Bernie Miklasz Show: Can Mizzou football handle the pressure?

hey back again for the second video of this Thursday August the 29th on the Bernie Show YouTube channel and thank you for uh all of your great support I'm gonna thank you every single time even if you get sick of it um really thrilled by the way things are going the interest level continues to grow and it's all because of your enthusiastic support and also the comments that you leave uh under each video it's amazing just absolutely amazing um gosh I'm I'm fortunate Guy seriously I'm very fortunate um it's college football season and mizou starts tonight against Murray State uh in KOMO just just some preliminary comments though about college football in general and my love for it I people have asked me a lot of times not so much anymore because I I haven't been at the post dispatch STL today since oh I don't know spring spring early summer of 2015 but people have asked me you know why I decided to make it a career change and there's a there's a lot of reasons and I'm not going to go into any of the professional reasons and everything was fine I love the post dispatch then I love it now um but on a personal level I was getting to a time and a stage whatever whatever you want to use as far as a frame um where from the early 1980s through the time that I left the post dispatch I'll I'll try to talk quicker I'm being very deliberate for some reason um I realized there's some things that I've been missing out on that I didn't I really didn't feel like missing out on anymore and number one is just having the chance to spend more time with my wife and you know wives of sports writers Sports columnist girlfriends of sports writers Sports columnist I mean it is not easy because listen and by the way I I'm not playing the violin I I'm not I'm not asking anyone to like feel sorry for me I had a I've had a great career I had a great career at the post's badge I was thrilled with it but one of one of the things was I love college football man do I love college football and I've loved it since you know being at my paternal or I should say maternal grandparents house my late mother Betty Lee uh she came from Southern people whereas my on my father's side uh came from Polish people so I grew up with pretty interesting mix of family but anyway you're probably saying get on with it all right um I have very wonderful memories of being a really young Bernie and my grandfather herb Andrews loved to watch college football and he really loved to watch Alabama and he really loved Bear Bryant and so as much as college football was on TV and it was it was limited back then I I just loved watching the games every Saturday I mean I just loved it I couldn't get enough of it and so then when I become you know then I go into a writing for at the Baltimore News American Dallas Morning News St Louis Post Dispatch and uh I didn't get a chance to other than the games that I covered you know covered missou games sometimes on the road uh sometimes Illinois gam sometime National games but I never could just kick back and you know figuratively speaking put my feet up and watch college football from late morning till late at night and that was one of the things I was really looking forward to once I knew Sports writers broadcast or whatever they you don't we don't get much there are there aren't many weekends off unless it's a planned vacation right so I'm just like man I don't know what it's like to have weekends off it's just like all those years because I covered 30 some Super Bowls in a row and it sounds uh glamorous and all that it's it's I mean it's a job I loved it I I felt fortunate I was in a position to do it but my point being um I used to say man I wish I could go to Super Bowl parties how come I never get to go to Super Bowl parties because I'm covering the Super Bowl and it's a lot more work than people think so I'm like you know there's going to be some benefits to to uh to doing this other than you know a nice contract and everything else it's going to be I get to watch all the college football I want I'm going to close the door to my Lair which is where I am now it's kind of my I hate I don't like the term man cave I say Lair that's where this is me this where I do my work this is where I watch sports this is uh gosh said Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in my room that's me right I come here and think about life and think about problems and you know work it all out of my head it's uh anyway I don't know listen sometimes I got to get personal on these right so I'm in a really happy place because I get to watch all the NFL football on Sundays and I've got access to where I can record every game and go back and see what I want to see and then I love college football so it's taken me almost six minutes to get to the fact that I want to talk about missou but I'm just giving you a background just just to let you know how much this means to me to be able to be a college football fan I couldn't find my misso hat I'm gonna have to order another one all right great expectations for Coach drink and his staff and his players in 2024 for obvious reasons 11 wins a year ago beat Ohio State in the cotton bow finish in the top 10 uh coach drinkwitz has built this thing up with outstanding recruiting not only high school but he has been terrific in terms of the transfer P portal and he's created kind of culture that players from other programs want to be a part of and drink witz is in my opinion the ideal coach for mizou for these times when they hired him I like to hire uh first couple years or so you know I wondered you know shouldn't this be better and I knew there was some pressure on him to uh you know start piling up some wins right instead of the usual six- win Seasons so there was some pressure on him and he came through the squad came through last year and it was a marvelous experience I hooted and hollered at the television set every single game and I looked forward to writing about it the next day at Scoops network.com and I'm going to be doing that this year and I'm G to be doing videos on missou this year so it's funny though because um you know everything's going so well with missou a lot of it has to do with drink wits a lot of it has to do with politicians in Jefferson City because mou's got the some of the most Progressive uh nil rules in college football which gives them an advantage over many programs and uh the funding has been really good but but the kind of the freedom of what mizou can do in using the inl is is really fantastic so missou football in terms of adjusting to this new era which has left left some coaches and some programs just very comfortable still trying to get comfortable like dbo Sweeney at Clemson's a really good example that but Drake wits hit the ground running man uh he's a Salesman and when I say that it is not a Prive I mean having worked in Sports Talk Radio I can testify to the vital importance of having people who know how to know how to sell and when you don't have people at the station in the sales department who know how to sell it's kind of like oh well I guess we'll you know I guess this place is closing down now so I respect the heck out of people who know how to sell and uh all I can sell is myself if I had to come into your home and try to talk you into some kind of life insurance policy you'd laugh I'd be stammering worse than I normally do I I'm not good at it just I don't know how people do it so drink is a natural-born Salesman and given the demands the incredible demands on college football coaches in the major conference level nowadays you better have a Salesman you better have somebody who can Network you better have somebody who can pitch it you better have somebody who can uh you know get the get the money people to come on in and help coach drink need your help I I like the way he rallies fans anyway missou football's in a really really good spot really really good spot the best spot it's been you don't need me to tell you this since coach pinkle uh led the Tigers to consecutive SCC East titles 20134 and you know missou in the back-to-back Conference Championship no they didn't win I think I really thought they should have won the Auburn game but they had some problems adjusting to the Auburn running game one of the Auburn players who was a ram and Trey Mason told me he said big man they were lined up in the wrong defense all day I think we were we were scared we thought missou was gonna win this game but then we made a couple changes and how we were running it and they never adjusted and it was like easy it was like eating ice cream and I'm say man why'd you have to tell me that but they could have won that game anyway the fact is they did not however and I know this this thing has made the rounds I'm gonna look at my notes you know for missou to be in two consecutive SEC title games or even to be in two conference Title Games since they joined the conference in 2012 um that ain't nothing to sneeze at and I know they haven't want it but I'm not being negative positive here I mean I'm going to be positive here not negative all right since 2012 Miss's been in two Conference Championship games right that's more than Tennessee AR Arkansas South Carolina Mississippi State Kentucky Old Miss Texas A&M Vanderbilt combined combined so we we've seen even in the pre- transfer transfer portal era that missou can reach really impressive Heights and you know coach pinkle had him ranked final poll number five one year and then I think the next year uh they were way up there I forget the ranking and please forgive me I should have memorized that but then it kind of fell apart again and this is the test for Coach drink and his his burgeoning program um the key is to get to a higher level and then stay there right um coach pinkle for all his incredible efforts wasn't able to do that um drink is capable of doing it for all the things I've mentioned so far in the video and that's why there's also a lot of pressure on that program and that coach this year because it's like okay mizou you had a great year in 2023 no doubt about it and the talent upgrades are obvious and you got so many returning players and yeah you got a new defensive coordinator and you you may be a little younger on defense so that's a question you don't have the thicker kicker who's going to hit those money field goals late in the final game you know late in final minute or whatever and that's a question don't I'm not I think the defense will be fine but how good I think that's the question um there's a lot of pressure on missou and someone who is is excited about this season I'm also really nervous about the season because teams are going to be coming after the Tigers this year because it's like oh oh look at them so they think they're among the elite now oh they're gonna make the playoffs is that right they one good season it's like oh you know but hey oh back up here comes missou what we're SC I'm being sarcastic of course and what that means is there's going to be so many people on their schedule they're lined up to take mizou down they are lined up to take him down and the thing about playing at at the higher level you can't afford to slip up even in the 12 team playoff mou can't afford to like lose a couple of games they should not lose and so I'm you know I'm nervous as a fan I'm nervous about that because they're not the team now that you know for years has been hunting down the best teams in the SEC now they're part at least this year they're part of the group of teams in the SEC that everyone else is trying to hunt down that comes that's an extra burden it's wonderful but it creates an extra burden extra pressure so listen I think I saw in Vegas like the over under is nine and a half wins that seems about right I think if they get to 10 wins they're in the playoffs uh when they get to nine it's uh I don't think it's a certain thing because it all depends on who they lose to but really they got a great schedule you all know that very advantageous schedule no Georgia no Texas no Old Miss no LSU no Tennessee um they have to go to Alabama they have to go to Texas A&M they've got Oklahoma at home so the point is as you all know missou fans this is set up really wonderfully for the Tigers but can they avoid trap games like Bost college is sneaky good the game will be in Colombia so that'll help they're going to fall in any trap games um C can they beat Oklahoma at home can they get to 10 wins I think they can I'm not cocky about it though I'm really not because missou is going to be tested a lot more this year than they were last season because now they're one of the big dogs enjoy the season we'll be talking about missou a lot thank you very much