ASSOCIATED PRESS Pinkel pauses while speaking about his players during a news conference Monday, November 16, 2015, in Columbia, Missouri.
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Missouri announced Friday that Pinkel would resign at the end of the season due to health reasons. They had added incentive from an unfortunate announcement that Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel was forced to make the day before the game.
So it should not come as a surprise that as Pinkel prepares to step away as coach of Missouri at season’s end, he’ll miss one thing above everything else. “I tell recruits and players, ‘You’re going to have my phone number forever, and I’m going to have yours.’ They can call me anytime they need me for anything, and that’s certainly what I’ll miss the most“. Amid chants of “Gary Pinkel” from the Arrowhead Stadium crowd, the Tigers swarmed Pinkel with their own cheers of “G.P., G.P., hey!”
“It hasn’t set in”, Pinkel said.
Pinkel told his players to go to class rather than attend the news conference, which was open to the public.
“My players and coaches had to be the first ones to know, and I was really upset about that”, Pinkel said. They’ve said a few of the nicest things to me. Missouri’s last 10-win season before Pinkel was in 1960. Who will take the reigns as the next head coach?
“I’ve told a few people if I’m coaching when I’m 70, shoot me, OK?” he said.
Pinkel supported his players’ decision to take a stand, a decision that drew mixed reactions from MU’s fan base. “We’re going to have to find a way to dig ourselves out of a slumping-type performance”. “I don’t know when that’s going to happen”.
The Tigers, who earlier in the week were part of a boycott that helped lead to the resignation of the school president, rallied with two fourth-quarter touchdowns to beat BYU 20-16 – and give Pinkel a victory one day after announcing he will leave the team.
The situation had become so emotional on campus that members of the football team even announced they would boycott team activities.
“I made the decision in May, after visiting with my family, that I wanted to keep coaching, as long as I felt good and had the energy I needed”, Pinkel said.
As the final seconds ticked away on one of the most tumultuous weeks in school history, Gary Pinkel stood in the middle of his players Saturday night and did something most unexpected.
The Cougars came into this pivotal game riding a two-game winning streak with a slight asterisk: Neither of the teams BYU played were Power 5 Conference teams, the likes of which BYU (now 7-3) hadn’t played since that pivotal loss at UCLA.
“They are really hurt”, Mendenhall said about his players after the game.
Here are five of the top candidates to watch in the upcoming search for Missouri athletic director Mack Rhoades, as well as a few wild cards to consider. He’s had a few historical games here, so I just feel like we wanted it that much more for him.
Pinkel is the only active coach who boasts the career record for wins at two FBS programs – Missouri (118-71) and Toledo (73-37-3) – and he’s one of three former SEC coaches with that distinction, joining Bear Bryant (Kentucky, Alabama) and Steve Spurrrier (Florida, South Carolina).
A handful of questions loom for the Mizzou football program.
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Going into the game, Missouri ranked No. 125 in the nation (out of 128 teams) in third-down conversion percentage at 29 percent.
