Mizzou football will play Wake Forest in Gasparilla Bowl
Missouri football will take on Wake Forest in the Gasparilla Bowl on Dec. 23, the program confirmed Sunday afternoon.
Brett McMurphy of the Action Network first reported the matchup on Sunday.
A win would be head coach Eli Drinkwitz’ first in a bowl game with Missouri. The Tigers lost to Army in the Armed Forces Bowl last season, and the 2020 Music City Bowl was canceled due to COVID-19.
The bid follows a season where bowl eligibility seemed unlikely for the Tigers midway through. Missouri sat at 2-4 through six games, and dropped early matchups against Auburn, Florida and Kansas State.
However, MU figured things out after that, picking up wins against Vanderbilt and South Carolina to better its conference record. In the final game of the regular season, the Tigers won a nail-biter against Arkansas 29-27 to gain its sixth win and ensure a bowl spot.
The Tigers will be without some of their top players for the bowl game. Most notably, top wideout Dominic Lovett plans to enter the transfer portal when it opens and seems unlikely to be with the team for the matchup.
Safety Martez Manuel already announced he will forgo the bowl game in order to train for the NFL Draft. Defensive end Isaiah McGuire also said he will enter the draft, though he did not say whether or not he intended to play in the bowl.
McGuire played through a separated shoulder in the Arkansas game.
Besides Lovett, MU will probably be without a healthy number of players gone through the portal, which opens on Monday. Other Tigers who have announced they will enter the portal include defensive backs Les Hewitt and Davion Sistrunk, quarterback Tyler Macon, linebackers Zach Lovett and Devin Nicholson, cornerback DJ Jackson, safety Jalani Williams and defensive lineman Travion Ford.
Bowl bids for SEC teams were distributed starting with the College Football Playoff, which took conference champion Georgia. Alabama was left just outside the top four.
After that, the Orange Bowl was able to take the highest-ranking non-champion out of the SEC, ACC or Notre Dame, which ended up being Tennessee. Alabama went to the Sugar Bowl.
Following that selection process, the Citrus Bowl got to take its pick of SEC teams. LSU, who lost the conference championship game to Georgia, will play in that game.
The conference then set matchups for games in the Pool of Six Bowl games. Those include the ReliaQuest (formerly Outback), Gator, Music City, Texas, Liberty and Las Vegas Bowls.
McMurphy reported last week that Missouri could have possibly had a bid in the Liberty Bowl against former Big 12 rival Kansas. However, according to McMurphy, MU did not want to take on the Jayhawks in a game.
Missouri, along with Drinkwitz, disputed that report on social media.
“Not true,” a post from the official Mizzou Football Twitter account read “Looking forward to our bowl game vs. any team!”
After all the Pool of Six games were filled, ESPN Events was able to fill the Gasparilla and Birmingham Bowls with remaining SEC teams.
Missouri and Wake Forest’s matchup is scheduled to kick off at 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 23. The Gasparilla Bowl will be aired on ESPN.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Mizzou football: Tigers to Gasparilla Bowl against Wake Forest
