100 Things Missouri Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die
256
100 Things Missouri Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781641251181 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 09/04/2018 |
| Series: | 100 Things...Fans Should Know Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Jut-Jawed Thin Man from Mountain Grove
In 1995 Don Faurot's heart gave out, but for parts of eight decades, it belonged to Mizzou. Faurot wasn't the University of Missouri's first football coach. He doesn't have the most wins or the greatest winning percentage in team history. But his legacy transcends that of any coach who came before or after.
The pride of Mountain Grove, Missouri, Faurot built Missouri football into a championship program in the 1930s and '40s, but a win-loss record could never solely capture his contributions to the state's flagship school — and the game of football. Not that Faurot's was too shabby at 101–79–10 over 19 seasons.
Faurot was one of the sport's great innovators, a visionary who gave life to an offensive philosophy that later won countless games for other coaches for generations. He was a longtime administrator with a keen business sense and acquired knack for hiring coaches. He was, if nothing else, a Mizzou lifer, a man tethered to his football program, his athletics department, and his school that he helped nurture for decades. And by all accounts, Faurot led with unmatched grace and class.
Upon Faurot's retirement from coaching after the 1956 season, the New York Times suggested that the name of the split T be changed to the Faurot T as an homage to its "originator and strategist." But despite the Gray Lady's hopes, the nickname for Faurot's offensive creation never stuck. Others adopted the option-based system and took it to greater heights on the national scale, but those who knew Faurot best could fully appreciate his mark on college football at large, not just at Mizzou.
"To this day, if someone was capable of doing this, if they gave me 22 players, no assistant coaches, no telephone, just 22 players and to play another coach with 22 players of equal ability, the one coach I would fear the most was Don Faurot," Hall of Fame Mizzou coach Dan Devine told the Columbia Daily Tribune when Faurot died in 1995. "He could coach every position."
Faurot's family moved around to different parts of Missouri during his childhood and for a while lived in Columbia. Faurot, who lost parts of two fingers on his right hand during a farming accident as a young man, would find his way to Rollins Field to watch the Tigers practice during his time in Columbia. The Faurots later moved back to Mountain Grove, which didn't have a high school football team, but Don wound up back at Mizzou for college, where he played baseball and basketball, ran track, and eventually joined the football team, lettering in 1923–24.
After college, Faurot got into coaching and spent nine years at Kirksville Teachers College, a school later known as Northeast Missouri State and then Truman State. Faurot won 63 games in nine years there, including a 26–6 takedown of Missouri in 1933 in Columbia.
Faurot had turned down an offer to join Missouri's staff as an assistant after the 1931 season, but in 1935, he returned to his alma mater to revive a program that had collapsed under the failed Frank Carideo regime. Three weeks and three wins into his first season, Faurot had eclipsed Carideo's victory total from the previous three seasons. The Tigers improved immediately on Faurot's watch but didn't really take off until quarterback Paul Christman's arrival in 1938. The centerpiece to Faurot's offense, Christman was Missouri's first national star, leading the Tigers to the 1939 Big Six Conference title. Christman finished among the Heisman Trophy's top five vote-getters in both 1939 and 1940. Faurot always credited Christman for turning around a program that hadn't won a conference championship since 1927.
But Faurot figured out how to sustain the Tigers' success after Christman, who would remain the school's most prolific passer for nearly 30 years after his departure. Without a capable passer on the roster and loads of running backs, Faurot figured his best chance to attack defenses was on the ground. For years he'd used the single-wing offense popularized by Pop Warner. That wouldn't work without a skilled passer. In pro football, George Halas's Chicago Bears were punishing opponents with the T-formation. In the college ranks, Clark Shaughnessy mastered the system at Stanford. In 1940 Halas and Shaughnessy rode the T to championships in the NFL and college football, respectively. The T quickly became the most popular offense at both levels of the sport.
But not at Missouri. Faurot didn't like the T-formation's heavy use of motion. He wanted more space between his linemen to create running lanes for his fleet of backs. And unlike in most other offenses, Faurot's ball carriers would include the quarterback. With wider splits between the linemen — a foot between the center and guards, two feet between the guards and tackles, and cavernous three-foot gaps between the tackles and ends — the quarterback in Faurot's split T would take the snap and have three options on most plays: hand off to a halfback for a quick-hitting plunge up the middle, keep the ball on a sprint down the line and around the corner, or pitch to a trailing tailback who could run around a convoy of blockers or throw downfield to a streaking end. Over time, the split T would evolve into the wishbone, veer, and triple-option attacks that ruled generations of college football.
Defenses had few answers for Faurot's invention as the Tigers led the nation in rushing in 1941 and Tigers running back Bob Steuber led the nation in yards per carry. With Steuber, Harry Ice, and Faurot's endless collection of runners dashing behind star blockers Darold Jenkins and Mike Fitzgerald, Faurot's system was born as the Tigers won consecutive Big Six championships.
Faurot left Missouri during World War II, after the 1942 season, and the split T went with him. While serving as the head coach at Iowa Pre-Flight School during the war, Faurot taught the split T to his assistant coaches, Jim Tatum and Bud Wilkinson. They took the system with them to their subsequent coaching stops, most notably at Maryland and Oklahoma, respectively. Unlike Faurot, both would win national championships running his offense.
But Faurot had already secured his legacy at Missouri by then. He returned to coach the Tigers from 1946 to 1956, though he never won another league title. Faurot resumed his post as athletics director when he returned from the war, a challenge perhaps greater than coaching the Tigers. As AD, Faurot was forced to tackle enormous debt in the athletics department, as much as $500,000 in the early years of his administration. To pay off the debt, Faurot scheduled nonconference road games that paid handsomely, including nine games at Ohio State from 1939 to 1949. The Tigers won just one of those contests, but they helped clear the books and boost a budget that grew from $70,000 in 1935 to $1.7 million when Faurot retired as AD in 1967.
As AD, Faurot handpicked some coaches who would go down as all-time greats at Mizzou: football's Dan Devine, baseball's John "Hi" Simmons, basketball's Sparky Stalcup, and track's Tom Botts. Simmons and Botts both delivered national championships to Mizzou. And like Faurot, Devine and Simmons have athletic facilities named in their honor.
In 1972 the playing surface at Memorial Stadium was named in Faurot's honor and a statue of his likeness was erected outside the north concourse, with the following epitaph, written by St. Louis Post-Dispatch icon and Mizzou historian Bob Broeg:
Here stands the symbol of Ol' Mizzou, famed "Thin Man" from Mountain Grove, a boy who helped build this stadium and a football coach who filled it with victories and fresh hopes. Faurot overcame boyhood mishap that cost him the first two fingers at the middle joint. Gutty, jut-jawed guy lettered in baseball at Missouri, captained the basketball team and punted as a 148-pound linebacker for top-rated 1924 Tigers.
Mastered in agriculture, but never left football. He head-coached Kirksville Teachers nine spectacular seasons and returned in 1935 to Missouri, which was embarrassed in defeat and debt.
Don quickly solved both with vigorous home-state recruiting and manfully overscheduled on the road for bigger receipts. Winning built bowl teams and a need to super-structure the stadium, now Faurot Field.
Old coach's greatest gridiron accomplishment in 19 seasons was his creation of a unique Split-T formation that featured celebrated quarterback option.
Although widely sought, intensely loyal, Coach Faurot never left MU until someone up there wanted another Boy Scout.
Into his 10 decade, Faurot still parked his lawn chair at the Mizzou practice fields in the early 1990s to watch the Tigers go through drills. He never missed a home game and occasionally exercised with the players while maintaining an office at the team facility, across the street from the field that bore his name.
Faurot, inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1961, died in 1995 from congestive heart failure. The patriarch of Mizzou football and a trendsetter for the game at large, Faurot forever changed the school and the sport.
His statue remains a touchstone from Mizzou's past, a meeting place for fans before games — not unlike its bronze peer to the east, Busch Stadium's crouched slugger, Stan Musial — and marks the entrance for every visitor from near and far to the House That Don Built.
"It's hard to imagine one individual who had more of an impact on the University of Missouri and intercollegiate athletics than Don Faurot," Mizzou AD Joe Castiglione once said. "What he did transcends time, and it is something that will virtually last forever."
CHAPTER 2The Storm from Shelbyville
Coach Norm Stewart sat over a bowl of soup on a fall afternoon in 2015 and pondered the question: A hundred years from now, how should I be remembered?
It had been 16 years since Stewart coached his last game at Missouri. With 731 wins on his record and eight conference championships, nothing mattered much beyond the chowder under his nose and his weekend plans with his wife, Virginia.
"Hell, nobody here's going to remember anybody 100 years from now," he said. "You know? I don't worry about that."
Stormin' Norm could still bring the thunder.
"My wife and I both ... she worked and still does — we worked hard."
That's why Stewart, a bit slower but still sharp into his eighties, didn't apologize for spending his winters in Palm Springs or for his family's lavish vacations to Europe or China or Africa. If a friend needled Stewart for his postretirement lifestyle, the coach jabbed back. Stewart said, "I tell him, 'Hey, you son of a bitch, for five years I lived in a stucco house. To get it cool, we had to run water over the top of the roof. My wife raised children and about went crazy because she was confined to our house. You pay your way.'"
For 32 years along the Mizzou sideline, Stewart paid his way with wins, championships and, many nights, peerless coaching as he presided over his alma mater's greatest teams and greatest players. Taking over a program that had badly decayed after his playing days in the 1950s, Stewart guided the Tigers to 634 wins in 32 seasons, eight Big 8 regular-season titles, and six tournament championships. He took 16 teams to the NCAA tournament and produced 29 players drafted by the NBA.
Only a couple goals went unaccomplished during Stewart's celebrated career: the Tigers never reached a Final Four on his watch, let alone won a national championship. As of 2018, there were 21 head coaches who had won 700 Division I games. Only three others failed to make a Final Four.
If that shortcoming bothered Stewart as he reached his eighties, he didn't show it. He said:
This is the woulda, coulda, shoulda deal, but had we won in '76 — [when] we had a good chance to win the national championship — or had we won in '80, I always thought once we knocked down one pin, it would be like winning the Big 8. Once we did that once, then we won eight of them.
Once you do something, and your organization is sound and you've got a good base, you can repeat those things and stay up there. But obviously we never figured out how to win that national championship. I've never been disappointed about that because I had such great players. They were really good. They could play and they understood the game. But more importantly, there are 15 of them that live in [Columbia]. I always told them, "If you're going to live in the town where you played, you better be more than a damn player. You better know how to conduct yourself."
Because where you were from always meant just as much to Stewart as where you were going.
Born in Leonard, Missouri, Stewart grew up in nearby Shelbyville, the youngest of four siblings. His father, Kenneth, worked for Standard Oil. The family was closer to poor than rich. Stewart prefers "disadvantaged." "But we always had a nice home," he said. "I couldn't have asked for a better childhood."
At Shelbyville High, Stewart played basketball for the school's superintendent, C.J. Kessler, the man who convinced Stewart to stay out of trouble and redirect his energy to the basketball court. It paid off with All-State honors and interest from college programs. Kessler tried talking close friend and Indiana coach Branch McCracken into signing Stewart, but the Hoosiers balked. Instead, McCracken suggested Kessler send his star player to Sparky Stalcup at Missouri. "Branch told him to send me to Missouri," Stewart said, "so I came to Missouri."
As simple as that. From 1953 to 1956, Stewart scored more points than all but one player in team history. He also pitched for the baseball team during its 1954 national championship season. Or, as Stewart wrote in his memoir, "I was a thrower on a team that had a great pitching staff."
After a few games with the NBA's St. Louis Hawks, Stewart returned to Missouri to help Stalcup coach the basketball team, which led to a head-coaching offer at Iowa State Teacher's College, later known as Northern Iowa. There in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Stewart won 97 games in six years. "I was happy there," he said.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "100 Things Missouri Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Dave Matter.
Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword Brock Olivo ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
1 The Jut-Jawed Thin Man from Mountain Grove 1
2 The Storm from Shelbyville 6
3 Devine Intervention 14
4 We Do What We Do 20
5 Southern Comfort 24
6 Memorial Stadium and Faurot Field 26
7 Armageddon at Arrowhead 30
8 Eight Big 8 Crowns 32
9 Pitchin' Paul: Football's Dizzy Dean 36
10 Chase Daniel: The Franchise 40
11 A Rivalry Born from War 42
12 Stipo 47
13 A Shooter Ahead of His Time 52
14 Colorado Counts to Five 56
15 Mel West and Norris Stevenson 58
16 Saint Brad 62
17 Leaving a Legacy 66
18 From Dixon to Stardom 68
19 Big Stage, Big Disappointment 71
20 Michael Sam: Courage Under Fire 72
21 Kellen Winslow: Late but Great Bloomer 76
22 One Stinkin' Play 78
23 King City's Finest 81
24 Out of the Coffin 84
25 A.O. 87
26 The Prince of Duke Who Would Be King 90
27 Mizzou's Italian Stallion 94
28 Uncle Al 98
29 Mr. Smith Goes to the Basket 102
30 Perfection Spoiled in 1960 105
31 Johnny Be Good 108
32 The Fixer 112
33 Band-Aid 115
34 Elite but Nevermore 119
35 A True Dual Threat 121
36 Mister Magic 124
37 A Star Shines in the Split T 126
38 The Physics Professor Who Changed Everything 129
39 Devine in '69 132
40 Hearnes Center 135
41 The Catalyst 138
42 Captain Jenks 142
43 "Let's Go Kick Their Ass!" 145
44 Sir Anthony 148
45 Tigers Go Bowling 150
46 The Gainesville Gunner 153
47 Mizzou Arena 154
48 Too Much Time 157
49 Kim Anderson Comes Home 159
50 Ol' Mizzou's Treasured Scribe 162
51 The King of Shake and Bake 164
52 40 Minutes of Hell 2.0 168
53 Missouri's Man in Charge 170
54 Mr. Mizzou 172
55 Tough, Raw-Boned Iowa Farmer 176
56 Faith in Haith 178
57 Lost in the Wilderness 181
58 Battle Royal at Brewer 183
59 Wilder Runs Wild 185
60 The Junkyard Dog 188
61 High Cotton for Tony Temple 191
62 D-Line Zou 193
63 Retired but Not Forgotten 195
64 West Is Best 197
65 "The Cats from Ol' Mizzou" 199
66 Sparky 202
67 To the Victor Go the Spoils 204
68 The Voice 206
69 Mighty Joe Moore 211
70 Truman the Tiger 213
71 Catch Some Rising Stars 215
72 Brewer Fieldhouse 217
73 Motown Tigers 220
74 Winslow Calls for Action in Canton 223
75 You Can Take the Cowboy out of Holts Summit 226
76 Super Bowl Champions 229
77 The Comeback Kid 231
78 A Pioneer on the Hardwood 233
79 Gage Pulls Double Duty 235
80 A Golden Age along the Offensive Line 237
81 The Point Guard from Moss Point 240
82 TVZ 243
83 Braggin' in the Lou 245
84 Larry Drew: Floor Leader 247
85 Keyon and Clarence 249
86 Knock, Knock…It's Mizzou 252
87 Gary Link: The Ambassador 253
88 Phil Pressey: The Playmaker 257
89 We're No. 1 259
90 The Warhorse 261
91 Coach lay and the Hoops Pioneers 263
92 "Fight, Tiger" 265
93 Marching Mizzou 267
94 Barry Odom: From Train Wreck to Conductor 269
95 Corey Tate Beats Buzzer, Crushes Kansas 272
96 Columbia's Downtown Dining Treasures 274
97 The Columns 276
98 Rock M 277
99 The Antlers 278
108 We're Going to Harpo's! 280
Selected Bibliography 283