Deja vu is an interesting concept. Having a sudden rush of emotions brought on by being in a familiar situation is a bizarre experience. During the school year, I experience deja vu roughly every four weeks, when a test week rolls around and the night before a test all I can think about is how I should’ve started studying earlier than 2 a.m.
Last Saturday afternoon, as I watched Missouri lose to the lowly Hoosiers of Indiana in a game Mizzou was favored to win by 17 points, I felt something I hadn’t felt since Oct. 26, 2013. That was the day Mizzou lost to South Carolina in a game that will forever be remembered as when Andrew Baggett missed a 24-yard field goal in the second overtime.
Last week, I wrote about what a great time it is to be a Mizzou fan right now and how we shouldn’t take this season for granted. What I didn’t write about is how we need to root with caution, because Mizzou sports have a history of brutally carving out your heart when you least expect it — from last year’s South Carolina game, to Tyus Edney’s coast-to-coast layup in the NCAA Tournament in 1995, to The Fifth Down game in 1990.
Sports teams in Missouri have a lot of diversity as far as success goes. The Cardinals are one of the most successful franchises in MLB history, the Blues went to the playoffs 25 straight seasons, and the Royals and Rams are infamously bad. Mizzou is somewhere in the middle of those teams.
That is the challenge of being a Mizzou fan.
This week, the Tigers and ESPN’s College GameDay will head to Columbia, South Carolina, to open up their Southeastern Conference schedule against No. 13 South Carolina. Mizzou could very easily walk out victorious. It wouldn’t surprise me at all. Mizzou is a well-balanced team with talent on both sides of the ball, and I’m confident Gary Pinkel will not allow the Indiana loss to derail the season. It’s just that with Mizzou, you never know when the next Norfolk State is going to sneak up and sucker punch you in the crotch.
As I rose from my bed on Sunday, the day after Mizzou’s loss to Indiana, I turned on my television to watch my Rams find a new way to break my heart, this time by blowing a three(!) touchdown lead at _home_ to the Dallas Cowboys. Usually when the Rams do this, I can find solace knowing that my Tigers took care of business the day before. Instead, I sat in my cozy reclining loveseat wallowing in both my decision to be a Rams fan and my decision to attend Mizzou.
The gravity of the Mizzou loss really set in at this point. No, it hadn’t ruined our chances of winning the SEC or the national championship, but it is without question one of the worst losses in program history. (Indiana had lost to the mighty Falcons of Bowling Green the previous Sunday.) I need to stress, though, that I don’t want my passionate following of readers to lose faith. I just want you to remember I told you to root with caution when Baggett misses a game-winning field goal next week.
