COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri was a legitimate national title contender.
It wasn’t in a hypothetical or what-if world. It wasn’t even about whether the Tigers could win the requisite football games to reach that status. It was about technicalities, and in 1960, Mizzou had as good a case for winning a national championship as anyone.
The hang-up was that the college football authorities of the time had their eyes on different champions. At the time, the sport was more than half a century from settling the title matter with a playoff, and the NCAA wasn’t willing to weigh in, leading to varying opinions on who was the best in the nation.