There’s an idea out there that Missouri is a uniquely tricky place for Florida to play. I understand where that comes from. UF is a mere 2-4 in six visits to the other Columbia since the Tigers joined the league. But, just how inexplicable are the outcomes?
2013: Missouri 36, Florida 14
This was a cursed season for the Gators, their first one under .500 since 1979. Bad Muschamp assistant hires came home to roost. There was a plague of injuries. It was terrible.
Of all the odd stuff in the unlucky ’13 season, this wasn’t one of them. This year was the first of Mizzou’s back-to-back SEC Championship Game runs, and so a 12-2 team comfortably beat an eventual 4-8 team. As you’d expect. UF had lost Jeff Driskel by this point, and Tyler Murphy threw for fewer than 100 yards. Nothing about this specific result screams “curse” beyond what the larger 2013 debacle meant for UF.
2015: Florida 21, Missouri 3
A lot of people remember the ’15 season going like this: momentum built until the big Ole Miss win, then Will Grier tested positive for PEDs, then the team shambled to the finish by barely winning a bunch of games before being uncompetitive against FSU, Alabama, and Michigan.
One small correction: the game after the win over the Rebels, this road trip to Mizzou, was Grier’s final game. The Tigers themselves weren’t good, as they limped to a 5-7 record after two trips to Atlanta. This one was never in doubt, and the Grier-led Gators were the much better team. Again, nothing fluky happened here.
2017: Missouri 45, Florida 16
Quick quiz: who was the Gators’ head coach in this game? If you said Jim McElwain, imagine you just heard a comedically loud game show buzzer. Mac was fired before this contest, making the road trip the first game under interim coach Randy Shannon.
Should the 7-6 Tigers have run it up this bad on the 4-7 Gators? Probably not, given the big pop in quality that more or less the same UF roster had the next year. However, teams often struggle to show up in the first game or two under interim coaches. Especially on the road. Especially for a noon Eastern/11 am local time kick in the old Jefferson Pilot window. Plus, this was part of a 6-0 run that Mizzou went on after starting 1-5. The magnitude of the loss is a little surprising, but not by much.
2019: Florida 23, Missouri 6
Another sleepy nooner (Eastern time), the 13 combined drives before halftime ended in three field goal attempts and nine punts. Florida fortunately woke up and won the second half 17-3.
Should the 11-2 Gators have beaten the 6-6 Tigers by more? Probably, considering Mizzou didn’t beat an FBS team with a winning record and also lost to a 3-9 Vandy team. But again, winning a road game in the JP Sports window? When the game time temp was in the low 50s? I can think of worse things to complain about.
2021: Missouri 24, Florida 23, OT
The two most recent games in CoMo I think have built the idea that it’s a house of horrors for UF.
The game was tied 16-16 late, and the normally reliable Harrison Mevis missed a field goal with just over a minute left to keep the game in play. UF found the end zone on its overtime possession when Trent Whittemore threw a TD pass to Emory Jones on a trick play. But then on Mizzou’s turn, Tyler Badie ran for 12 yards and 13 yards to get to pay dirt quickly for the Tigers. MU went for two, and they got it on a pass where the quarterback was falling backwards as he lofted the throw.
Neither team was all that good; both finished 6-7. Badie gashed the Gators for 146 yards, though that was 121 in regulation when Mizzou only got to 16 points. He was a 1,600-yard rusher that season, the lone real bright spot for that offense. This game was the final straw for Dan Mullen’s tenure, which makes the game more notable than it otherwise would be for a contest that really only helped decide the order of teams in the bottom half of the SEC East.
2023: Missouri 33, Florida 31
Remember when I talked about an 11-2 team beating a mediocre team in this series? Here it happened again, just with the roles reversed and a much closer final score. Florida was on its way to a 5-7 record, while MU hit 11 wins with only losses to 10+ win LSU and Georgia squads.
UF still almost pulled it out, despite losing Graham Mertz part of the way through and having to turn to the untested Max Brown. And despite that unfortunate event, Florida still broke 30 and was let down by the defense giving up a field goal drive that finished with five seconds to go in the game. It was a crushing loss at the time, but in hindsight, it was a bad mark for Missouri that Florida was even in position to win it with a stop or a shank by Mevis.
How bad is it?
Certainly, it’s not a great place to play with that 2-4 record. But also, the losses included one by an interim coach, another by an about-to-be-fired coach, and yet another by Florida’s worst head coaching hire since 1946. And two of those three very nearly were wins.
Florida has also had only four regular seasons under .500 since 1979. Three of those seasons by coincidence included road games at Mizzou. In only one of those cases, that being 2023, could reversing the outcome in Columbia resulted in avoiding that sub .500 record. These were not classically great Gator teams being upset.
If you believe in the Gators struggling when it’s chilly, then you can also point to three of the losses being in November when temperature was at the highest 60 but mostly in the 50s. This weekend’s forecast at present has a high of 73, by the way.
The biggest problem I see with Missouri is Florida not bringing their best teams out there. The only time that a UF squad that anyone would consider more than middling lost to Missouri was at home in 2018, when the eventual 10-3 Gators dropped a game in the Swamp to an eventual 8-5 Mizzou team with senior and future NFL quarterback Drew Lock.
As is so often the case in football, UF’s issue has been more about getting its own house in order than anything else. Not to get all coachspeak on you, but Florida has to worry about Florida more than anything else.
Missouri is a solid team that absolutely could beat the Gators without it being a historic upset. If Florida doesn’t bring its A game, it can lose, and it would have nothing to do with some bad vibes about Columbia.