Missouri

Missouri joined the SEC in 2012 over sustained skepticism — too small a brand, too thin a roster, too soft a tradition for the league's grind. The Tigers promptly won back-to-back SEC East titles in 2013 and 2014, the second and third years of the move, and answered the argument without a press conference. That sequence — the doubted bet that returned the answer so cleanly — is the essential Missouri football fact, the proof case the program points to when the national conversation moves on without mentioning Columbia.

Elisha Drinkwitz has delivered three straight strong seasons and built the program's most stable modern run, but 2025 was a step back: 8-5 (4-4 SEC), a defense that ranked among the nation's stoutest but an offense that couldn't finish, ending in a 13-7 Gator Bowl loss to Virginia. Drinkwitz enters year seven with a base that has bought in fully and an internal fracture that's been quiet but hasn't disappeared — the faction content that Mizzou is finally a real SEC winner versus the faction that wants an outright SEC title before it declares the move a full success. The 2007 team reached No. 1 and lost the Big 12 title game to Oklahoma with a national championship in view; that's the standing definition of Missouri's almost.

The 2026 question is whether a Drinkwitz team can get back over the threshold that separates good-SEC-program from SEC-contender. The SEC East is open enough. The defense has been a reliable foundation. What Mizzou needs is an offense that doesn't disappear in November, and a signature win over a team the league actually argues about — the kind of result that moves the conversation rather than confirming a stable floor.