No one wins consistently in college football. Texas is in a funk and cannot get out. Michigan just returned from the dead. Even Alabama had a 4-win season not long ago.
The realistic goal, especially for Mizzou, is a few great seasons and then limit the length and depth of the correction that follows. Historically, Mizzou has not been good at this. After the Devine Era (three or four great seasons in the 60's), for 40 years Mizzou was nothing more than a foil and a footnote.
When Pinkel woke the giant, we had great seasons in 2007 and 2013, with a 5-7 season in between. If you lower your standards (being a Mizzou fan) you might count 2008 and 2014 because we won division titles, but from a national perspective, teams that finish #14 and #19 in the AP poll are not notable or memorable. Even so, those were two of the best seasons those of us not in retirement homes have seen.
Returning to my original point: There's not much any college program can do to win consistently because you have an ever-changing roster of college kids, and (anywhere but under Pinkel) a constantly changing staff. The only consistent things are head coach, in-state talent, booster support, and winning (or not) culture.
In the SEC, Mizzou has a substantial in-state talent gap, a booster support deficit, and lack of "win-at-all-costs" cheating culture, so we are not going to regularly beat Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Ole Miss, TA&M, etc., who do not have those challenges. At best we can be another South Carolina, who does not win consistently, and we can beat up on Kentucky and Vanderbilt and sometimes Arkansas.
To make things worse, there is no momentum left from the Pinkel Era or the 2013 season. This is a complete rebuild now, and I'm afraid Odom does not, at this stage of his career, have what it takes to build a program in the SEC. I wish he had cut his teeth first as HC at Memphis. He is making first-time HC mistakes, and the SEC is not a place to learn on the job. It takes so much to rise up in the SEC and it is so easy to fall. If history and logic mean anything, this is going to be a bad stretch and probably a long one.
Then again, maybe something magical happens. Don't kid yourself, it would take something magical.
The realistic goal, especially for Mizzou, is a few great seasons and then limit the length and depth of the correction that follows. Historically, Mizzou has not been good at this. After the Devine Era (three or four great seasons in the 60's), for 40 years Mizzou was nothing more than a foil and a footnote.
When Pinkel woke the giant, we had great seasons in 2007 and 2013, with a 5-7 season in between. If you lower your standards (being a Mizzou fan) you might count 2008 and 2014 because we won division titles, but from a national perspective, teams that finish #14 and #19 in the AP poll are not notable or memorable. Even so, those were two of the best seasons those of us not in retirement homes have seen.
Returning to my original point: There's not much any college program can do to win consistently because you have an ever-changing roster of college kids, and (anywhere but under Pinkel) a constantly changing staff. The only consistent things are head coach, in-state talent, booster support, and winning (or not) culture.
In the SEC, Mizzou has a substantial in-state talent gap, a booster support deficit, and lack of "win-at-all-costs" cheating culture, so we are not going to regularly beat Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Ole Miss, TA&M, etc., who do not have those challenges. At best we can be another South Carolina, who does not win consistently, and we can beat up on Kentucky and Vanderbilt and sometimes Arkansas.
To make things worse, there is no momentum left from the Pinkel Era or the 2013 season. This is a complete rebuild now, and I'm afraid Odom does not, at this stage of his career, have what it takes to build a program in the SEC. I wish he had cut his teeth first as HC at Memphis. He is making first-time HC mistakes, and the SEC is not a place to learn on the job. It takes so much to rise up in the SEC and it is so easy to fall. If history and logic mean anything, this is going to be a bad stretch and probably a long one.
Then again, maybe something magical happens. Don't kid yourself, it would take something magical.
