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1) Nick Bolton and Blaine Gabbert are two-time Super Bowl champions.
Now nobody can accuse me of starting with a thought that isn't related to Mizzou.
I've often wondered what it's like to root for a team where anything short of a championship is a disappointment. I've thought "That has to get boring, right?" I can tell you it does not. This one was the best one. And it's not particularly close. The only Chiefs game I went to this year was the Christmas Day loss to the Raiders. It was rock bottom. It was the worst game Patrick Mahomes has ever played. I walked out of Arrowhead that day thinking that the last five years had been really fun and the next five years were going to bring more chances, but this just wasn't the year. They never lost again and Mahomes reminded us again why his name is now mentioned with Brady and Jordan and Tiger. They're the all time greats because they do whatever it takes to win. They might not be at their best. It might not be pretty. But they always come out on top. They're always standing on the stage with the trophy while we sit there and think "How the hell did he do it this time?" And if they won it this year, with this receiving corps (by the way, Mecole Hardman and Marquez Valdes-Scantling combined for 6 catches, 77 yards and two touchdowns including the game winner) when are they not going to win it? Maybe he'll decide he wants to go play baseball and give someone else a chance.
Will he win seven? Will he be above Brady on the sports talk radio lists? I don't know. I don't care. For 40 years, I watched this team never win the big game largely because they never invested in the right guy at the most important position in sports. They have now and my God was it worth the wait.
From the other side of this, I watch sports in one way: If I was covering this game, what would I write about? @drewking0222 came over to watch the game and we were talking about that during overtime. Sure there's the Mahomes angle, but if your job was to cover the 49ers, there's only one question you needed to ask after that game: Why, Kyle Shanahan, did you opt to take the ball in overtime?
There is no acceptable answer. That decision lost the game. Even if the 49ers had won, that decision is indefensible. You go on defense first. Always. Because then you know what you have to do. If you take the ball and don't score, the other team knows it needs only three. If you take the ball and get three, the other team knows it needs a touchdown to win. If you take the ball and get seven, you can still lose because the other team knows if it scores it can win the game by going for two. It changes the way the opposition approaches every single snap (for example if the Chiefs have 4th and 1 at the 29 if they're on offense first, do they go for it? Probably, but it's not a sure thing. Because they knew the game was over if they didn't score, it became a sure thing). The advantage in overtime is knowing what you have to do when you have the ball. When's the last time you saw a college coach go on offense first in OT? It doesn't happen. They all know you go on defense first. Not Shanahan. The same guy that blew a 10-point lead to this same team three years ago, the same guy who blew 28-3 as an offensive coordinator, that guy put his team at a massive disadvantage in overtime in the Super Bowl. Shame on Kyle Shanahan and shame on Jim Nantz and Tony Romo for not immediately asking what the hell he was doing. Also, thank you sir.
Final Super Bowl thought that I texted many people last night: John Elway delivering the Super Bowl trophy to the Chiefs might be the greatest day of my life. So, so delicious.
2) Speaking of shame, this was the worst week in an awful year of Missouri basketball. The Tigers lost two home games by an average of 21.5 points. They did not lose those games to particularly great teams. Texas A&M and Mississippi State are a combined 11-10 in SEC play. They both have a shot to make the NCAA Tournament, but neither is probably a lock with a month to go before Selection Sunday. But they are miles ahead of Mizzou, which didn't look like it belongs in the same league this week.
All the criticism is now fair. You want to compare them to the Kim Anderson teams? Fine. Bob Vanatta? Fair. I don't think it's the worst team in school history and I don't really think it's the worst season in school history, but if you want to say it is, I'm not going to spend much energy arguing against it because those are hairs that just aren't worth the time they take to split.
How did it get this bad? I don't really know. They shouldn't be this bad. They've been in a lot of these games. They don't have a ton of talent but they don't have 0-18 talent. But every time out since the calendar turned to 2024, they've found a way to lose. In the last 67 days, they've played 15 times and the only time they won was against Central Arkansas. So they are this bad. There's good news though. Only eight games remain.
3) I went down a somewhat masochistic rabbit hole while researching this piece. I wondered if there were teams that had fallen off a cliff similar to the one Mizzou has fallen off this year. Believe it or not, there are.
Missouri has dropped 87 spots in KenPom from the end of last year to now. The Tigers ended last year at No. 57. They now sit 144 (that might have changed since I looked at the numbers on Sunday afternoon). Believe it or not, that's not the biggest drop in the country...or even in the SEC. Here are the teams I found that have fallen further:
UCLA: 88 spots from 3 to 91
Arkansas: 95 spots from 22 to 117
West Virginia: 121 spots from 19 to 140
They say misery loves company. There's Missouri's company.
4) How about the opposite of that? Who are the country's most improved teams? And why do you care? Well, you care because you're looking for some reason that it can improve next season. And it can. Because there are teams that have completely flipped it in one year, including multiple examples in the SEC.
The most improved teams this season according to KenPom:
Wake Forest: Up 58 spots from 86 to 28
LSU: Up 64 spots from 151 to 87
Georgia: Up 69 spots from 154 to 85
Louisville: Up 126 spots from 290 to 164 (yes, they're still awful)
South Carolina: Up 176 spots from 221 to 45
It can be flipped in a year. Two of those five teams have gone from bad to in the NCAA Tournament. Two more have gone from really bad (LSU and Georgia were a combined 8-28 in the SEC last year) to respectable and at least within shouting distance of the bubble. Is it easy? No. But it can absolutely be done.
5) It was a heck of an opening weekend for the Missouri softball team. The Tigers won five games to take the title at the NFCA Leadoff Classic this weekend. They outscored their opponents 37-8. That included two wins over ranked teams (Utah and Clemson). They used a late innings comeback (one in the 6th, three in the 7th) to beat South Alabama. They showed a lot of signs that they're ready to rebound from a season that left a bad taste in their mouths. They now go to Denton, TX where they open play in the Tracy Beard College Classic on Friday morning against Texas A&M-Commerce.
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