Mizzou football chosen for the Cotton Bowl. Here’s who they’ll face & when
Happy New Year.
Mizzou football is heading to Dallas.
Nine days after the Tigers’ resounding 10th win of the season — and five days after the College Football Playoff committee handed Missouri a third straight vote of confidence by ranking it No. 9 in the nation — MU got the nod it earned.
Missouri will play in a New Year’s Six Bowl for the first time when it faces Ohio State on Dec. 29 at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, in the Cotton Bowl. The news was announced Sunday during a live selection show on ESPN.
The game will air on ESPN, and kicks off at 7 p.m. Central from Arlington, Texas, in the DFW area.
The Tigers have been to Jerry World in the past decade, defeating Oklahoma State in the 2013 Cotton Bowl, but that was before the CFP era and the introduction of New Year’s Six bowls.
MU coach Eli Drinkwitz’s team has been bowl eligible in each of his four seasons at the helm, but until now it was often by the skin of the Tigers’ teeth.
Mizzou has finished each of the past two regular seasons at 6-6 and was 5-5 in the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign — Drinkwitz’s first in Columbia.
The Tigers lost to Army in the 2021 Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas, and to Wake Forest in the 2022 Gasparilla Bowl in Tampa, Florida. They were scheduled to face Iowa in the 2020 Music City Bowl, but that matchup was canceled due to COVID cases within the MU program.
But the dog days, for one remarkable moment, are done.
The Tigers stormed through their regular-season slate, romping by SEC East rival Tennessee at Faurot Field, stealing last-gasp winners against Kansas State and Florida, hammering Arkansas in the Battle Line Rivalry and, when all was said and done, winning 10 games for the first time since the Gary Pinkel-led 2014 team.
MU’s only losses came to SEC runner-up Georgia on the road and to likely Heisman winner Jayden Daniels and LSU in Columbia — a game the Tigers led in the fourth quarter.
Missouri’s reward for defying the preseason predictions, when Vegas set the over/under at 5.5 wins?
A trip to Arlington, a game in the Cotton Bowl and a matchup with Ohio State.
And who saw that coming?
The Star has partnered with the Columbia Daily Tribune for coverage of Missouri Tigers athletics.
