When Cole Feuerbacher was little, he didn't think about Missouri State football.
"It was kind of irrelevant, almost," Feuerbacher said. "The Bears were playing but no one talked about it. It wasn't really a thing."
That all changed in recent years when Bobby Petrino was hired as the Bears' head coach in 2020. He immediately led the Bears to their first two postseason appearances since 1990 and created a buzz around the program that it hadn't had in decades.
Feuerbacher noticed, as did his friends. The likes of West Plains' Heston Miller, Kickapoo's Andrew Link and Reeds Spring's Caden Wiest committed with the hopes of bringing a championship to southwest Missouri.