Nick King photo

Missouri seniors Chase Daniel (10) and Tommy Saunders (84) suffered a dispiriting loss to Kansas last weekend at Arrowhead Stadium. Tonight’s Big 12 championship game against Oklahoma offers a chance at redemption.

A year ago this week, Chase Daniel was pumping his fist at us from the cover of Sports Illustrated. The headline read, "Mizzou, That’s Who." The Tigers were No. 1 in the nation and coming off the greatest victory in school history over the previously unbeaten Kansas Jayhawks. They were one win away from the national championship game.

On the eve of the Big 12 championship game in San Antonio, there might not have been a better time to be a Missouri football fan. The margaritas flowed on a warm night, and the shouts of "M-I-Z … Z-O-U" bounced back and forth across the Riverwalk. What greater joy could there be than unexpected, unprecedented success and the promise of even more delicious rewards?

Now we’ve reached the verge of another Big 12 championship game, against the same Oklahoma Sooners who derailed the dream last year. Although Missouri’s key players are largely the same, the storyline is not nearly so easily packaged and the enthusiasm of Tiger Nation is far more muted, as evidenced by 8,000 unsold tickets for tonight’s game at Arrowhead Stadium.

This time, the Tigers began the year on the Sports Illustrated cover but played themselves out of the national limelight with losses to Oklahoma State and Texas and ultimately a startling defeat to a mediocre Kansas team. They stand 9-3. That’s quite good by Missouri’s historic standards, but even 12 games in, the season seems somehow incomplete and unsatisfying. With the best collection of talent to pass through these parts in nearly three decades, they haven’t gone toe-to-toe with a heavyweight opponent and won, unless you count Nebraska, and I’m not sure you should count Nebraska.

Tonight is the last opportunity, and it is a doozy. There are teams that can beat you, and teams that can do something more than that. When you play Oklahoma, the cover charge to enter the fourth quarter in contention is 42 points. You should be safe if you can hang 70 on the Sooners by game’s end, but you might want 77 just to be sure. If this is a heavyweight bout, it is like one of those Mike Tyson fights from the late 1980s and early ’90s. The reward is great, but decapitation is a legitimate concern. What the Tigers don’t know yet is whether they’re about to play the role of Marvis Frazier or Buster Douglas.

Missouri is a 17-point underdog for a game in its home state. To tell you how far the Tigers have fallen in the bookies’ estimation, they were just six-point underdogs when they played at No. 1 Texas on Oct. 18.

Usually, when a team is given so little chance to win, it’s said to have nothing to lose. That’s not quite the case here. Even with a loss, MU would get a trip to the Alamo Bowl and a chance to beat Iowa or Northwestern and finish with 10 wins. That would be a fun final chapter to the careers of Daniel, Chase Coffman, William Moore, etc. But to make this season truly special, it is Big 12 title or bust.

On Monday, Coach Gary Pinkel was musing about the fine line between 9-3 and 11-1 - as coaches of teams on the wrong side of the fine line are apt to do.

"You’re 9-3 and disappointed," he said. "We’ve made a lot of progress at Missouri when that happens."

True. Such is the punishment for raising the bar of expectations. But given that Missouri returned 16 starters from last season and its schedule got easier - Illinois and Kansas declined markedly from a year ago, and there was no nonconference road game against an SEC opponent this time around - does Missouri need to beat Oklahoma for the season to be a success?

When asked that question Monday, Pinkel paused for a beat.

"Well, what’s a success?" he said. "If you don’t win the Big 12 championship, you were unsuccessful? I would suggest that would not be fair."

It’s a subjective matter, to be sure. Few would argue with the claim that Big 12 South teams Texas and Texas Tech had great seasons without even making it to the conference championship game. Missouri certainly had a successful season last year without winning the Big 12 title. But so much was expected of the Tigers this year - from within and without - and they haven’t delivered. At least not yet.

Why is Missouri entering this Big 12 championship game ranked No. 19 instead of No. 1? Statistically, there is one reason for the slippage: turnover margin. The Tigers are plus-1 this year after being plus-13 in 2007. With the same quarterback, 10 of 11 defensive starters back and a coach with a history of winning the turnover battle, there was no reason to expect problems in this category.

Some write off the yearly fluctuations in turnovers to luck, but usually there is more to it than that.

On the first drive against Kansas, Daniel forced the ball to a double-covered Tommy Saunders, and it was intercepted. Last year, Saunders was Missouri’s fifth option - current NFL rookie Will Franklin was the fourth - and never drew that kind of defensive attention. But with Coffman on the sidelines, the Jayhawks could afford to focus on Jeremy Maclin and Saunders.

Missouri’s embarrassment of riches at receiver has dwindled through graduation and injury. All-America tight end Martin Rucker and Franklin are gone to the NFL, Coffman has been grounded by turf toe and Danario Alexander is hobbling around on one good knee. There were times against KU when both Coffman and Maclin were sidelined with injuries, leaving Missouri’s receiver corps south of ordinary. Ordinary receivers don’t get open, and when passes are forced into tight coverage, interceptions happen.

Defensively, Missouri has missed the lone senior starter from last year, nose tackle Lorenzo Williams, more than anyone could have expected. He could generate an interior pass rush. Other than the occasional Stryker Sulak sack off the edge, the Tigers have generally magnified their secondary’s shortcomings with a weak rush.

Beyond that, defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus probably outthought himself with his use of Moore, who intercepted eight passes last year and one this season. I get the idea behind it. Because so many teams run spread offenses, using the 230-pound Moore as a hybrid linebacker/safety allows the Tigers to play a nickel defense without sacrificing their ability to stop the run.

But the upshot is that competent linebackers such as Luke Lambert and Van Alexander spend most of the game on the sidelines while confused safeties botch things royally in the secondary. We’ll never know, but I suspect if Moore was back there playing free safety, Missouri wouldn’t rank anywhere near last in the Big 12 in pass defense. That ranking is a sobering thought as MU prepares for one of the best offenses in college football history.

In the dissection of what went wrong, you can’t ignore what went right. Missouri made key plays late against upset-minded Illinois and Baylor and absolutely dominated Nebraska and Colorado. When they avoided interceptions, the Tigers could tilt the scoreboard. And you have to figure that any offense with Daniel, Maclin and Coffman has at least a puncher’s chance tonight.

"We’re going to take a shot at this," Pinkel said. "We’re excited about the opportunity to do it. If I could be here at this time the rest of my career every single year, I would be the happiest guy in America, because it’s hard to be here."

Harder still to win here. But at the end of a year of too many missed opportunities, it will take a monumental upset to make this a season to remember.

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