I was in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago, and after the necessary trip to the Arch, we moseyed on over to the nearby riverboat Casino, in which most of the slot machines were broken. No bother. The blackjack table still worked (I won 40 bucks in one shoe). I was the only card player of the group, so the other two guys I was there with were more into slots, and, as I said, the machines there were a little below average, so we decided to take of fairly quickly.
As we were leaving, one of the employees manning the craps table called out to my friend Justin who was wearing his Texas A&M shirt saying, “Hey, Texas! Who won the Missouri game (against Kansas State that weekend)?” That’s how big the Missouri Tigers are in St. Louis. They will ask people with any sort of Big 12 affiliation whether or not they knew who won a fairly meaningless game. And they will do so only by referring to the state in which you can be quickly associated with.
Fortunately for this craps dealer, we had just come from TGIFriday’s and watched most of the game there. After doing a little cheer, she politely asked who won the A&M game. We had no idea. (They didn’t play).
It’s interesting to me that Missouri has been largely unnoticed leading up to today, despite the fact that they have blue chop talent at quarterback in Chase Daniels, have defeated several quality opponents, including Big Ten runner-up Illinois in St. Louis (something Ohio State couldn’t do at home) and don’t have a gimmicky style of game play.
Perhaps that’s why Mizzou has flown under the radar to this point. Kansas and it’s behemoth coach, Mark Mangino. Perhaps that’s why Missouri hasn’t caught the eye of the national media before this week. They seem to like the quirky stories, and a manatee on the sidelines is certainly quirky, rather than a surging, high quality developing story, and I can’t really blame them. Kansas captured all of our hearts.
In the meantime, however, Missouri was gaining considerable steam, winning by bigger and bigger margins. If seeing Mark Mangino plastered everywhere helps Missouri beat Oklahoma tonight, I’m happy to oblige. It’ll be nice to see an unconventional BCS national championship game, and this will be only the second that hasn’t featured a team from either Florida or Oklahoma since the BCS came into being. So, Tigers, here’s a look at Mangino. Good luck.
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