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Normally I’ll bury the personal or off-topic thread at No. 9 on this list because half of you have quit reading by then and the other half of you don’t care about it. We’ll be football and fall camp heavy today, but I’m making an exception this week.
1) Today marks exactly 20 years since I started at PowerMizzou. The first thing I covered was 2003 Big 12 media days in downtown Kansas City. I introduced myself to Gary Pinkel that day and met a redshirt sophomore quarterback named Brad Smith. Those two would be the primary reasons I’d find myself in Shreveport, LA that New Year’s Eve, covering Mizzou’s third bowl game in 20 years (I’ve mentioned this before, but I was a student for the 1997 and 98 bowl games, they didn’t go again until I was covering the team, so you can give me as much credit as you’d like for playing a part in that).
Over the next decade, Pinkel would take Missouri fans on the greatest ride in program history (yes, I think it’s more impressive than what the Tigers did in the 1960s given the landscape of college football in the two eras). I got to go along for the ride and act as somewhat of an intermediary between the team and you guys. During that time period, I took over as publisher of the site and the site itself went from this thing a few people knew about to whatever it is today (I’d like to think it’s a thing that most all Mizzou fans know about, even if some of them will never pay for it). I had no idea what this would be in July of 2003. I just knew I didn’t have a job and I needed one because I had two kids. It’s exceeded anything I could have hoped back then. I’d like to think I played at least a small part in that, but the truth is, I owe most of it to Gary Pinkel and the football players he signed over the years (and a little to some of the bat**** crazy headlines and a whole lot of basketball coaching searches Mizzou has provided).
In my time on this site, Missouri has changed conferences (as have half the teams that were in the conference Mizzou was in when I started, including one who’s left and now gone back), the entire landscape of college sports has changed and the entire media industry has changed. Kids I covered as recruits at the beginning are now full-blown middle-aged and kids I’m covering as recruits now weren’t even born. My own were about to start kindergarten and about to turn one when we moved from Rapid City, SD to Columbia, MO. Now one of them turns 26 this month and is entering his fourth year as a teacher and the other turns 21 and is getting ready for his junior year in college. TL;DR version: Damn, 20 years is a long ass time.
A couple of weeks ago, I was having lunch with someone at Mizzou (that’s another thing that’s changed; I can’t think of five people who have been at Mizzou as long as I’ve been covering it). This person asked me “Why have you stayed here this long?”
When you get down to it, it’s simple: If someone had handed me a piece of paper with my diploma in the spring of 1998 and said “Write down your ideal job” this is what I’d have written down. I work from home. For all intents and purposes, I am my own boss. I set my own hours. I have more flexibility than 99.99% of people have in their jobs and my job is to talk about college sports. I get to do it all two hours away from my parents (after getting to do the first ten years of it literally sitting next to my dad) and I live two miles from where I did as a senior in college. I’ve gotten to see the best run of Mizzou football in the modern era and (while there have admittedly been far too many valleys that were far too low) some absolutely iconic moments in Mizzou hoops. I’ve gotten to cover people like Pinkel and Smith, but also Martin Rucker, Chase Coffman, Sheldon Richardson, Sean Weatherspoon, Jeremy Maclin, Danario Alexander, Chase Daniel, Drew Lock, Blaine Gabbert, James Franklin, Henry Josey, Markus Golden, DeMarre Carroll, Rickey Paulding, Marcus Denmon, Kim English, JT Tiller, Laurence Bowers, Kobe Brown, Chelsea Thomas, Ben Askren, J’Den Cox, Karissa Schweizer and Sophie Cunningham. I still keep in touch with some of and would consider some of them friends. I’ve gotten to follow their paths from 16-year-old kids with dreams to adults with careers and families. More than that, I’ve gotten to know people through this site that are now personal friends. I played golf with two of them this weekend. I've gotten to work with people like Dave Matter, Joe Walljasper, Steve Walentik, Alex Schiffer, Mitchell Forde and Terez Paylor who all became more friends than colleagues. This site gave me a paycheck when I desperately needed one, but then it turned into a business that has provided everything I could have asked for and more 20 years ago when I walked into Big 12 media days.
I’ve only had that opportunity because all of you (well, this is in the free portion of this article, so some of you) have chosen to spend your money here. I couldn’t have imagined 20 years ago I’d still be doing this in 2023. But at this point, there’s no way I’m doing anything else until I have to. So, thank you and sorry you’re stuck with me. I’m only going to get snarkier and more jaded from here.
2) Season number 21 starts in a few hours. Missouri will open fall camp with an 11:30 practice this morning. The Tigers held a pre-camp media session yesterday and we've already had some stuff on the quarterbacks and a full notebook out of that. We've dissected this season every single way we can for a full eight months now. We have a million questions. Most of them aren't going to get concrete answers in the next four weeks, but we'll do what we can. I don't think it's too dramatic to say what happens in the next four months will shape the immediate future of Missouri football. We'll be there every step of the way at everything they'll allow us to be at. The season, at long last, is here. You can find the full camp and access schedule here.
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