COLUMBIA, MO. • As somber as he appeared all season, Missouri football coach Barry Odom walked out of Missouri’s locker room at NRG Stadium on Dec. 27 having just watched his team relapse in the Texas Bowl.
Rather than add some credibility to their seven-win regular season with a victory over Texas, the Tigers turned back the clock to September and played the kind of football that sabotaged the team’s start to the year. Costly and careless mistakes haunted Odom’s Tigers against the Longhorns — and perhaps lent credence to the popular criticism that Mizzou owed its success to a favorable schedule more than anything else.