This spring, when Missouri graduates its class of seniors, it will be the final group to ever attend the school during Gary Pinkel’s 15-year tenure as Missouri’s coach. The final connection to the man who took the Tigers to their highest highs will be gone from Columbia, and even though time marches on, nostalgia is still entrenched.
In Missouri, Pinkel’s tenure—the elevation from the Big 12’s basement all the way to the SEC—is still the glory days. There’s 2007, when Chase Daniel was a Heisman finalist and Mizzou was, for one blissful week, the country’s No. 1 team, and 2013 and ’14, when Missouri improbably won consecutive SEC East titles.