Big games are now routine at Missouri, but this week’s showdown with Alabama carries both historic weight and pressing urgency.
The Tigers haven’t won a top-15 showdown at home since 1976, when No. 12 Mizzou crushed No. 14 North Carolina 24-3. Forty-nine years without such a victory is staggering, but the scarcity of opportunities may be even more telling.
That drought ends Saturday, when No. 14 Missouri welcomes No. 8 Alabama in the first top-15 duel at Faurot Field in nearly half a century. History is on the line, and so is a breakthrough moment for coach Eli Drinkwitz’s tenure as head coach.
The Tigers have been superb since 2024, with a 25-5 record and 15 straight wins at home, tying for the second-best active streak in the country. But there’s one lingering issue: the lack of a marquee win.
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Their five defeats in that span have almost all come against the SEC’s heavyweights: Alabama, Georgia, LSU, South Carolina and Texas A&M.
Alabama, long the SEC’s ultimate blue blood, arrives under second-year coach Kalen DeBoer looking mortal, yet cloaked in its familiar aura of invincibility. What might a win do for the Tigers? What would a loss do to the Tide?
“At the end of the day, you’re only as good as your next opportunity,” Drinkwitz said. “We don’t sit here and pat ourselves on the back because of what we’ve accomplished in the past. All we’re looking for is what lies ahead, and there’s no reason to beat our chest about it. It’s something that we’ve accomplished but I think our whole football team, organization, fan base are really only worried about what we do this Saturday at 11 a.m. versus a top-10 team in the country.
“We don’t really concern ourselves with the opinions of others. It does you no good. I can’t sit there and complain about it when it’s not what we want, and I can’t sit there and drink the Kool-Aid when it’s positive.”
Missouri has started the season hot, again, thanks in part to a manageable schedule. Their biggest win is against South Carolina, and their game against Alabama in Week 7 will be their first against a ranked opponent.
“The next step for this coach and this program is to beat one of the unquestioned big boys,” longtime Missouri reporter Gabe DeArmond said this week. “Alabama is more beatable than it has been in the past.”
Alabama may not sit atop the polls as it so often has over the past 15 years, but the stakes remain high. For Missouri, the stage echoes past breakthroughs at Faurot Field: the upset of No. 1 Oklahoma in 2010, the division-clinching wins over Texas A&M (2013) and Arkansas (2014).
Those wins all came under the watch of Gary Pinkel, the winningest coach in Missouri history. He led the Tigers to a No. 1 ranking in 2007, three first-place finishes in the Big 12 North, and the program’s two trips to the SEC Championship.
“We started winning pretty high-level games. We got more respect,” Pinkel told CBS Sports. “Sometimes people didn’t respect us at the time, so you don’t generally get their ‘A’ game. After we started winning some games like that, all of a sudden the respect factor shot up and people looked at us and said, ‘You better get ready to play them because they’re a good football team.'”
Missouri is one of only four remaining undefeated teams in the SEC, but the Tigers are the eighth-highest-ranked SEC team in the AP Top 25. Is it a lack of respect or a lack of top-25 wins? The Tigers’ strength of schedule so far ranks 80th, though the remaining games rank 12th.
Fueling Missouri is Ahmad Hardy, arguably the nation’s best back, leading all rushers with 730 yards. The Tigers bludgeon opponents on the ground, out-rushing them by 229.6 yards per game — the largest margin in the FBS. Under DeBoer, Alabama is just 4-5 when out-rushed, including the stunning 31-17 loss to Florida State in Week 1.
Every coach’s tenure has touchstones. Pinkel’s career had many, though a 41-24 win against No. 10 Nebraska in 2003 may have launched the program into a new era. It snapped a 24-game losing streak against the Huskers, who ranked no lower than No. 9 in 20 of those matchups. Mizzou went on to win four of six in the series.
“Missouri was kinda hitting an upswing, and putting those nails in the coffin for Nebraska was a big deal,” said former tight end Chase Hoffman, a consensus All-American and winner of the John Mackey Award.
Mizzou went from snapping a five-year bowl drought in 2003 to reaching No. 1 in the polls in 2007.
“I don’t think there’s been a better team at Missouri since,” Hoffman said. “I take pride in that fact. I hope this team continues and surpasses what we did.”
In 2013, the Tigers beat Johnny Manziel’s Texas A&M Aggies to secure a spot in the SEC Championship Game during the program’s second season in the SEC. Missouri fans stormed the field. The next season, the Tigers beat rival Arkansas to secure another bid.
“The stadium was rocking,” said former linebacker Markus Golden, who sacked Manziel in 2013 and recovered a fumble against the Hogs in 2014. “It’s one of the loudest I’ve ever heard. I can remember going out that night and fans being so happy. They were walking up crying because we were going to the SEC Championship.”
What a win Saturday against the Tide would mean can’t quite be measured, or perhaps overstated. The Tigers last beat the Tide in 1975, when Big Eight-era Mizzou upset the No. 2 team in the country 20-7.
Fifty years later, will history repeat itself at Faurot Field?
“You can’t be considered one of the top teams unless you’re beating the top-ranked teams,” Hoffman said. “That’s what they are right now.”