by Gary Pinkel
At Toledo, I was the players’ third head coach in three years. The program there was winning, so this change was difficult for the players. I changed a lot of things they were doing and they wanted some stability.
I walked into an entirely different environment at Missouri. It was a losing culture. That mentality impacts how you think and act, and when adversity comes, everything gets magnified.
We understood the culture had to change. We had to demand excellence and attention to detail. We had to get these kids to understand that all the tiny details of our program had to be important to them. This losing culture was similar to the situation Coach James walked into at Kent State when I was a player. But unlike Coach James, I came into the Missouri job with a track record of success as a head coach. I knew we could clean this up. But it was going to be very difficult.
Our first winter conditioning workout illustrated the situation we inherited. We had strict standards for these 6:00 am drills. For one, don’t even think about putting your hands on your knees when you get tired. Players rotated through three different stations and had to follow commands at each one. They had to start and finish each drill the right way every time—just like a football play. These players had no concept of the discipline we demanded. One of our first workouts, we had probably about 20 players leave the field and climb the stairs toward the exit of the Devine Pavilion because they wanted to quit. I told them, “Go ahead. Because we’re not going to change.” They all came back down and finished the drills.
All the while, I kept my eyes on my staff. They looked so frustrated. They couldn’t believe how undisciplined these players were compared to what we left behind at Toledo.
Weeks earlier when I told my Toledo coaches I was taking the Missouri job, I told them there would be nothing easy about this challenge. Yeah, we were moving into a bigger conference with more bowl bids, more money, more exposure. But this job was going to be hard. That’s why a lot of people thought I was crazy. Five straight Missouri coaches had been fired from 1977 to 2000. They had just two winning seasons in 17 years.
After that first workout, we talked to the players, then the staff went into the coaches’ locker room. Almost every one of the assistants had his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. It was like a state of depression had swept over the staff. I had to say something. “Guys,” I told them, “there’s a reason why we’re here. Now you know.”
After that day’s workout, I began to believe my friends might have been right. I was crazy.
• • •
Once the staff was in place we had to start recruiting. For the most part, coaches received us pretty well as we toured the state. But there was one high school in St. Louis that wouldn’t let us in the door. We arrived and they told us, “Our coach doesn’t want to see you.” I realized then that we had some problems in terms of public relations. It was enlightening…or maybe I was just naïve. We believed in our program, and I had great faith in the system I had learned under Coach James and all the schools where his system had success. But that didn’t really resonate on the recruiting trail in Missouri. You quickly learn that no matter how strong that sales pitch sounds, you inherit all the problems from the previous regime. When you have just two winning seasons in 17 years, that means you’re rifling through coaches. All this baggage piles up, and the only way you lighten the load is to run your program with honesty and integrity. You have to treat people the right way, starting with your players. If you start there, you build trust. I realized walking out of that high school that we had to build trust. I told the rest of the staff, “Don’t expect people to jump on board with blind faith.”
In our first recruiting class, we had some success around the state, especially in the St. Louis area. We were fortunate to sign Damien Nash, an elite running back and a national recruit out of East St. Louis. We knew there was a chance he’d need some time at junior college, but it was crucial to sign him. It made a bit of a statement for our program, that we could come in without having coached a game at Missouri and sign the area’s best player. Missouri wasn’t on Damien’s radar before we came along, and that goes back to the trust factor we were trying to establish. We got some positive feedback early. We got our share of national recruits from around the state in those early years before we’d have any success on the field. The next year we landed Dedrick Harrington, a national recruit from Mexico, Missouri, who chose us over Notre Dame.
We didn’t come to Missouri with a program that we hoped would work. We knew it would work. And that’s exactly what we told players and their parents. “I don’t care what happened in the past at Missouri. We’re going to win here—and we’ll win for the same reasons we won at Kent State, at Washington, and at Toledo. It works.”
We believed we could teach players the proper fundamentals to play the game at the highest level. We recruited speed, strength, and quickness potential. With our proven development program, we would build great players out of great athletes. That was a different sales pitch for a lot of recruits.
We realized shortly after I took the job that there was some friction between the African American community and the Mizzou program, particularly in St. Louis. That was something we had to address. In March 2001, not long after national signing day, Demetrious Johnson, a former Mizzou player who had influence in the St. Louis area, reached out to me to talk about the problems that had lingered for years. Demetrious and some other former Mizzou players, Don Johnson and Kevin Potter, helped organize a meeting at the Marriott in St. Louis by the airport. Norris Stevenson, who in 1958 became the first black scholarship football player at Mizzou, also helped organize the event. Norris would become a close friend and a great asset in the St. Louis community. It was important that our program recognized Norris’ legacy and his significant place in Mizzou history. We established a scholarship fund on his behalf and made his name a more prominent fixture around the program, including the Norris Stevenson Plaza of Champions, which we unveiled in 2001 on the west side of Memorial Stadium.
Mike Alden and I invited each and every former player from the area to talk about these problems. At the meeting, we needed dialogue. Most important, I had to listen. The turnout was awesome. I spoke to the group and told them we all had to be honest. This was our shot to make a strong first impression and start the healing. There was some tension in the room. A few harsh comments were made. The discussion was raw and emotional. Many of the black players felt a disconnect with the program.
I finally had to stand up and say something. I told the room, “Listen, I’ve coached a long time and coached all different kinds of kids. But I can’t say how a black player feels. I’d like to think I can, but deep down, I don’t know what that’s like.” We had to respect the different backgrounds and perspectives. It turned into a real honest, productive meeting. It was good for our program. That’s when some healing started. After that you started seeing more former players coming back to the program. We started seeing bigger crowds at our player alumni reunions at the spring scrimmage. That was important for me to make those connections. We had to reconnect with the past to see a better future. We realized that day we couldn’t just pop into the community every couple years and pay lip service to these ideas. We had to consistently build relationships. We assigned Cornell Ford to be our primary recruiter in St. Louis, and he developed trust with the high school coaching community and over time cultivated strong relationships.
• • •
In our last year at Toledo we had a quarterback on our radar, an elite athlete from Youngstown, Ohio. Decent quarterback, tremendous athlete. Little did we know Brad Smith would change our lives forever. If I had been the head coach at Ohio State, this guy would have been on the top of my list, but he wasn’t picking up much attention from the so-called power conferences. Mid-American Conference schools were interested, but not the Big Ten or Big 12 schools. He was such an outstanding athlete, we thought he was talente
d enough that we could train him into a good quarterback. Why didn’t Ohio State see the same thing? If he would have signed with the Buckeyes and become their quarterback, they would have won at least one national championship. I firmly believe that. If Ohio State or Michigan would have shown much interest, I figured he’d be gone in a heartbeat. But those offers never came. Fortunately, we were the coaches who saw Brad’s potential.
By December we had settled into our new jobs at Missouri, but we hadn’t forgotten about Brad. We soon discovered that the church played a critical role in Brad’s life, and we figured out that the church would play a critical role in his college choice. A man named Bishop Norman Wagner presided over Brad’s church in Youngstown. He was obviously an important figure in Brad’s life. Matt Eberflus and I went back to Ohio to visit Brad, and Bishop Wagner arranged a meeting for us and members of the church to discuss Brad’s future. We talked for more than two hours. I was really impressed with this man. The congregation had done its homework on Mizzou and its new head coach. The bishop looked at me and said, “I know everything about you. Everything. I know more about you than you know about yourself.” He was probably right. He knew where I went to high school and college. He knew the details of my coaching career and my background working with quarterbacks. He knew all about my family, too. Finally, the bishop delivered his good news. “I’m going to allow Brad to go to Missouri,” he told us.
Hallelujah!
Of course, I didn’t want to jump up and celebrate in the church, but we were happy for obvious reasons. Maybe Brad would prove all those Big Ten schools wrong and turn into a starter for us.
Bishop Norman looked at me and said, “Coach, you have no idea what you’ve got in this kid.”
I beg your pardon? I think my track record spoke for itself when it came to quarterbacks. I said, respectfully, “Well, yes…”
He interrupted me.
“Coach, you have no idea.”
After the meeting, Matt and I left the church and headed back to the airport. It was one of the most unique recruiting visits either of us would ever make. “You know,” I told Matt in the car, “if he turns out to be a great player, that scene’s going to make for a good story someday.”
The Bishop was right. We had no idea!
We signed Brad and took a close look at him that first summer to see what kind of athlete he was. We looked at his passing ability. I knew we’d really struggle that first year. To throw him into the mix as a true freshman, that didn’t make much sense to me. Halfway through the season some coaches on the staff wanted me to change my mind and make him the quarterback. “We’re not going to play him. Period,” I told them. I knew they were upset with me, but that’s okay. He wasn’t ready, and if we played him it would be a waste of his year of eligibility.
Right after the 2001 season, I met with Brad and told him, “Listen, you’ve got to become a great thrower. You’ve got to throw every day. That’s the only way you’re going to become a great quarterback.”
In the middle of January, I was driving past the facility coming home from a movie and the lights were on in the indoor facility. I pulled into the lot to flip off the lights—and there’s Brad. He’s got trash barrels lined up all around the field. He’s taking drops and throwing passes into the barrels. “Hey, what are you doing, man?” I asked him. “I thought someone broke into the facility.”
“Nope, I’m just working, Coach.”
That was a good drive home. I just remember thinking, “Wow, if this guy’s got that kind of work ethic, who knows how far he can go.” There weren’t too many days he didn’t work like that. It was a great visual aid to our team.
I thought he could play the position. Did I think he’d last eight years in the NFL? I had no idea.
• • •
We went through our first cycle of recruiting, offseason conditioning, spring practices, and preseason camp, and it all led up to our first game. An old familiar opponent came to Memorial Stadium for my first game as head coach: Bowling Green. They weren’t just a Mid-American Conference team but our main rival at Toledo.
We spent 10 months working toward that first game…and got hit by a truck.
The year before, my final game coaching Toledo, we smothered Bowling Green 51–17. After the season, I left for Missouri and Bowling Green hired a new coach. I didn’t know Urban Meyer at all. He was a fellow Ohio native and had been Notre Dame’s receivers coach before landing his first head-coaching job. His debut game would send him on the road to a Big 12 school. Little did we all know what would unfold.
MAC schools lived for games like this, as our players soon discovered. I knew the possibility. Our staff knew. Most of us had just spent a decade or more in the MAC. We’d gone to Purdue and Penn State and taken down heavy favorites. But our first Missouri team wasn’t good enough to overlook anybody. Bowling Green proved it with a 20–13 upset.
I was devastated. Why did I come here again? Everyone told me not to make this move. Maybe they were right. In moments like that, those thoughts resurfaced. What had I gotten myself into? But times like that always brought me back to my dad and the message he gave me at Toledo. His advice was so simple but so profound. When doubt crept in I could hear his voice. “Gary, go fix it!” That got me back to focusing on my job. I went in the next day and went back to work. We had to demand excellence. We had to fix it.
We won the next week against Southwest Texas State then got flattened at home against Nebraska. But we won two of our next three, both on the road, at Oklahoma State and Kansas, and stood at 3–3. A week later, No. 7 Texas rolled into Columbia with a cast of star players, especially on offense. The score was closer than most people expected at 35–16. It wasn’t Texas’ best effort of the season but they played well enough to win.
I jogged off the field and as I stepped into the tunnel toward the locker room, our fans were cheering. They probably thought we’d lose by 40, but instead we looked respectable. I guess those fans were clapping for respectable. Are you kidding me? We’re not going to feel good about ourselves for playing a really good team close. We’re trying to establish standards around here, and we just lost by 19 points. I had to make a statement. I went off on the team, the staff, and myself and made the same point in my postgame press conference. “That’s how losers think,” I told the media. Also, that was a message directed to our fans. We had to train them, too. Get mad if we play poorly and lose, but don’t celebrate losing close.
We lost four of our final five games, including a 24–3 loss at Kansas State, a place where Missouri teams had struggled for years. A week earlier, during a bye, our punter and backup punter were spotted at a bar. That was against our team rules. The next morning I decided we had to suspend them for the Kansas State game. Some of our assistants said, “Coach, we can’t do that. We don’t have anyone else to punt.” Too bad. We must follow through with our standards, and if we didn’t, it would have consequences down the road. The right thing to do was suspend the players. It wasn’t the right time, but we had no choice.
Kirk Farmer, our quarterback, handled the punting duties in swirling winds that day in Manhattan. God bless Kirk. He did his best. But we didn’t play well in any area.
The next week we played our season finale at Michigan State, a game that was rescheduled from earlier in the year after the 9/11 attacks.
The attacks happened on a Tuesday morning as we were preparing for our trip to East Lansing. Once the news broke, the first thing we did was contact any relatives of players or staff who were in the areas affected by the attacks. Once we got that settled, it was time to figure out what came next. Routine is so essential for coaches, but 9/11 put college football on pause. Initially, some conferences decided to postpone their games for the following weekend. The Big 12 and Big Ten decided to carry on with their schedules. I spoke out publicly against those decisions. For me, it made zero sense to play games that weekend. Wit
h the magnitude of what happened to our country, I thought it would be disrespectful to play a football game. By Thursday, the leagues came to their senses and postponed all games.
It made for an especially unique season for us because we were scheduled to have a bye after the Michigan State game, which meant we’d go three weeks between games after the attacks. At the same time, when we started playing the following week, it was great to see the role sports played in the country’s healing process. For a few hours, football gave us a chance to forget about the devastation.
By December 1, 2001, we were 4–6. A bowl game was out of the picture. We headed north to play a physical Michigan State team. It wasn’t even close.
At halftime we had players who didn’t even want to go back out for the second half. It was cold and nasty, and Michigan State had a much more physical team. They hammered us 55–7. I remember going home and sitting on the edge of my bed by myself and the tears came bursting out. I was an emotional wreck. We finished 4–7 and got outscored 79–10 in our final two games. I might have gotten a couple hours of sleep, then I woke up around 3:00 am. I walked around my house and thought about everything that had just happened. I had some players quit on me. Okay. Now what? I decided right there that would never happen again.
I called the staff in the next morning before they headed out recruiting. They were devastated, too. I told them, “I guarantee you what happened in East Lansing will never happen again. We might have some players quit in January. That’s okay in spring ball or during the summer, but Missouri players will never quit on the field during the season.” I made the same point to the players. We were going to crank up the intensity. We were not going to tolerate quitting. It was a defining moment for the program. It was an awful time for me personally, but we turned it into a positive.
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