After examining the Nouveau Riche of Illinois and Kansas, it seemed inevitable that SMQ would work its way around to Mizzou's newfound fortune.

I can only assume this is in the works for tomorrow's Mizzou Links, but I haven't seen it linked anywhere else and thought it was an interesting enough read to open up a diary for comment before the morning calls.

A couple of interesting snippets -

On legitimacy:

They bookended the regular season with wins over two teams that ended in the BCS (Illinois and Kansas). By margin and degree of difficulty, Missouri was as much a non-flukey powerhouse as anybody.

On the offense:

Daniel is an accurate, first-rate decision maker, and as long as he's well-protected - and Pinkell's system continues to make defenses pay for their aggressiveness with a lot of screens, misdirection and a deceptive, trap-heavy running game - the offense might as well be on high-scoring autopilot.

On 2008:

In the losses to Oklahoma, Mizzou gave up 41 points the first time and 38 in the Big 12 Championship. In the other eleven games, it was the stingiest in the league. If scoring is steady - it should be, based on personnel - those numbers only need to come down a little to make the Tigers legit mythical championship contenders. It could have been them, after all, rather than LSU, playing Ohio State if not for the flop against OU in St. Louis [sic].