Even after questionable Kentucky call, Mizzou football isn’t cursed — or is it?
Mizzou football isn’t cursed. I repeat, Mizzou football isn’t cursed. One more time for the folks in the back: Mizzou football isn’t cursed.
Or is it?
Since the late 1980s, the Tigers have lost games on fifth downs and after kicked passes in the endzone. In 1986, one of the top recruits in school history was injured before ever stepping foot on campus. And the bad luck trend has continued into the new millennium.
In recent years, Mizzou has lost at home on an untimed down and earlier this year lost a game at Auburn that it should have worn. A kicker nicknamed “Money Mevis” missed a chip shot field goal as time expired in regulation and a running back, a hometown kid from Columbia, fumbled at the one-yard line as he tried to score a winning TD in overtime against Auburn.
The cruelty isn’t fair.
Last week, the misery (or is it Mizzery?) continued. The Tigers lost to Kentucky in one of the wildest finishes to a college football game I’ve seen.
By now, I am numb to it all.
Mizzou’s fortune on the gridiron hasn’t been the same since Tony Van Zant, the most celebrated high school football recruit in program history, tore up his knee before ever playing a down for the Tigers.
In the summer of 1986, Van Zant, Parade Magazine’s 1985 National Player of the Year, severely injured his knee in a high school all-star game played nearby in Jefferson City. I was 12. Saved for a few successful seasons under former coaches Larry Smith and Gary Pinkel, the program has been mired in misfortune since.
A few years after Van Zant’s injury came the notorious Fifth Down game in 1990 against Colorado and its star running back, current Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy. Game officials erroneously awarded the Buffalos an extra down as time wound down. Colorado, the eventual national champs, used the extra play to score a game-winning touchdown and walked out of Faurot Field in Columbia as victors.
Who could forget the Flea Kicker game in 1997 against No. 1 Nebraska? The Cornhuskers sent the game in Columbia into overtime after a Nebraska player caught a touchdown on a deflected pass that caromed off a teammate’s cleats. The visitors won in overtime. Nearly 25 years later, The sheer agony of that defeat still lingers in some corners of Memorial Stadium in Columbia.
Generally, I don’t believe in curses. There is no hex on Mizzou. But the absurdity in which the state’s flagship football program loses games is as comical as it is cruel. Whatever Mizzou has done to upset the football gods, they must make it right and soon. This decades-old grudge against the Tigers is maddening.
Take Saturday’s 21-17 loss to Kentucky for example, just another in a string of bizarre defeats over the last three-plus decades. Who knew a snap that sailed a mile over a punter’s head wasn’t a live ball? I didn’t. A hustling Mizzou player didn’t either, and late in the fourth quarter, he tackled Kentucky’s punter as the kicker punted the errant snap. The Tigers were called for a personal foul and Kentucky held on for a close win.
But Mizzou football isn’t cursed, right? Right.
After the questionable but legal call in the Kentucky game, the Boone County locals booed the officials unmercifully as Mizzou fans all over the globe were left to ponder if the program is forever relegated to wild finishes and inexplicable losses.
God, I hope not.
