It’s a Mizzou football reunion: remember 2007 with former Tigers coach Gary Pinkel
Leading up to the biggest game of the 2007 season, former Missouri coach Gary Pinkel prepared his team for any situation imaginable. Mizzou was set to battle Kansas, and Pinkel wanted his team mentally and physically sharp.
Once the teams’ buses arrived at Arrowhead Stadium on game day, though, fans had other ideas. What’s normally a smooth process thanks to a police escort was bogged down as well-wishers slammed their hands against the side of the buses, a small preview of the craziness to come.
Initially, Pinkel was angry — after all, he hadn’t prepped his players for this. But looking back, it’s one of those memories he has come to cherish from the Tigers’ 36-28 win over the Jayhawks.
“I looked at the back of the bus, and those guys’ eyeballs were as big as softballs,” Pinkel told The Star recently. “I was very disappointed at that moment for Gary Pinkel, but anyway, they responded well.”
To this day, Pinkel, Mizzou’s all-time winningest coach, says it was the best atmosphere he’s ever experienced.
“In all my years coaching, I never, ever have seen a better environment than that,” Pinkel said. “I’m telling you, it’s one of the greatest environments I’ve ever been around. There’s not very many games like that where it was one of them.”
Pinkel and Mizzou fans reminisced about that 12-2 season that culminated in a Cotton Bowl victory Friday. Former MU quarterback Chase Daniel held a joint reunion call and fundraiser with 11 members of the 2007 team, including Jeremy Maclin, Martin Rucker, Sean Weatherspoon and Voice of the Tigers, Mike Kelly.
The call was pre-recorded, Daniel said, with the final product just under two hours long. It was released on Daniel’s Twitter and Facebook.
Daniel, now with the Detroit Lions after stints with the Chiefs, New Orleans Saints, Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears and Washington, has worked alongside the Food Bank of Central and Northeast Missouri to make the “show” a fundraiser. The charitable goal started out at $50,000, with Daniel pledging to match donations up to $25,000.
But that mark has been obliterated, with more than $100,000 generated as of Friday evening, Daniel tweeted.
“I want people to sit together, especially in Missouri, in their home,” he told The Star. “I want them to screen-mirror it to their big-screen TV. I want them to get some popcorn and spend some family time reminiscing on the season that changed my life and changed a lot of those other guys’ lives but also had such a big impact on Missouri fans’ families.”
One-on-one with GP
Editor’s note: The Q&A was edited for length and clarity.
Q: What was the leadup like to the 2007 season, your most successful year to that point?
Pinkel: From a coaching perspective, it was building a program and changing the culture. In my first four years, we had losing, losing, winning, losing, and it wasn’t easy. We had a plan in place that works. I just remained very patient — actually, that’s not true, I’m not very patient. I guess I remained very demanding in detail and working with kids and working with coaches to create a culture of commitment, hard work. We came back in 2005 and we got to a bowl. Then, in 2006, we were getting a little bit better, but we couldn’t find ways to finish the games.
We just couldn’t get over the hump. I was so frustrated. To get to being a top-10 football team, you’ve gotta learn how to win games and learn the details and all that goes with winning those kinds of games. I was just very, very frustrated going into 2007, because I thought, personnel-wise, we had a lot of really good players. Great kids, and they were committed. They all were on board with how we do things. They were so much a part of it. Going into 2007, I just wanted to take a step into that highest level, and at the end, as it all played out, it was an incredible year for football.
Q: While the on-field product was prolific, there were some characters on that team. Who stood out off the field?
Pinkel: We had a bunch of great guys on that team. Great leadership. That was the amazing thing about it. We had been working on it for years. Developing with the younger players and working it all up. There was just a chemistry about that football team. It was a year where, one at the time, can you take care of your business? That team was a lot better on Oct. 1 than we were at Sept. 1. We were better at Nov. 1 than Oct. 1. That team kept getting better and better and better. Obviously, with Chase Daniel and his development, he had a national year. I’m sitting at New York City at the end of the season at the Heisman finals. We reached our potential. It wasn’t easy. But we went through the season and a lot of great things.
Q: You’ve had other great seasons at Mizzou, with 2013 and 2014 coming to mind. But is there something that sticks out to you about 2007?
Pinkel: What they did in 2007, that set the stage. From that point on, from 2007, for the next eight, nine years, for almost a decade, we finally got to the point where we won at a really high level. That 2007 team said, ‘Can Mizzou get in the hunt, can you do it?’ And the message was yes. Was it easy? No. It’s hard to be a top-10 football team. But at the end of the day, to me, that’s what the 2007 team did. But it was talented. We had so many great players on that team. Chase had so many great players to throw to. As it ended up, we’re going to play KU. KU’s had the best team they’ve ever had, we’ve had one of the best teams Missouri ever had. Very legitimate. It was a historic game in Arrowhead Stadium. It was really hard to describe, me trying to prepare our players for that.
Q: Was there a turning point in that season?
Pinkel: The thing with our football team, you’ve gotta bring it every week. We’re not good enough to play our B-game and win a bunch of games. When we played our A-game, when we played our best, we were good enough to beat anybody. … I don’t know if there was any particular time ... I just felt good each and every week. I saw a consistency of high-level play from our team regardless of who we played. From a coaching perspective, they get it, they understand. It doesn’t matter who we play, it matters how we play. When you finally get that, it’s pretty exciting. That’s kind of what we had. The leadership on the team, I can go through so many of those guys, they did such a great job. It all came out to the big game.
This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 5:00 AM.