championship in two more weeks.
His win on the Loudon, New Hampshire mile locks him into the next stage of the playoffs as he chases his second title in three years.
The final results were a boost for Team Penske which had been shut out of victory lane in the first three-race round of the playoffs. Blaney was chased across the finish line for the last twenty laps by Josh Berry, who drives for a Penske subsidiary—Wood Racing. Penske teammate Joey Logano, who led the most laps in the race finished fourth.
Team has won the last three Cup championships with Logano’s titles in 2022 and last year bracketing Blaney’s title in ’23.
Missourians have a second chance this year to watch a playoff race as the series moves to the Kansas City area next weekend. The next cutdown of the competing drivers will come the week after the Kansas race when NASCAR runs its last road course of the year, on the Charlotte Roval.
After that only eight drivers will remain.
Heading into the Kansas race, drivers Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric Tyler Reddick, and Bubba Wallace are on the outside looking in.
(Photo Credits: Hardy—Instagram; Burden—Bailey Black, Chicago Bears); Kauffman—KC Royals; Blaney—Bob Priddy)