The 100-Yard Journey

by Gary Pinkel

  Well, it turns out I was the coach.

  The next morning I brought in our captains: L’Damian Washington, James Franklin, E.J. Gaines, and Andrew Wilson. By then everyone had heard what Michael said the night before.

  “Okay, guys,” I told them, “talk to me.”

  L’Damian did most of the talking.

  “Coach,” he said, “first of all, most of the guys knew this already. It’s not a shock around here.”

  I asked him if we should have a team meeting to address the topic.

  “Coach, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  Over the years you learn to listen to your players. I could have done things my way—or run things by the team leaders first and get a feel for the pulse of the team. So we decided against a team meeting. I wanted to bring Michael into the office before we did anything else. I told them I needed communication from them twice a day. They could go through L’Damian if they wanted. I needed feedback. I needed to know what was going on within the team. There was a sense of calm while talking to the captains. It was like a true family. We weren’t a bunch of individuals taking sides. With that team, it was becoming obvious we had great kids who truly cared about each other.

  Next, I had Michael in the office. I hugged him, told him I loved him. Now, let’s talk.

  “Okay, what do you want me to do?” I asked him. “L’Damian didn’t think it was necessary to have a team meeting to address this. If you want to have that meeting, we can do that.”

  He didn’t think it was necessary, either.

  Did he want to come out publicly and talk to the media? He wasn’t sure it was the right time. He asked what I thought.

  “This is about what you want to do,” I told him.

  There was no way I could tell him what to do. But I felt like we had to discuss what would happen if this went public. Chad Moller, our media relations director, talked to Michael, too. Mike had been in contact with a reporter from the Missourian, the newspaper that’s published by the students in the journalism school. Michael was considering coming out in an interview with the paper. We were prepared to support Mike in whatever path he wanted to take. But Chad made him aware how big this story was going to become. We’d help him any way we could.

  “This is going to be national news,” I told him. “Every game we go to you’re going to be asked about this. If you can handle that, that’s fine. As a team, we’ll find a way to handle it.”

  Michael seemed unsure about what he wanted to do. He said he’d get back to me. He came back later with a decision.

  “Coach, I don’t want this team to have that distraction,” he said. “I’ll do it sometime after the season is over.”

  I was okay with that.

  “Once the season is over,” I said, “just give me a timeframe and I’ll stand right there next to you when you want to talk about this publicly.”

  I brought the captains back into my office to give them an update. We had a few minor issues in the locker room between players that we addressed right away. Otherwise, it was business as usual. I was so proud of my team in the way they handled the situation that season. I was proud of Michael.

  Any day during that season a story could have come out about Michael’s sexual orientation. A teammate could have tweeted about it or posted something on Facebook. That possibility was always there, but it wasn’t something I worried about. I never woke up thinking, “Today might be the day.” You just don’t have time for those concerns during the season.

  After the season, Michael told the world he was gay in interviews with ESPN and the New York Times. It became an international story. Michael didn’t do many interviews during the season, but still, outside of our program, people were shocked that his story never went public during the season. After he came out, I did national TV and radio interviews, and the hosts couldn’t believe that 126 players on a football team never said anything publicly to the media or posted something on social media. They asked me, “How did you keep that from happening?”

  I didn’t know the answer. We just tried to be honest with each other in our program. It just speaks to the kind of men we had on our team. It spoke to a team culture of tolerance, acceptance, love and, more than anything, respect. We were going through the grind of the season in the toughest conference in America. Michael’s news could have been disruptive, but nobody in that locker room put any selfish thoughts or opinions ahead of the team. I never had to hold a meeting where I told the team, “Don’t you dare say this to anybody.”

  For me, it was never about my personal beliefs. It was about respect, being respectful to people—and in this case, being respectful to a player on my team. I would like to think that message resonated with a lot of people. Maybe some people didn’t like the idea that we had a gay player on our team. Maybe they were uncomfortable that we respected him and loved him. But I didn’t care about those opinions. I’d like to think, in a small way, we helped change attitudes when it comes to protecting and respecting another person.

  It was such a big moment for sport. Not just for Mizzou or the SEC or college football. Michael was on the cover of Sports Illustrated the next week. While the personal story was all about Michael, his courage and his challenges, it also reflected something very positive about our team and our culture. We taught respect in our program. That year, it proved our players were listening.

  I had a lot of people, good friends, tell me our handling of that situation helped them understand this topic better. It probably wasn’t easy for a lot of people to accept, the idea of a gay player in college football. I’d like to think we helped change minds.

  On top of all of this, Michael had an outstanding season. He broke our team record for sacks. He was named the SEC defensive player of the year. He earned unanimous All-American honors.

  Michael wasn’t highly recruited. He became a productive college player who made huge plays for us during his career. He was a classic example of what we called “Mizzou Made,” an unheralded prospect who developed in the program, getting bigger, stronger, and faster in our system. After college, he wasn’t considered a great NFL prospect. Fortunately, the St. Louis Rams drafted him in the seventh round. I thought that was significant, that a franchise gave him a chance. He was eventually cut during training camp and resurfaced with the Cowboys, but he never played in a regular-season game. That couldn’t take anything away from what Michael achieved at Mizzou and the impact he made in sports and throughout society.

  • • •

  We started the 2013 season 5–0. That’s how many games we won the previous season. But then we headed to No. 7 Georgia for the first time. It was a day game in one of the loudest places we had ever played. It was such a great environment. On that day, that team embraced the Harbaugh mentality. Our players understood how strong of a program Georgia has been historically. I made sure they knew, too. It was my first time coaching in Athens. We loved the opportunity to play on that stage. We focused on us, not Georgia.

  We found a way to win even when our starting quarterback left the game with an injury. Maty Mauk, a redshirt freshman, came in for James Franklin and did just enough to manage the game in the second half. We called a memorable trick play, a receiver pass from Bud Sasser to L’Damian Washington that went for a big touchdown. E.J. Gaines, our all-conference cornerback, also left that game with an injury.

  But that team was fearless. We won 41–26, a huge game for our confidence.

  I didn’t make any grand statements after the game. I didn’t tell the players, “Hey, you just won at Georgia. You can beat anyone.” I kept the focus on our opportunities. “I told you guys this is a great league. Next week we play No. 22 Florida. Here we go. It doesn’t get better than this.”

  First series of the game, Maty, in his first start since high school, hit a deep pass to L’Damian and a play later threw a touchdown to Bud. Two plays and we’re on to
p. Before long we were in charge and we won the game 36–17 to go 7–0.

  A week later, No. 20 South Carolina and Steve Spurrier came to town. Could we beat three nationally ranked teams in a row? We got out to a 17–0 lead, but they rallied and took the game to overtime. A missed field goal was the difference and South Carolina won 27–24.

  • • •

  Earlier that week came devastating news of the death of my former coach and mentor Don James. I flew out to Seattle for the memorial service. I was honored to give one of the eulogies. I knew he was struggling with his health. He’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I called him one day that fall, but he didn’t answer, so I left a message. A couple days later, Ann came into my office to tell me he was on the phone. I figured he was too sick to use the phone, so I was blown away when he called me back. His voice was slow and soft. We didn’t talk long, but I got a chance to tell him how much I loved him and how much of an impact he had on my life. He had influenced thousands of the kids he coached, and it was important for me to tell him just that. He told me he loved me, too. I had to take it all in after we spoke, because I knew we’d never talk again. He died two days later.

  • • •

  When you lose a game, you want nothing more than to avoid a losing streak. After the South Carolina game, we bounced back and beat Tennessee at home. We became very good at handling adversity. It started in the offseason when I talked to the team about how we’d manage through the tough times that were sure to hit us at some point during the year. We had a structured plan for how we were going to handle adversity. And when adversity struck, we went right to the plan. Those lessons and those messages filtered down through the players on the team. We headed to Kentucky the next week and won big behind Maty and Dorial Green-Beckham, our big, talented freshman receiver. From Springfield, Missouri, Dorial was rated the No. 1 recruit in the country when he chose Missouri on national signing day in 2012. He became a more productive player for us in 2013, but we’d only get to see glimpses of his potential.

  The more we saw Maty play as a redshirt freshman, the more we got excited about the future. What’s this guy going to be like once he’s more experienced? At 9–1 we went to Ole Miss the next week with James Franklin back at quarterback. We were ranked No. 8 in the nation and our confidence was starting to peak. In Oxford we won behind our running game. We stayed patient and just kept pounding away.

  Then we came home to host Texas A&M in the regular-season finale. The incentive was simple—win the game and we win our first SEC East championship and we would go to Atlanta to play for the SEC championship. We were ranked No. 5 in the country. We were playing Johnny Manziel. It was a sold-out crowd. It doesn’t get any better than this. This was one of Missouri’s biggest games in the history of Memorial Stadium—maybe the biggest ever. I didn’t back away from the enormity of this game. Publicly, I built it up this way all week. I didn’t deliver the same message to the team, but I knew they’d hear what I told the media. Sometimes that’s how you indirectly send messages to your players. It was calculated. We had to embrace the moment—and we did.

  This team was unique. They were on a mission all year long. Yeah, it’s the SEC. It’s a great league. But we were a great team.

  The Texas A&M match was a tight game, back and forth through three quarters. In the third quarter, L’Damian caught a go-ahead touchdown that was initially ruled an incomplete pass, but he immediately got my attention and motioned to throw out the challenge flag. Well, that’s an NFL thing. I didn’t have to throw a flag to get a review. But he was right. Touchdown. Texas A&M answered with a score to tie the game early in the fourth quarter. Finally, with three minutes left, Henry Josey delivered the final blow, a 57-yard touchdown that put us ahead for good 28–21. Fans stormed the field after the win. “Georgia on My Mind” played in the stadium while we celebrated a chance to play for the SEC championship in Alabama.

  In the week leading up to the game, the Washington job became open again and my name drifted into media reports as a possible target. My agent, John, had contact with the Husky administration, but at this point in my career, I knew I would retire at Mizzou. I wasn’t going anywhere—except to Atlanta.

  Auburn would be the opponent thanks to a wild win over Alabama in the Iron Bowl, the infamous “Kick Six” game when Auburn returned a missed field goal 100 yards for the deciding touchdown on the final play of the game. Auburn entered the championship game with a lot of buzz because of that play. We were the newcomers, just in our second year in the conference but already playing on the SEC’s biggest stage in the Georgia Dome.

  If we win in Atlanta, we’re in position to make the BCS national championship game—just like 2007. That year, had we beaten Oklahoma for the Big 12 championship, we would have moved ahead to play Ohio State for the national title. This time around, the stakes were essentially the same. Auburn was No. 3 in the BCS standings. Alabama was No. 4. We were No. 5. With a win over Auburn and an SEC championship, we’d slide up to become the SEC’s highest ranked team in the final BCS standings, the rankings that decided the No. 1– and 2–ranked teams to play for the national title.

  Later that night, No. 2 Ohio State lost to Michigan State for the Big Ten title, which opened a spot in the title game for someone to face No. 1 Florida State for the BCS championship. That meant the SEC champion was all but locked into the game, played that year at the Rose Bowl.

  But first, we had to win our game in Atlanta.

  Auburn was a dynamic offensive team running Gus Malzahn’s system. We scored 42 points but got caught up in a shootout. They just played better than us. We had played well defensively all year long but we couldn’t get those stops against Auburn’s running game. We had one of the best offensive performances in the history of the SEC championship game. But Auburn was even better in a 59–42 win.

  I told our players we had to hold our head high. We were still going to a good bowl game, and just like 2007, we couldn’t let our disappointment with losing the conference championship game affect our enthusiasm and preparation for the next step. We headed back to the Cotton Bowl to play Oklahoma State, but this time the game was set for Cowboys Stadium, Dallas’ brand new NFL stadium in Arlington.

  In the Cotton Bowl, we stuck with Franklin when he struggled early. It was similar to Brad Smith’s final game in the Independence Bowl. I could have gone to the young backup, but Franklin was still under control in his final college game. Henry scored the go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter, and Michael Sam and Shane Ray kept us on top for good with the last great play of a great season. Michael Sam had a quiet game up to that point, but he stripped the Cowboys quarterback on their final drive and Shane raced the ball 73 yards for a touchdown, good for a 41–31 win.

  I didn’t realize until after the game, but I passed Don Faurot as Missouri’s career wins leader with the victory. It was just an honor to be mentioned in the same breath as Coach Faurot and Dan Devine. It was a 12-win season for us. We finished No. 5 in the final polls.

  Our strong finish took me back to a meeting we had in the preseason. Mike Alden came to talk to the staff. He told me I needed 12 wins to become the school’s all-time leader. Brian Jones, our running backs coach, piped up during the meeting: “Let’s do it this year. Why not?”

  He wasn’t kidding. He was dead serious. We were coming off a five-win season in the toughest conference in America, and here was one of my assistants suggesting we win 12 games the next season? Who could have imagined such a season would unfold? We were picked sixth in the SEC East preseason poll—and finished No. 5 in the country.

  After the season, Kony Ealy, another great defensive lineman to come out of our program, decided to enter the NFL draft a year early. Henry made the same decision. He had recovered from that horrific knee injury two years earlier and rushed for 1,100 yards and 16 touchdowns. He had one more year of eligibility, but he was scared to death he’d get hurt again and n
ever have a chance to play in the NFL. I was bothered that he made the decision without talking to me. That never happened before with any other player. Those decisions are personal, and that’s why I always made those conversations about the player and his future. I never told players how their decisions were going to impact the team. If I thought they were crazy to leave school, I would tell them. I think Henry probably didn’t want to hear my opinion, because I thought he should have stayed another year. But once I talked to him after he made the announcement, I understood how he came to his decision. With everything he had gone through with that knee injury, and such a grueling recovery process, he was worried this was his chance to make it in the NFL. Unfortunately he didn’t get drafted but bounced around a few rosters during the preseason.

  • • •

  We lost some important players from the 2013 team—Franklin, Josey, Sam, Ealy, E.J. Gaines, L’Damian Washington, Marcus Lucas, Justin Britt—but we had some experienced playmakers coming back, including Dorial Green-Beckham, our leading receiver from the 2013 team. Unfortunately, Dorial had some problems off the field. In January, he was arrested for drug possession in Springfield but was never charged. In the spring, there was an incident in Columbia where he was accused of assaulting a female. The alleged victim decided against pressing charges, so he was never charged or even arrested. But we had the police report and all the details. The media had the police report, too. The allegations were all right there. We suspended Dorial while we looked more closely at the situation. Ultimately, I had to remove him from our program.

  Unlike other incidents we had with athletes in the past, in this case I had multiple people whom I trusted dearly tell me what happened that night of the incident. It was not acceptable behavior. Had no one told me what really happened, I wouldn’t have had enough information to discipline Dorial. But I knew the details. I had to do what was right for him, our team, and the integrity of the program.