Written by Dave Matter the St.Louis Post Dispatch.com
Welcome back, college football! We missed you so.
Yes, technically you returned last Friday with that Cal-Hawaii pillow fight in Australia, but SEC football kicks off Thursday night in Knoxville and Nashville, the start of a yuuuge weekend to begin the season. It’s been billed as the best opening slate of games in modern history, and several of the nation’s high-profile showdowns involve SEC teams.
Which brings us to a new weekly feature here at Eye on the Tigers: Immodest Proposal.
With apologies to Jonathan Swift, this will be our attempt to advocate something — an idea, a strategy, a new tradition — to make the world of Mizzou football more entertaining, more sensible, more likeable. Just better.
Maybe we’ll suggest more playing time for an underused reserve. Maybe a change in philosophy on play-calling or scheme. Maybe a uniform tweak for the fashion-conscious among us. Maybe a new gameday soundtrack at Memorial Stadium. (Though Guns N’ Roses never gets old, right?)
This week we start with a popular topic — and a timely one considering what’s going on around the country.
The schedule.
Missouri opens the season Saturday with a nonconference game against an unranked but relevant team (West Virginia) from one of the other power conferences (Big 12) for the first time since 2010 (Illinois in St. Louis). The last time Mizzou opened out of conference against a team other than Illinois that currently resides in a power conference? TCU in 1990. Before that it was Baylor in 1987.
Saturday’s game marks the first time since the Arch Rivalry went into hibernation that Mizzou’s schedule generated some buzz about the Week 1 matchup. And that’s indisputably good for the program, good for the fans, good for the players. It should happen every year.
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