There’s still so much to process and absorb about Gary Pinkel’s retirement at the University of Missouri… and no, we’re not even talking about the off-field stuff from a rather remarkable week in Columbia.
The larger drama enfolding the program last week was quite compelling, regardless of personal views. For some, that series of events is worth discussing; for others, it is and will always be repellent. All those issues, however, represent a different conversation best suited for another space. Here, we’ll focus on football itself, and what Missouri has taught us as Gary Pinkel rides into the sunset.
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Let’s start with 2015 in particular. This year’s Missouri team helps us to understand what a diminished SEC East really looks like. The East has been the weaker division in the SEC for several years. Its champion hasn’t won the conference since Florida and Urban Meyer celebrated in Atlanta back in 2008. Yet, the past two seasons have truly marked a low point for the East. The 2010 season was terrible, but it was one year sandwiched between strong seasons on the part of Florida (2009) and Georgia (2011). The East is now in a genuine slump, with 2015 failing to restore what 2014 lost.
Missouri is very much a part of that dynamic.
The Tigers not only won the East the previous two seasons; they did so with a 7-1 record, crashing through the front door instead of backdooring to a title the way South Carolina did in 2010 at 5-3. The regression witnessed this year, despite the return of veteran quarterback Maty Mauk, has diminished the profile of the East. Victories over Mizzou held considerable value (for the few teams able to attain them) in 2013 and 2014. This year, that’s not much of a notch on the belt. With Kentucky and Tennessee still largely stuck as programs (though the Vols were always pointing to 2016, not 2015, as their big year), Missouri’s failure to maintain its status in 2015 leaves Florida as the only program which either lived up to or exceeded expectations. (If Vanderbilt can upset Tennessee, it would reach this status.)
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What other lessons does Missouri leave behind as Pinkel exits, stage right?
It is easier to win in the SEC East than in a non-divisional Big 12… and roughly as easy as it was to win in the Big 12 North.
In the Big 12 and the SEC, Pinkel pulled off back-to-back division titles at Missouri. He won the Big 12 North in 2007 and 2008. He won the SEC East in 2013 and 2014. Much as the Big 12 North played second fiddle to the South for most of the first decade of this century, the SEC West dwarfs the East in the present day. Being slotted in the weaker division, and having an eight-game conference schedule, put Missouri in position to succeed. This makes the program an attractive opening, since the portal to the SEC Championship Game is fairly wide at this point.
The SEC-Big 12 comparison isn’t necessarily overrated or overemphasized, from either side of the aisle; the key point was and is that the Big 12 — in its current non-divisional form — is much harder to win. This isn’t really a commentary on conference strength so much as a slightly different concept: “conference difficulty.”
Playing nine games is something which has hurt the Pac-12 this season. The cannibalization in evidence on the West Coast has caused the league’s best teams to become more vulnerable, ultimately killing off the Pac’s playoff chances. In the Big 12, which also plays nine games, this pattern emerged last season. It could still emerge this season if the results don’t break right for the conference. (Those results: TCU and Baylor winning this weekend, and Notre Dame finishing 11-1.)
The key detail to emphasize, though, is that while the Big 12 plays nine games, it’s an even more cutthroat conference than the Pac-12 for the simple (yet overlooked) reason that everyone plays everyone. There is no escape from any team in the Big 12. One could make the case that the SEC is better from top to bottom (we’re not going to weigh in on that here), but regardless of that point, one can make a very convincing argument that strictly in terms of schedule construction, it is harder to WIN the current version of the Big 12 than the current version of the SEC. Missouri’s ability to go 7-1 in 2013 and 2014 backs up this contention. The Tigers had to play only two SEC West games those seasons, and to their great credit under Pinkel, they took full advantage.
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There’s one more lesson Missouri teaches us in a larger context: The BCS was awful.
Yes, even though we live in a playoff world, there’s never really a bad time to continue to reflect on just how unfair and shortsighted the BCS in fact was, a 16-year period in which college football so markedly failed to reward teams for achieving richly.
This was said about the South Carolina program Steve Spurrier left behind, and it applies just as much to Pinkel’s program in the SEC’s other Columbia: The two-team-per-conference limit on BCS bowl representatives was one of the worst aspects of the larger BCS system. The mere reality of being a champion of a BCS conference — even if you had four or five losses — was always elevated above the reality of winning 10 or even 11 games. South Carolina felt this pinch.
So did Pinkel and Missouri.
What’s particularly galling from the Tigers’ point of view is that they were jobbed by the system in separate conferences, including the SEC they newly joined.
In 2007, Missouri beat Kansas in a late-November matchup of top-four teams. The Tigers won the Big 12 North. They played for a spot in the national title game. Yet, when they lost to Oklahoma, the Sooners (as conference champion) and Kansas (at-large, Orange Bowl) filled the Big 12’s two BCS slots.
It’s not that Kansas DIDN’T DESERVE the Orange Bowl bid. The Jayhawks were the only BCS conference team with only one loss in that crazy 2007 season. Moreover, they beat Virginia Tech in that Orange Bowl game.
The problem was that Mizzou DID DESERVE a bid; based on a division title and the head-to-head win over KU, the Tigers should have been first in line. The BCS made them second in the at-large pool, which — in those days — meant expulsion from the party.
In 2013, the same basic pattern developed: Missouri won its division but lost a conference title game, dropping Pinkel’s pupils behind Alabama in the at-large pool. (Auburn was the SEC champion in the final year of the BCS.) The reality of losing in a 13th game has often deprived deserving teams of BCS bowl slots; winning division championships mattered less than avoiding a loss in early December… by virtue of not playing in a game… due to not being as good as the division champion.
Missouri is just another example of how the BCS spat in the face of fairness. Gary Pinkel should have been able to coach in a signature bowl game in both the 2007 and 2013 seasons. He was denied not once, but twice.
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Pinkel’s career and the Missouri program — in immediate and more far-ranging contexts — offer many lessons about the workings of college football. The 2015 season; the impact of division-based versus non-divisional scheduling; and the reality of eight-game schedules versus nine-game schedules are all part of the larger Missouri story.
The BCS’s unfairness, though, is the story with the most bitter taste for Pinkel as his decorated coaching career winds down.
