STARKVILLE, Miss. — Missouri's football team was close to proving that its head coach was right to worry and that his fears were correct.
And then, halfway through the first quarter of the Tigers’ Saturday win at Mississippi State, a scoop and score flipped the whole mood. The kind of start to a game that makes a head coach lose sleep at night yielded to a controlling performance from Mizzou (8-3, 4-3 Southeastern Conference), which held the ball for nearly 42 minutes in a 39-20 victory against the struggling Bulldogs.
Much is often made of the disconnect between what’s said about a college football program outside of it and what the conversations look like inside the locker room.