Pinkel points to an apathy-free future
He’s a loyal Tiger. He’s our man. He’s not going anywhere.
That was the general idea about Gary Pinkel before the holidays, but now it’s more than an idea. It’s a signature on the dotted line.
Mizzou announced a new five-year contract for Pinkel (pictured at right) on Sunday, Dec. 23, no doubt making for a merrier Christmas for the coach. Including base pay and other compensation (for things such as football camps, apparel and broadcast shows), his guaranteed yearly compensation jumped from $1.3 million to $1.85 million. In the process, Pinkel went from being the seventh-highest-paid coach in the Big 12 to the third, behind only Texas’ Mack Brown and Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops. His staff also receives an increase, to be divided at his discretion.
What a difference seven seasons make, especially capped with one like 2007. Pinkel — noticeably in pretty happy spirits these days — talks about how different things were for him when he first came to the university.
“One of the things when I took over this job that was a little bit overwhelming was the apathy,” Pinkel said in the week before his contract announcement, “the negativity by media, by fans. You know, you get beat up so much that you just don’t have a very positive fan-base. We had to overcome that. In fact, we had to ignore it.”
Ignorance wasn’t bliss, though. Early on, when he was selling his program on recruiting trips, he was met with apathy, skepticism and worse. This year, in the time he spent recruiting between the Big 12 Championship and the team’s Cotton Bowl practices, he was still selling the program. But now people were buying.
Fans are buying, too. Home attendance averaged more than 60,000 for the first time since 1981. Mizzou’s official ticket allotment for the Cotton Bowl sold out within hours, and all bowl tickets sold out within a day.
A big season and bigger money don’t mean the coach is content, though. His new and returning players in February will get a speech about how they have to be in the title hunt in November every year — and play at a high enough level to capture what they’re hunting.
“I’m not implying in any way that we have arrived, but certainly there’s great pride and enthusiasm for Mizzou football now,” Pinkel said. “We finally did some things that people said Missouri can’t ever do.”
Photo by Shane Epping
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