Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you.
Every word you read of this useless sports blog is another second off your life. Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that
you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think every thing you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told to want?
Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive tailgating and alcohol consumption. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned. – Josh
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You see what I did there? That’s called “lazy writing.” The same type of lazy, pre-manosphere writing that David Fincher’s Fight Club is lampooning. At least I think. I’m not sure if anyone has ever been able to parse his intentions with that one.
I thought about Fight Club a lot while I watched Mizzou trudge its way to a 23-17 double overtime win in Auburn last weekend. Not just because it was bleak and yet strangely exhilarating. I also found it overwhelmingly ugly.
I’m not sure the last time you saw Fight Club, but it’s a nasty film. Content-wise, sure, but also in the way that it looks like someone smeared it with the underside of a subway worker’s boot before hosing it down with some garbage water. It’s all greens and browns and sickly yellows and, when there’s blood, red. It’s kind of disgusting.
But still. Exhilarating.
There’s a cliche we like to use in sports writing that has become a cliche: “They can’t all be pretty.” That’s certainly true of Mizzou Football on Saturday night as they bashed and clanked and whiffed and growled through obscenity on their way to a win that may end up defining their season. Nothing about Mizzou’s game was pretty. The touchdowns they scored were all of the punishing run variety, players falling their way into the endzone while bodies pummeled each other all around. There were no big, beautiful deep balls, no scintillating scrambles that saw Pribula darting to and fro. No Ahmad Hardy beast mode rumbles.
Just the type of fight that David Fincher once encouraged us not to talk about. Twice!
And even though I don’t want to, I will admit that I can’t stop thinking about it.
It’s another cliche, this time of Mizzou Football, that we often catch ourselves saying, “The old Mizzou loses this game.” Part of that is due to the Tigers’ ascendant status in college football. For the past three years, they’ve been one of the best teams in the country and, let’s face it, that leads to a lot of, “wow, the Mizzou of old wouldn’t have done that,” moments. So of course saying that the old Mizzou wouldn’t have been able to waltz into Auburn and leave bruised, bloodied and, ultimately, victorious. The old Mizzou would have dropped after the first haymaker.
Even still, I think there’s some truth in that statement — the one about “the old Mizzou” — even within the confines of the past few years. It’s one thing to have a special season where you finish in the Top 10 and knock off a blue blood. It’s another to follow that season up with another Top 20 finish. But it’s entirely another to lose a lot of the talent that got you there and still elevate to the next level. The vast majority of football programs aren’t in a position to do that. The old Mizzou would’ve stepped back to 5-7 or, at best, 8-4 with a modest bowl win.
This Mizzou, however, doesn’t tap. It doesn’t go limp. It fights until the other team does, though.
This Mizzou team isn’t perfect, and the last two weeks, maybe against the two most talented teams the Tigers have played this year, have exposed some of those flaws. The offense probably isn’t as high-flying as we first assumed. The secondary still has issues. Beau Pribula is in a slump and Ahmad Hardy has hit the skids against some really good defenses. Old Mizzou teams would’ve crumbled.
But Eli Drinkwitz’s 2025 Tigers are tired of being a statistic in the confines of their own history. They’re out to write a new story. A better one. A one without “atta boys” and “at least you tried’s.” Mizzou doesn’t want to be the middle child of college football history anymore.
It wants to be the guy that you don’t want to fight when you show up to Fight Club. The one that makes you a little scared. The one that eventually kicks your teeth in. And at times, it’s going to be awful to watch.
So long as you come out on top? I’m guessing most people will still find it weirdly exciting.
So bring it on, Vandy. You’ve met us at a very strange time in our program’s life.
For beating the hell out of Auburn while simultaneously being beaten the hell out of, Mizzou gets 4 out 5 five soap bars. Think I’m being too generous? Why don’t you fight me over it? No shirt, no shoes.
