How Mizzou’s Beau Pribula went from ‘lose-lose’ dilemma to finding himself in CoMo
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Beau Pribula reluctantly left dream school after Drew Allar’s return.
- Mizzou coaches sold Pribula on scheme fit and coaching rapport during visits.
- Pribula is third in the nation in passing percentage as he’s led MU to a 5-0 start.
Much like Brady Cook, his Mizzou quarterback predecessor, Beau Pribula grew up about a two-hour drive from his home state’s land-grant university and marquee athletics program.
From around the first times he can remember throwing a football in the backyard and playing tackle around the neighborhood, his dream grew: to follow in the footsteps of family who went to State U. and play there.
Like Cook, Pribula made a verbal commitment in his junior year and enrolled during the would-be second semester of his senior year of high school to get acclimated and compete with higher-rated prospects.
And like Cook, Pribula at last is fulfilling his fondest hopes at Mizzou, where the dual-threat ranked third in the nation in passing percentage (75.9) entering a bye weekend for Missouri.
“It’s been amazing,” said Pribula, who next Saturday will lead the 19th-ranked Tigers (5-0) against No. 10 Alabama (3-1) in a monumental opportunity for MU.
It’s just that the native of York, Pennsylvania had his heart set not on Missouri but on Penn State, where he spent the previous three years and anguished over leaving in a scenario that epitomized the transfer-portal era.
That’s both in the sense of some fundamental problems with how it’s administered and, more happily, that it led Pribula to find himself at home in a place he knew little about a year ago at this time.
Beyond knowing of Cook and Luther Burden and Mizzou enjoying some success in the Southeastern Conference and having beaten Ohio State in the 2023 Cotton Bowl, well …
“As far as the program and the history goes, and kind of where even Missouri was on the map, I didn’t know too much about it,” Pribula said in an interview with The Star on Wednesday. “But obviously now I do.”
So he seems to have ended up where he somehow was supposed to be all along.
But it’s also important to know this part of the story about him: Pribula’s time at Penn State was a vital part of who he has become, and the decision to leave was no whim.
In fact, it agonized him to leave. Especially since he had to launch the process as Penn State was about to enter the College Football Playoff.
But when starter Drew Allar decided in December 2024 to return, Pribula finally determined that his best chance to play a more substantial role (he rushed for 571 yards and threw nine TD passes in 2023 and 2024) anywhere was going to be elsewhere.
Trouble was, the nature of the portal meant the game of musical chairs was already underway while Penn State had the CFP ahead. The extended season now can flow into mid-January — when transfers ideally would be enrolling at their new school.
Plus, Penn State coach James Franklin had a rule, one that Pribula completely understands, that he couldn’t enter the portal and remain on the team.
“I was put in a situation,” Pribula said, “where it was kind of a lose-lose.”
So he had multiple meetings with Franklin, offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki (formerly at Kansas) and quarterbacks coach Danny O’Brien. And multiple times, he added, they’d all kind of just look at each other, gridlocked.
Trying to work through it, Pribula said, Franklin offered to call coaches he knew to tell them Pribula would be available but not technically in the portal.
“And we were going to go with that,” Pribula said. “And then I realized, how can I see where I want to go without going on any visits? And how can I get schools to trust that I will enter the portal?”
It’s revealing that after Pribula’s reluctant announcement on Dec. 15, Franklin opened a news conference by speaking with reporters about Pribula, and the portal system, for some five straight minutes.
He called Pribula “a man’s man” and a “phenomenal teammate” and said that he’d “still recruit the heck out of him” now even knowing he was leaving. And he lamented the “problems in college football” — a lot of things that “don’t really make sense” — that created a “no-win situation.”
Certainly, it felt like that for a while to Pribula.
On Dec. 21, for instance, he took a recruiting visit to Mississippi. As it happened, that was the day Penn State was playing Southern Methodist in the first round of the CFP.
While watching game tape with the Ole Miss quarterbacks, he was so distracted knowing the game was going on that he took “a little bathroom break” just to go check out what became a 38-10 Penn State victory.
“It was killing me,” he said.
It helped that Franklin and the staff and his teammates understood and encouraged him. And it helped, too, that in the whirlwind of visits he’d already taken, MU had made a compelling impression.
Not so much because of facilities that struck him as nicer than Penn State’s but because of how he clicked with Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz and offensive coordinator Kirby Moore.
The “glitz and glamour” was fine and all, but he felt a keen sense of comfort with Moore and a system he thought of as fitting his style best: “kind of up-tempo, spread it around, do a lot of different things.”
So Pribula committed to MU on Dec. 22. Soon, he was pouring himself into mastering the offense and preparing to compete with Sam Horn, the star-crossed four-star recruit and baseball player coming off Tommy John surgery.
The QB derby went into the Tigers’ opener against Central Arkansas, when Horn suffered a gruesome and season-ending fractured tibia.
If the job in a sense became Pribula’s by default, he sure has seized it from there.
Pribula completed 30 of 39 passes for 334 yards and three touchdowns in MU’s 42-31 win over Kansas after the Tigers had trailed 21-6.
Last week against Massachusetts, he completed a school-record 21 straight passes.
Yes, he’s also thrown interceptions in three straight games. And it remains to be seen how much more he’ll go downfield in the thick of SEC play: So far, with MU bolstered by Ahmad Hardy’s NCAA-leading ground game, 134 of Pribula’s 145 attempts have been less than 20 yards in the air.
But he’s more than alleviated what loomed as MU’s greatest concern post-Cook, and Pribula also figures to get better in his first season learning a new system — one he’s processed all the faster with visualization while walking through plays with quarterbacks coach Sean Gleeson.
On their own on the field, Gleeson will read off a call and Pribula will process and walk out every element of it: the verbiage, motions, protections, checks, each potential route. Etc.
“If it’s a pass play, you kind of want to do each snap throwing to a different guy,” he said. “‘He’s covered. OK, I’ve got to do it again. Oh, he’s open now. Boom.’”
Like other aspects of his growth, Pribula began this technique at Penn State but is expanding and enhancing it at MU — where he’s pursuing a master’s degree in Positive Coaching and Athletic Leadership.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “it’s like your mind doesn’t know the difference between what you’re visualizing and what’s real.”
Just like his reality is finally becoming what he’d long visualized.
Even if it’s not exactly where he’d pictured it all those years back in York.
Instead ...
“You’ve got, like, a Penn State town,” he said, smiling, “with a bunch of Mizzou gear.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2025 at 5:00 AM.