ATHLETICS

From Underdog to Top Dog

Note: When this column ran on the MU Athletics web site, the wrestling team was ranked second in the nation. The team is currently fourth in the nation, and is coming off back-to-back shutouts of Central Missouri State University and Eastern Illinois University.

Athletics Director Mike Alden discusses the success of the Tiger wrestling program in his Jan. 14 column.

Americans love to see the underdog win; that’s a phenomenon that has developed over the years in our great country. Maybe it’s because we were once underdogs ourselves as a nation, back when our forefathers broke free from England and won our independence against staggering odds in the Revolutionary War.

Whatever the history for this mentality, the fact is that the University of Missouri has a sport program that is quickly rising to the top, despite years of being an afterthought in national circles, and I think this is a wonderful story to tell everyone.

Entering the National Duals in Cleveland, Ohio, the Missouri wrestling team ranked No. 2 in the country according to the national polls. The Tigers were 7-0 on the season and 1-0 in the Big 12. Our win in conference action was against the then-No. 1 ranked team in the country, Oklahoma State. Before a raucous crowd at Hazelwood Central High School in suburban St. Louis, the Tigers broke a 29-year drought against the Cowboys, beating them for the first time in school history, 21-17. Mizzou also snapped OSU’s overall 23-match winning streak, which dated back to the 2001-02 season.

It has been amazing to watch Head Coach Brian Smith build this program from literally the ground up. In the five years before his arrival, the Tigers won 27 matches. In his first five years at Mizzou, Smith coached the Tigers to 55 dual victories. From his very first day at the helm, the former Michigan State star believed he could win a national championship at Missouri.

“I believed it from day one,” Smith recently said. “There were certainly days you questioned how long it was going to take. I remember telling my coaches, ‘it’s baby steps,’ when we were getting beat 44-0 by Oklahoma State my first year, but every year we showed improvement. Believe me, there were hard times. Losing to Central Missouri my second year, tying Missouri Valley in my third year. But every year we showed progress. The kids kept believing and working harder, and better recruits kept coming in. And that’s a big part of it. We kept getting big recruits every year. We knew in our third year, when I was redshirting Jeremy Spates, Tyron Woodley, Kevin Herron, Mark Bader and a host of other people, we knew that fourth year was going to be a breakout year, and fortunately it was,” he said.

When I arrived as the Director of Athletics at Missouri in 1998, there was tangible evidence that would have supported eliminating the wrestling program from our family of sports. Factors that the program had going against it included the lack of success and interest in the recent past, as well as budget problems, and gender equity issues, among other reasons.

But I’m very pleased that we didn’t overreact to whatever negative pressures there were, and that we stayed the course. Instead, we put faith in Brian Smith to do the best job he could, and there is no disputing the fact that he has done remarkable work in building a program of which all Mizzou fans can be proud.

Coach Smith, a very modest individual, explains the turnaround like this, “It’s changing attitudes. We had to change the attitude of everyone, including the administration, because I think when they hired me they were like, just go ahead and do what you can! That’s not a cut-down, it was just we didn’t have a big budget. In fact, we still have the smallest budget in the Big 12, the worst facilities in the Big 12. But that is not the stuff I look at,” he said.

Smith continued, “A lot of people looked at the Missouri job as one that could succeed, but it had all these negatives. But I looked at it like the horse Sea Biscuit. When the trainer looked at Sea Biscuit, he didn’t see the wobbly knees and the temperamental attitude. He looked at it and said, ‘This horse can be a champion.’”

“I choose to feel the same way about our opportunities here at Mizzou,” Smith said. “Missouri is a great academic school, and you can get students to come like our redshirt freshman Ben Askren, who is a super student. Telling recruits that you are going to wrestle against Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Nebraska is another great selling point. And once you start succeeding, people jump on board and start helping out. That is what’s happened. I started with two coaches, now I have six guys helping our program, and believing in it. Our administration is excited about hosting Nationals, and they believe that we can win a national championship. You can’t expect everything in the beginning. You have to make people believe first. Changing the attitudes of the high school coaches, and the Pee-Wee Parents, everybody, that is what we had to do. That’s all evolved nicely over the last five years,” he said.

The University of Missouri will co-host the 2004 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships March 18-20 at the Savvis Center in St. Louis. Smith looks at the big-picture, “It’s huge to have the NCAA’s in St. Louis. Not because we are wrestling at home, but because it educates our state. There will be so many members of the media on hand for the national tournament, and they will say, ‘Wow, this is an unbelievable event!’ Everybody that attends the NCAA wrestling tournament comes back and says, ‘That is one of the most amazing events I have ever been to in college sports!’”

Smith says exposing the sports to young people naturally helps the growth potential.

“When you have little eight- and nine-year-olds going to it with their dads, saying ‘I want to wrestle one day’ and ‘wow, look at the Tigers, I want to wrestle for Missouri,’ it’s hard to measure how much that can do for your program,” he said.

I hope you enjoyed this look into our wrestling program, which is doing such great things. I invite you to come to a wrestling match in Columbia and also to check out the NCAA Championships this March.

If you have any questions about this topic, or anything related to Mizzou Athletics or college athletics, in general, please contact me via e-mail.

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Last Update: March 12, 2007