A four leaf clover. A horseshoe in your pocket. A rabbit’s foot on a keychain. A rub of the green. A heads up penny.
However you want to define the unquantifiable, damn-near-spiritual factor that accompanies all championship teams on their way to glory… the fact is that they all need it. A few less injuries, a rival slipping on a banana peel, a bounce of the ball off someone’s helmet, the opposing coach being too conservative with a timeout. Every championship story is littered with the remains of lucky
charms, as much as they may or may not want to admit it.
And if Mizzou wants to do the unprecedented in 2025, they’ll need a whole lot of lucky charms.
That may seem like a slight against a program that’s currently riding a hot streak matched only twice in its history. It may feel like an insult to a team that Eli Drinkwitz has publicly hailed as “his most talented.” It may sound like I’m doubting Corey Batoon’s defense, which looks CFP-quality, or Kirby Moore’s offense, which is stacked to the gills with Sunday-level playmakers.
Really, I’m not. I’m just facing the facts. Mizzou needs luck. It’s always needed luck. And it will continue to need luck if it wants to do the unthinkable by banking its third straight 10-win season… or reaching the College Football Playoff… or, god forbid…
No, we won’t go there. Saying it out loud would be unlucky.
On last week’s Before the Box Score, the Nathan’s played the schedule game to determine where they think the Tigers will end up by the dropping of the ball in late December. And while you need to listen to the full podcast to get their predictions — like, subscribe, you know the drill — let’s just say a common theme of their exercise is trying to figure out the swing games.
While notoriously hard to pin down, you could generously count as many as six swing games on Mizzou’s schedule for the 2025 season. And while we can’t put true percentages on Mizzou’s chances in each individual game until the season bears out, we can look at a few stats to gauge how the Tigers will fare:
- Home teams generally win about 60 percent of football games.
- Betting favorites in close matchups (between 3.5 and 7 points) win about 65 percent of the time.
- Four out of Mizzou’s six “swing” games in 2025 come on the road.
- Mizzou is 8-15 in true road games under Eli Drinkwitz, a winning percentage of just under 35 percent.
- Before calculating any of the above into the mix, Mizzou has a basic 14.3 percent chance of winning all six of those swing games. So we’re already starting at a low probability.
Understanding that it’s never good to count your checks before they’re hatched, the other six games on Mizzou’s schedule feel like a 5-1 outcome. So you’re looking at a variance of anywhere from 11-1 to 5-7, with the likely outcome probably falling somewhere in the middle.
So yeah, no disrespect to Eli Drinkwitz and what he’s built in Columbia. But he better be blowing on those dice before he rolls them out on Thursday night.
Of course, it’s also said that good teams can make their own luck. And we have enough of a sample size to see that Drinkwitz has done something right in that regard. Under Drink, the Tigers are 17-8 in one score games, a bonkers number considering one-score games can almost be considered a toss-up. For whatever reason, the Tigers under Drinkwitz have shown an ability to close things out, by hook or by crook.
But, you know, is it fair to wonder if that number might regress to the mean a little bit this season? Or does Drinkwitz really have the special sauce that keeps his teams cooking in tight contests. Whatever it is, add it to the list of things to consider for those swing games.
And finally, have we considered the luck of other teams in this matter? It stands to reason that a few of these teams the Tigers will square up with in swing games might have more injuries or less momentum than Mizzou when they meet. But what about those that have pleased the injury gods, the ones that have benefited from a few banana skins of their own throwing?
This has been a lot of hypotheticals, what-ifs, and have-you-thought-abouts, but I believe the point stands. Outside of the unscientific assumption that the Tigers have a 5-1 schedule with six toss-up games included, the level of variance depends heavily on what sort of bounces the Tigers get over the coming months. Yes, some of it will be the talent Drinkwitz and his staff have put on the field. Yes, some of it will be the culture they built. Yes, some of it will involve the coaching or the mental fortitude or this, that, and the other.
But every team that’s ever won anything of note — to the college football world, or to themselves as a program — has benefitted from a little kiss from Lady Luck. And the bigger the goals, the longer the kiss you need.
So stock up on rabbits feet, go hunting for those clovers and leave those tails-up pennies on the ground where you find them. Oh, and avoid cracked mirrors. Mizzou’s got big ambitions, personally and nationally, in 2025. And they’ll need a touch from the fickle college football gods to reach them.
