‘He made us all believe’: How Warren Powers reinvigorated Missouri Tigers football
As the Missouri Tigers’ football team stepped off the plane at Columbia Regional Airport, offensive lineman Howard Richards was shocked to see nearly 500 fans cheering. There had never been anyone waiting for them at the airport before, at least during his time in the program.
The fervor was just getting started. Later that night, fans tore down the goal posts on Faurot Field and paraded them down Broadway Street. If this is what college football is about, then I’m glad to be a part of it at Mizzou, he recalled thinking at the time.
It was Sept. 9, 1978 and Mizzou had just knocked off defending national champion Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, shocking college football with a 3-0 upset in the first game under head coach Warren Powers.
“We’re coming off of a 4-7 season in which there was very little expectation on how the team would do,” said Phil Bradley, a three-time all-conference quarterback under Powers. “We go in there and we beat them. Turned out, it kinda jumpstarted our whole season.”
Powers, who had Alzheimer’s disease and died earlier this week, reinvigorated the Missouri program during his time coaching the Tigers from 1978-84. And he did it fast, hardly skipping a beat as he led them to their first bowl game in five years in that 1978 season. The Kansas City native’s 15 wins through his first two years remain the most of any Mizzou coach to begin their tenure at the helm.
“It was just a whole refreshing atmosphere when he came in and took over the program,” said Richards, who played in the NFL for seven seasons and is now a radio analyst for Mizzou football. “I think he made us all believe that we could all be great, we could all be elite players. And that was the attitude that I think we all had. Every time we stepped on the football field we always felt that we had a chance to win.”
Former MU players who were coached by Powers described him as a motivator, someone who pushed everyone around them to be the best they could be. He instilled belief but also demanded hard work.
Powers was 36 when he moved to Columbia to lead the Tigers (he was 37 at the start of his first season), and he and his young staff were able to relate well with the team. They came from a background of winning, having learned under Tom Osborne at Nebraska, and Powers often talked about building a tradition of success at Missouri.
Richards vividly remembers a team meeting in December 1977, shortly after Powers had taken over the helm.
“We’re going to be competitive, we’re going to challenge for the Big Eight title every year and we will never lose to Kansas,” Richards recalled him telling the group.
“And for the next three years that I was there until we left, we thumped Kansas every year. So got a thrill and I will always remember those words because they rang true and he made that promise and came through with it.”
One of Power’s first priorities was implementing a weight training program and improving the team’s facilities. According to an article from The Star in January 1978, he urged the MU administration to add a weight room as well as a classroom where players could study film, which he wanted to make part of their game preparation.
“These are things we think are necessary to compete,” Powers said at the time.
He switched up the playbook as well, installing the veer offense in place of the I-Formation.
“He kind of brings a little bit more of that attitude of maybe we’re going to be a little bit more balanced, you know, we’re going to have a little bit more passing,” Bradley said.
Eric Wright, who played corner for the Tigers before going on to win four Super Bowls with the 49ers, remembers how Powers instilled a fundamental attitude of hard work with a focus on player development. A former defensive back who had won the 1967 AFL championship and played in Super Bowl II with the Raiders, Powers also placed a bigger emphasis on defense.
“The conversation that he always instilled in the defense when he would come in the meeting room was playing hard and not letting anybody out-hit you, outwork you,” Wright said. “And that carried on and off the field. … That’s one thing he always preached and taught. Be tough, organized, disciplined, that’ll carry you over in life.”
Former Tigers also pointed to Powers’ emphasis on creating a family atmosphere as key to his success as a head coach.
“When you look back to that era, we had great players and a lot of those guys are still friends today,” Wright said. “When he brought all those guys and all the coaches, we bonded as a family, we fought as a family. And that’s what we built at Mizzou and that’s the tradition.”
That bond played a big factor when the Tigers went on the road to face Nebraska in the last game of that first season. Players knew how much that game meant to Powers and his coaching staff, given their roots with the program.
The Cornhuskers were ranked second in the country at the time and in the hunt to win it all, but as Richards put it, Powers “had the formula.” Mizzou left Lincoln with a 35-31 victory, which remained the program’s only win over the Cornhuskers until 2003.
“That victory probably was one of his sweetest victories, I think he’d probably tell you that,” Richards said. “To be a part of the Nebraska program and to go back and beat them on a bitterly cold day when no one gave us a chance to do it. Knocked Nebraska out of a chance to play for the national championship that year.
One of Richards’ other favorite memories of Powers didn’t come from a win, however. It was after a loss.
In the third game of the 1979 season, Mizzou, ranked fifth in the country, suffered a 21-0 home loss to No. 4 Texas. Powers was not pleased with his team’s effort.
“I remember the next day, he comes in and he opens up the can of film. And the reel of film normally is at least close to being a full reel of film. That reel was maybe a third full, we had like no offensive output that day,” Richards said. “And he holds up the film, takes it out and he holds it up — ‘This. You see this? This was horse(stuff)’ — and threw the canister across the room.”
They didn’t ever rewatch that game. The display certainly got everyone’s attention though.
“You could see, I mean, the passion that he had about not just winning but playing well and being competitive,” Richards said. “We were not competitive that day and I think he took it very personally. And as a result we took it personally. We never played that poorly again.”
The team went on to make the Hall of Fame Classic bowl that season, where it defeated No. 16 South Carolina, 24-14. Powers led the Tigers to the postseason in both of the following two years as well, becoming the first coach in program history to lead a team to four consecutive bowl games.
Powers was fired by the program after just one losing season in 1984, which Richards said was a mistake and “didn’t make a lot of sense.” Powers had five bowl appearances and a 46-33-3 record at the time, still the fourth-most wins of any coach in school history. Missouri wouldn’t have another winning season until 1997.
“Because it was so long ago, you forget about what he was able to do for the program,” Richards said. “He’s a guy that should be recognized for that.”
