Those Were The Days

By Seth Herrold
Most people who know me would say I am too young to be saying ‘those were the days.’ Yesterday at Thanksgiving with the family, however, I found myself uttering those exact words. No I wasn’t reminiscing about the days when gas prices were lower or when times were simpler; I was reminiscing about when the Missouri Tigers football team was winning… a lot. I was reminiscing about the Chase Daniel days to be specific.

Back when Daniel was the quarterback of this less-than-storied program, the Tigers were constantly ranked and battling for conference titles every year. A bowl game was a given and anything less than the Alamo Bowl was a disappointment. Oh yeah, and the Tigers never, ever lost a non-conference football game. They played some schools from big conferences too, like the SEC’s Ole Miss and the Big Ten’s Illinois. Not great teams, but not pushovers by any means.
Times change in college football and they have changed a lot for Missouri since Daniel and his class graduated. Before Daniel came to Columbia, Missouri was a basketball school. Norm Stewart built the hoops program and Quin Snyder, in his early years, had the Tigers constantly ranked and took them to an elite eight appearance. Then, whether it was by Quin’s failure or Daniel’s success, or a combination of both, things shifted at Missouri. Mizzou was a football school.
Those fleeting years were fun for me and my friends. We attended 31-of-41 games between Daniel’s sophomore and senior seasons. We traveled to El Paso, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Kansas City, Ames, Manhattan (Kansas), Lincoln, St. Louis and of course Columbia. Where the Tigers went, we went. Those were indeed the days.
Now, the Tigers have steadily gotten worse on the gridiron and Mike Anderson and then Frank Haith have brought the basketball program back to the national stage. The pendulum is swinging again. The Tigers’ football team has nearly come full circle and is in danger of missing out on a bowl game for the first time since 2004. It’s hard to justify a long road trip to follow a team of this caliber. When Daniel was the quarterback, I would follow the team to the ends of the earth and paid some outrageous ticket prices along the way. With Franklin and company, I would just as soon watch the majority of the games from the couch in my living room.
The Tigers are falling back into the era when a close loss to a good team was considered a win. In 1997 Missouri lost to Nebraska in overtime when a kicked ball allowed the Huskers to score the game-tying touchdown. Mizzou fans were walking tall that week and Nebraska ended up winning the national championship that year. There was obvious disappointment, but saying you took the national champs to overtime was as good as saying we won for Tiger fans. This year I listened to the Mizzou-Florida game on the radio while working with my Dad, a life-long Husker fan. When the game ended and Missouri nearly pulled off the road upset Dad, who never misses an opportunity for a good barb, said “Well you’re a Missouri fan so that is basically like a win for you.” The sad part was he was right. It was a close loss to a highly ranked team on the road.
Here is the difference, though. Missouri lost a close game to Oklahoma on the road in 2007 when Daniel was quarterbacking and that didn’t feel like a win like this year’s Florida loss did. Like I said, times change.
If there is a saving grace to the football team’s failure, however, it is that the basketball team is bringing plenty of excitement to Columbia. I’m okay with being a basketball school I just don’t want to become a Kentucky or Kansas where we compete for titles every year on the basketball court, but lose every game we play on the football field. I love to see success in any sport for Missouri, but football will always be my first love and I will alway cherish ‘those days’ when Daniel led the Tigers.