Missouri, Gophers pursue similar rebuilding plans

Just walk around the site of the Missouri Tigers' future football practice facility and count all the bulldozers pushing dirt around, marvel at all the cranes ready to erect a new football barn, and you'll understand how the Tigers intend to approach their daunting-but-exhilarating new football existence.

Don't see 'em? That's because there are none. The long-planned project, relatively modest by Southeastern Conference standards, was abruptly scuttled, at least for the time being, last month.

The Tigers, you see, are thinking bigger.

"The magnitude of this project is much greater," athletic director Mike Alden said at a news conference to announce, at the suggestion of coach Gary Pinkel, the change in priority to a huge new football complex adjacent to the stadium that will include an enormous weight room and luxurious locker rooms. It's an apt metaphor for how things have changed in the long-slumbering program.

"Gary just looks at it like, 'Look, man, this is just the next step,' " Alden said. " 'We've just got to keep it going. Just keep building.' "

That's been Pinkel's goal since he arrived in Columbia, Mo., in 2001, taking over a program that hasn't won, or even tied for, a conference championship since 1969, back when they were in the Big Eight and a Minnesotan named Dan Devine was coach. Pinkel's ambitions were modest at first — he wanted a winning conference record, something the Tigers had done only twice in 17 years when he was hired — but they have grown exponentially in his 14 seasons in Missouri.

Pinkel again has his Tigers playing on Jan. 1, this time against Minnesota in Thursday's Citrus Bowl in Orlando. The Tigers are favored by five points to get their 11th victory — quite a leap for a program that counts a 1998 Insight.com Bowl victory over West Virginia as its peak of the 1980s and '90s.

Pinkel's program wanted to join the Big Ten when conference expansion heated up, but found that door slammed shut by their natural geographic rivals. So they aimed higher, and wound up in the SEC, college football's undisputed gold standard for more than a decade.

They wanted to play for championships, and in 2007, they managed it, claiming the first of three Big 12 division titles in four seasons. But they lost both of the championship games they qualified for, leaving a rather obvious goal undone.

And they want to be respected in their new conference, after hearing skeptics grouse that they do not — and perhaps never will — possess the football stature of the SEC's cornerstone franchises.

"Missouri is still a little off-Broadway," said Paul Finebaum, an ESPN analyst and host of a popular radio talk show heard throughout the South. "Missouri doesn't bring the same cachet."

Debuting with a 2-6 record in their new conference in 2012 only emboldened their critics, but the Tigers have rebounded to go 7-1 in each of the past two seasons and capture a pair of SEC East Division titles.

"Well, I don't think we have anything to prove" about whether they are a bona fide SEC powerhouse, Pinkel said. "Back-to-back division championships, that says a lot."

It does. But they also lost to Auburn 59-42 in the 2013 SEC title game, then absorbed a disheartening 42-13 thumping from Alabama in this year's championship, making it clear that they have to think even bigger. They've been outscored 35-0 in the fourth quarter of those games, reinforcing that not-quite-up-to-it reputation.

"The Big 12 was a great league, but there's more high-level teams in this league. That's no disrespect, that's just honest," Pinkel said. "But one thing you learn real quick in this league, you better be good in the fourth quarter, because it's like the NFL — many, many games come down to the end. It's a grind, and it's going to be a grind next year and the next year. But you've got to handle the grind if you want to win the thing."

And in the SEC, winning championships is everything, which is why that 45-year title drought makes SEC fans smirk. More than one Tiger mentioned a lingering lack of respect before the conference championship game.

"Every game, everybody picks us to lose. As a team, we don't understand how you can just count us out like that," defensive end Shane Ray said after the Tigers clinched the division. "We understand respect is intangible. But you can't deny we're the SEC East champions."

Missouri won six consecutive games to close the regular season, hasn't lost a regular-season road game in two years, is ranked 16th and will fight for victory No. 11 against the Gophers on Thursday.

And in many ways, the Citrus Bowl opponents will see similarities in each other, starting with that title drought; it's 47 years, after all, since the Gophers won part of a championship.

"There were a lot of struggles at the start. [When] you're building a program and you're changing attitudes, that's the most difficult thing to do, getting people to believe in what you're doing," Pinkel, sounding a lot like Gophers coach Jerry Kill, said of his rebuilding job. "We went through a lot of growing pains. I often questioned why I came here those first couple of years, but the kids started trusting me … and it slowly started changing."

Change doesn't happen much on the coaching staff, though. Like Kill, Pinkel has inspired unusual loyalty among his assistants. Four of his coaches came to Mizzou with Pinkel in 2001, and a fifth, defensive coordinator Dave Steckel, left earlier this month to become head coach at Missouri State.

Then there's the roster: Pinkel never has signed a top-25 recruiting class, same as Kill, but thrives on turning lower-rated recruits into valuable players.

Those players collected big, signature victories as underdogs this season. Just as Minnesota shocked Nebraska and Michigan, Missouri defied oddsmakers by winning at South Carolina, Florida, Texas A&M and Tennessee. But both have absorbed embarrassing upsets to bottom-feeding Big Ten schools, too, with the Tigers' 31-27 loss to Indiana matching Minnesota's 28-24 stumble at Illinois.

And both teams had to rely on defense this season to overcome some inconsistent quarterbacking from a sophomore passer. Like Minnesota's Mitch Leidner, who completed only 49 percent of his throws, Maty Mauk has yet to live up to the high expectations for him. Against Florida, Mauk managed only 20 passing yards, but the Tigers still beat the Gators. By the end of the season, however, Mauk — with four consecutive games of 230 or more yards and a six-game touchdown streak — had repaid Pinkel's trust in him.

"I told him when he was going through it, this was something he was going to learn from," Pinkel said. "But don't question your ability. Just keep making yourself a better football player. It's nice to see him making plays like we expected him to."

The defense has made plays all season, thanks especially to its powerful pass rush. Ray, a junior defensive end who was named the SEC's Defensive Player of the Year, set a new school record with 14 sacks and 21 tackles for loss, and fellow end Markus Golden had 8½.

"Those guys are big-time. When you talk about SEC defenses, you talk about LSU, you talk about Alabama. No one really talks about Missouri, but there's a reason why they played for the championship," Gophers offensive coordinator Matt Limegrover said. "A lot of it has to do with their defense, particularly their front four. … We're very respectful of what they bring defensively."

That's because the Gophers' blueprints for the future look a lot like Missouri's. The Tigers just have a head start.