KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- And so a crazy college football season ends
with one last crazy scenario, so close you can almost smell it. With a
win on Saturday in the SEC championship -- and some help from Michigan
State or Duke -- Missouri can stake a claim for a berth in the Bowl
Championship Series national title game.
But first things, first, Chase Daniel warns.
And
the first thing on this particular table is an 11-1 Auburn squad with
some big-time pelts of its own up on that big, bad War Eagle wall.
"They're
already in the (BCS title) conversation," Daniel, the former Mizzou
quarterback and current Kansas City Chiefs backup, told
FOXSportsKansasCity.com. "If (the Tigers) can just take care of
business, let the rest take care of itself. If it's meant to be, they
will (do it).
"I think their No. 1 focus, and what Coach (Gary)
Pinkel is going to say all week, is, '(Let's) go down and try to beat
Auburn.'"
Daniel has been down this path before, only his led to
San Antonio. As a junior in 2007, Daniel's Tigers were 11-1 and No. 1 in
the country, fresh off a historic win over then-No. 2 Kansas at
Arrowhead Stadium, when they met Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game on
Dec. 1 of that year.
The Sooners won, 38-17, handing Mizzou its
second loss, a setback that also cost the Tigers a shot at a BCS
at-large berth. Mizzou instead dropped to the Cotton Bowl, where it
thumped Arkansas, 38-7.
That team finished the season ranked
fourth in the AP poll and ranked fifth by the coaches. Daniel's Tigers
the next year went 10-4 and finished 19th in the AP poll, 16th in the
coaches after a win over Northwestern in the Alamo Bowl.
Daniel
set nearly every major quarterbacking record at Mizzou from 2005-08,
ending his collegiate career as the Tigers' all-time leader in lifetime
passing yardage (12,515), passing touchdowns (101) and passing
efficiency (148.9). His Tigers won the Big 12 North in '07 and '08, but
were beaten by Oklahoma in the conference title game on both occasions.
On Nov. 9, redshirt freshman quarterback Maty Mauk tied Daniel's school
record by throwing five touchdown passes against Kentucky.
"It
was awesome to see, man," Daniel said of the SEC East champions. "(I'm)
just so prideful for us, for every Mizzou alum out there.
"For them to go out and do what they have done in the second year of the SEC is pretty incredible."
It
might have been Pinkel's most incredible coaching job, too, given the
dance card -- which included trips to Georgia and at Vanderbilt; Mizzou
won at both places -- and the fact that the Tigers were coming off a 5-7
campaign in 2012 that had left fans and pundits disgruntled.
"I
think the jury's still out on that one," Daniel said of the comparisons
to his era. "We'll see what happens (this) week and from here on out.
Who knows what can happen?"
In the meantime, it makes for some
pretty good dessert talk, doesn't it? According to
Sports-Reference.com's Simple Rating System, which takes into account
point differential and strength of schedule, the current Tigers are in
the middle of the third-best season in school history (SRS: 21.11) and
the program's finest in 44 years; the '07 team was seventh-best (SRS:
16.77).
The site ranks Dan Devine's 1969 Orange Bowl team (23.71)
and 1960 Orange Bowl squad (21.88) as the two best seasons ever at
Mizzou.
Well, the best to this point, anyway. Check again after Saturday night.
"You
can't worry about outside influences," Daniel warned. "You've got to
worry about what is at hand. And right now, it's Auburn."
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com.
