Missouri’s win over Tennessee last season was one of the biggest of Eliah Drinkwitz’ four years as head coach and a defining win of the Tigers resurgent 11-2 (6-2 SEC) season that saw them knock off Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl.
After Tennessee defeated Missouri in all of Drinkwitz’ first three seasons in Columbia, including by a combined 128-48 in Josh Heupel’s first two seasons at Tennessee, Drinkwitz made sure to rub in the victory.
He told Heupel during the post game handshake line that Missouri “stands on business, Josh” and told CBS that Missouri’s defense “kicked their (Tennessee’s) ass.”
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Now with the 2024 season less than a month away, Missouri is getting another jab in against Tennessee as well as a handful of other programs in the state of Tennessee.
Meeting with the local media on Tuesday night, Missouri defensive back TreVez Johnson wore a shirt that said “Missouri Football: Tennessee State Champions” with the logos for Memphis, MTSU, Vanderbilt and Tennessee inside an outline of the state of Tennessee.
#Mizzou safety TreVez Johnson came to media day in his Tennessee state champs shirt pic.twitter.com/ZBr404RWr7
— Power Mizzou (@PowerMizzoucom) August 6, 2024
Missouri’s 2023 football team earned wins against all four teams, the four biggest football programs in the Volunteer State, over the course of its 11-2 season. The Tigers knocked off MTSU 23-19 in week two, Memphis 34-27 in week four, Vanderbilt 38-21 in week six and Tennessee 36-7 in mid October.
Tennessee isn’t the only school that Missouri is trolling with the shirts but the Volunteer program is the best in the state and the only one that had previous success against Drinkwitz and Missouri. Ironically, the Tigers’ home win over Tennessee was their most lopsided victory of the four matchups.
The Vols and Tigers don’t meet on the field during the 2024 season in the first year of the expanded, 16-team Southeastern Conference so Tennessee won’t have a chance for revenge this season. Missouri expects to have a strong team again this season and is returning star quarterback Brady Cook and receiver Luther Burden. The league’s media picked Missouri to finish sixth and Tennessee to finish seventh in the conference this season and the Tigers do boast an incredibly favorable schedule.
In the 12 years that Missouri was in the SEC and the two teams met on the field every single season, they split the matchups 6-6 though Tennessee has won four of the last five matchups.
2 Responses
What Tennessee did to Missouri was Bush League. Running up the score a couple times unnecessarily. So you can’t really blame Missouri even though the victory was not as lopsided as it needed to be. It’s nice to see Tennessee beginning to become as good as they’ve always claim they were without any proof. But you failed to mention the Missouri in the 12 years that they’ve been there have played in two SEC championship games while Tennessee hasn’t played in one. And Missouri will probably play in one this year too
“.. so Tennessee won’t have a chance for revenge this season.”
This isn’t true, though unlikely, both teams could meet in the SEC championship or in the playoffs. So, yes, I’m telling you there’s a chance.