Mizzou Tigers play road football game at UMass Saturday: why/when it was scheduled
The SEC has one of the best slates of the season this week with the Red River Rivalry — No. 1 Texas at No. 18 Oklahoma — in its first year in the conference, as well as No. 9 Ole Miss at No. 13 LSU and ... Mizzou at UMass?
The Tigers are this week’s outlier with an unusual trip to Amherst to take on the Minutemen at 11 a.m. this Saturday.
Saturday’s kickoff is a part of a home-and-home agreement signed between the two schools in November 2018, with Mizzou announcing it (along with all of its nonconference opponents from 2020-2024) in January 2019.
It’s Missouri’s first road trip to a non-Power Conference school since August 31, 2019, at Wyoming. The Tigers also played at UConn in October 2017.
“Non-conference games are designed to help prepare your team for SEC play,” then-Mizzou deputy athletics director Nick Joos said in the 2019 release. “And we believe that as we’ve completed our schedule to date, we have been able to accomplish this, while also being able to play seven home games nearly every season on Faurot Field — that will always be one of our primary guidelines as we’re building our schedules.
“With eight league games in the nation’s toughest conference every year, and a ninth game against a Power Five opponent, it is important to have a balance in the other three games we schedule, and we look for nearby FBS and FCS opponents whenever possible.”
The terms of this nonconference matchup include a $1 million payment to break the game contract, but no payment guarantee — in either direction — for Missouri to travel to Amherst, nor UMass to come to Columbia.
Comparatively, the Tigers would have been paid $200,000 to travel to Miami (OH) for a nonconference agreement signed in 2016, but that game is no longer listed on the Miami (Ohio) football schedule and was reported to be axed in 2023.
If that game was bought out by the Tigers, according to the contract terms, Missouri would’ve paid $750,000.
UMass (Oct. 18) is one of the three nonconference opponents slated to come into Faurot Field next season, alongside Louisiana (Oct. 4) and the rebirth of the Border War on the gridiron, as Kansas travels in on Sept. 6.
This story was originally published October 10, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
