***Official 2012-13 Mizzou football repository thread***

[duncan_idaho]

I figured it was time to start the new version of this...

2012 Schedule
April 14: Spring Game
Sept. 1: SE Louisiana
Sept. 8: Georgia
Sept. 15: Arizona State
Sept. 22: at South Carolina
Sept. 29: at Central Florida
Oct. 6: Vanderbilt
Oct. 13: Alabama
Oct. 20: OPEN
Oct. 27: Kentucky*101st HOMECOMING*
Nov. 3: at Florida
Nov. 10: at Tennessee
Nov. 17: Syracuse
Nov. 24: at Texas A&M

Still three games to be released here. I'd expect a mid-major in the Sept. 1 game, a FCS team on Sept. 29, and another mid-major on Nov. 17 (to get a November home game on the schedule).

Committed Recruits:
A list of all players committed to Missouri for the 2013 recruiting class.

*** LB Joe Burkett, Jefferson City
*** ATH Aarion Penton, Christian Brothers (St. Louis)
*** ATH Anthony Sherrils, Hogan Prep (Kansas City)
*** OC Alec Abein SLUH (St. Louis)
**** ATH Chase Abbington, Fort Zumwalt South (St. Louis)
*** OL Harneet Gill, Francis Howell (St. Louis)
*** QB Trent Hosick, Staley (Kansas City)
*** WR J'Mon Moore, Elkins (Missouri City, Tx) Soft verbal - still looking around
*** OT Clay Rhodes, Stillwell (Kansas City)
*** DT Antar Thompson, Richmond Heights (St. Louis)
*** LB Eric Beisel, Rockwood Summit (Fenton, MO).
*** DT A.J. Logan, Rock Bridge (Columbia, MO)
*** QB Eddie Printz, Lassiter (Marietta, GA)
*** DE Nate Crawford, West Florida Tech (Pensacola, FL)
*** DE Marcus Loud, Wheatley (Houston, TX)
*** DT Josh Augusta, Peoria (Peoria, IL)
*** TE Jason Reese, Trinity (Euless, Tx)
*** S SHaun Rupert, Carver (Montgomery, AL)
*** S Duron Singleton, Fresno CC (Fresno, California)
NR DE Charles Harris, Liberty Prep (Kansas City, MO)





Season Notes:
New uniforms to be unveiled at the Spring Game on April 14.

I'll try to be good about maintaining this, though I've set a ridiculous standard for myself.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Big Jack Meiners (strongest guy on the team) out with a knee injury. Our line is getting really thin.

[duncan_idaho]

Meiners' injury is a concern. A big one. They MIGHT be OK if he is out for an extended period of time, but the quality of the depth takes a major hit. And another major injury would be really detrimental.

Best case, it's a sprain and he's back for Georgia.

Worst case, it's an ACL.

An MCL wouldn't be AS crippling, as he could be back towards the middle of October.

Scary stuff, regardless. Losing three of your top 7 guys is not a good way to start the season.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Ruth and Meiners hurt quite a bit. Hopefully, some of the younger guys can step up. However, you're not going to replace Meiners' strength and experience.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Best college football uniforms:

http://www.complex.com/art-design/20...-2012/missouri

[Saul Good]

Tennessee has suspended their top WR indefinitely.

[Stanley Nickels]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

Tennessee has suspended their top WR indefinitely.

"Indefinitely", in SEC terms, is parlance for "depending on how our season goes without him". At least, that's how I've seen it used.

Still, if they're serious about it, that can only help the Tigers.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

Tennessee has suspended their top WR indefinitely.

Eh, we've "suspended" most of our O-line with injuries. I guess I'm more worried about MU than I am our opponents.

[Saul Good]

Staley is playing LSW on ESPN right now. Mizzou commit Nick Ramirez looks like a monster.

[Pitt Gorilla]

MU has a lot at stake with Green-Beckham

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/25...ith-green.html

He’s got all the right moves, but no one’s rushing top freshman wide receiver Dorial Green-Beckham.

BY TEREZ A. PAYLOR
The Kansas City Star

COLUMBIA -- On a sunny Saturday morning, Corbin Berkstresser looks to his right and perks up. Dorial Green-Beckham is lined up in the slot against a linebacker? That’s not even fair.

Berkstresser, Missouri’s backup quarterback, takes the snap and watches the Tigers’ 6-foot-6, 220-pound freshman receiver beat the linebacker with a double move. Berkstresser launches the ball 40 yards or so down the right sideline and sees it drop perfectly in Green-Beckham’s outstretched hands.

Touchdown. No doubt.

“Dorial is a natural athlete,” Berkstresser said. “He’s so smooth … my job is to get the ball to him after he does all the cool stuff.”

So far this camp, the nation’s top recruit has done a lot of that. Whether it’s making one-handed catches or making like former Tigers star Jeremy Maclin in eluding defenders on screen passes, there’s no doubt one of MU’s most vaunted recruits has the talent to live up to lofty expectations.

“He’s really stepped up a bit,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. “He’s doing less thinking and he’s doing more reacting. We see him make more and more plays each and every single day.”

Senior receiver T.J. Moe said Green-Beckham’s talent is a combination of the best attributes of recent MU receivers.

“He’s got the strides of a guy like Danario (Alexander),” Moe said, “but he’s also a little quicker, like me, like J-Mac (Maclin), like some of the guys that have been able to get open underneath.

“He’s just tough to cover. He’s got real fluid hips and he’s catching the ball a lot better recently. … If his hands really come along, then he’s going to be something to reckon with this season.”

Missouri’s coaching staff has been careful not to burden Green-Beckham with unfair expectations. But it’s not every day you get a chance to develop a rare talent and show him off on a national stage.

“When you have the best player in the nation, who decides to stay home and go to Mizzou when he could have gone anywhere he wanted to,” Pinkel said, “that’s mammoth.”

David Yost has been in college football long enough to know one of the golden rules of recruiting: never take anything for granted.

So as Yost, Missouri’s offensive coordinator, sat in safeties coach Alex Grinch’s office on signing day in February, waiting for Green-Beckham’s big announcement, time began to move slowly. Someone on the TV predicted the Springfield recruit would end up at Arkansas, and Yost stewed.

“I was like, ‘How could he could he go to Arkansas?’” Yost said.

Yost and receivers coach Andy Hill had pulled out all the stops to lure Green-Beckham, one of the best players the state had produced in years. It’s easy to forget how much time and effort coaches put into recruiting; when Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo learned he’d lost out on Detroit prep star Chris Webber 20 years ago, he wept.

“If you’re not first, you’re last in recruiting,” Yost said. “Finishing second supposedly makes you feel a little bit better, but it probably makes you feel worse, because that means you were so close and still didn’t get them.”

That’s why, when Green-Beckham slipped on a black snapback Mizzou hat with a gold brim that February day, Yost and the rest of the staff exploded with high-fives and fist pumps. Not only did they get their man, the Tigers sent a message that they were ready to play in the Southeastern Conference.

“Our idea is if we can get 80 percent or better of the in-state guys — and really, 100 percent would be great — in Missouri, generally, that’s where our greatest players are from,” said Hill, who recruits Kansas City. “So we’re just trying to keep the best guys here. It was big for us to compete and have a chance at Dorial.”

To see that, all one needs to do is look at Missouri’s current recruiting class. The Tigers have commitments from 10 of the top 16 prospects in the state, according to Rivals.com, and of the six who remain, Lee’s Summit West’s Jamone Boyd is still in play and three others never received offers.

“If the guy who is from Springfield, Mo., who can go any place in the country, can do it, why can’t you?” Hill said, mimicking the pitch the staff now uses.

The success of St. Louis-area players Maclin and quarterback Blaine Gabbert, two five-star talents who became first-round NFL Draft picks, also offer shining examples of what Missouri can do for potential recruits. Green-Beckham could join that list, provided he lives up to the hype.

“When we’re talking to recruits down the road,” Yost said, “(we) can say, ‘See, the No. 1 guy in the country came to us and he was successful: we used him to the utmost of his ability and it was a great experience for him. You can have those same things.’”

But there is a flip side, Yost said. Have a couple of touted recruits fail to live up to their potential, and other schools will use that against you.

“It does come back (to bite you),” Yost said, “because if you don’t bring it up, other coaches do. It’s all part of the recruiting game.”

Pinkel has handled Green-Beckham’s first month on campus carefully. For the first time, Pinkel prohibited freshmen from talking to the media aside from one day at camp. Perhaps it was his way of keeping Green-Beckham from feeling overwhelmed.

“My big thing is, I just want people to stay away from him and let him focus on being a good football player,” Pinkel said.

It’s more than just that, however.

“I recruited him, so I feel responsible to his parents that he’s successful,” Yost said. “I want to make sure he’s got his degree when he’s done playing here, and that he’s had a great career and a great experience here and feels a part of our family.

“And then, anything on top of that — him making plays, scoring touchdowns, all these things — that’s bonus stuff that comes with being a football player.”

Green-Beckham seems to get that message. It is not uncommon to see Hill motivating Green-Beckham during practice — about blocking, about route-running … anything.

“There’s going to be points where we get yelled at, where we do something wrong, because that’s what freshmen go through,” Green-Beckham said. “That’s the difference of us coming from high school to here, to learn all those fundamentals.”

He later added that there’s a lot being thrown at him in the playbook. But by all accounts, he has started to pick it up, which has allowed him to start playing faster and get more work with the first team.

“He’s getting comfortable now,” Berkstresser said. “With any freshman coming in, there’s a lot to learn in the spread offense. And at first, when you don’t know what’s going on, your reactions are a little slow. But once you know the offense, it becomes natural.”

With so much at stake, Green-Beckham will continue to be pushed. The coaching staff knows his ceiling and is determined to help him reach it.

“We’ve had some success at receiver, some guys that have been top-level guys, and he’s on par with where those guys were early in their careers,” Hill said. “I think of Danario Alexander, Jeremy Maclin and Will Franklin … their junior, senior years, those are top-end years.

“But if I think back to their freshmen years, there were a lot of things they needed to (work on) … playing hard, playing fast, catching balls, doing the right angles. All that stuff is just an ongoing, day-to-day process. So that’s where we are, and I feel real good about where he is right now.”

[Pitt Gorilla]

Meiners will be out this week, but MAY be back for Georgia.

[duncan_idaho]

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

Meiners will be out this week, but MAY be back for Georgia.

Very good news. Meiners is a huge part of that OL this year, IMO. And a key part of the matchup with the huge NTs of Georgia. Meiners has the bulk and strength to stand up to them, especially in combo blocks.

Also makes you a little deeper at OL. With Meiners, the Tigers are probably 7-8 deep without it being a disaster. Without him, they're dangerously thin in terms of talented depth. (He's the best reserve tackle)

[Pitt Gorilla]

It sounds like Ruth may be back about halfway through the season as well. That would be outstanding.

[ChiefsCountry]

I wonder if SE Louisiana will even make it to Columbia with the Hurricane headed their way.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Like:

http://showmefansong2012.tumblr.com

[Pitt Gorilla]

Missouri lineman Max Copeland runs down dream, earns scholarship

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/29...eam-earns.html

Hard-rocking Montana native has gone from walk-on to starter.

BY TEREZ A. PAYLOR
The Kansas City Star

COLUMBIA -- The man with long, stringy blonde hair trudged up the stairs at the Mizzou Athletics Training Complex, his mind racing with every step.

Max Copeland was about to meet his position coach, Josh Henson, who cryptically ushered him down the hall to head coach Gary Pinkel.

Considering he’d already spent three-plus years paying his own way to play football at Mizzou, Copeland tried not to get his hopes up.

“I’m thinking ‘Oh, oh,’ ” Copeland says with a laugh.

The memory of what happened next still makes Copeland — a hard-rock fan who fires himself up for practice by shouting phrases like “Rock ’n’ roll!” and “If it ain’t heavy, it ain’t metal!” — choke up a bit.

“He told me ‘We’re going to put you on scholarship,’ ” Copeland says, his husky voice now turning a bit emotional. “It was surreal, man. I’ve had that dream 500 times before, and it was coming true.”

The first thing Copeland did was call his parents, Michael and Joanne, back home in Billings, Mont. They understood the gamble he had taken and the doubters he had faced to chase his dream, turning down a scholarship offer at Montana and willing himself into a 290-pound starting guard in the Southeastern Conference.

“In Billings, Montana, if you got a good offer, you went to Missoula — that’s just what you did,” Max says. “But I don’t want someone telling me what my path is. I’m going to tell you what my path is.

“That’s what rock ’n’ roll is about, man. It’s about forging your own path, taking the road less travelled and doing it because of who you are, not because it’s who people are telling you to be.

“It’s about bucking the system, man, you know?”

Whether Max Copeland is in the locker room or on his way to class, he always has his headphones on, cranked up to the max, blasting heavy-metal bands such as Motörhead, Black Label Society and Black Sabbath.
“The soundtrack to my life,” he says. “You’ve got to get yourself in a trance, get ready to bang heads, man.”

Copeland reinforces his hard-rocking persona with a variety of glares and catchphrases that make him seem more like a professional wrestler than a physics major.

“I always call him ‘Max the Action Figure’ because he has like 12 sayings that he just says over and over again,” senior guard Jack Meiners says.

Michael and Joanne say that at his core, Max is the same kid who was raised on classical music, played the piano and bass, wore short hair and was student body vice president his senior year at Billings West High School.

There is no doubt, however, that their son releases the more aggressive side of his personality through football. Since he was a boy, Max dreamed about playing for Missouri, his father’s alma mater.

But that dream seemed like a long shot in 2006, when Max, a high school sophomore, visited Columbia for Missouri’s 26-10 loss to Oklahoma and got a chance to walk on the field during warm ups.

“Tyler Luellen was on the field, and he just seemed enormous,” Michael Copeland says of the former Missouri offensive lineman. “Max was standing close to him and you could just see his eyes get big. After that, he never, ever missed a workout.”

Still, Max did not start until his senior year, when he played tight end and earned a scholarship offer from the University of Montana, a Division I-AA power at the time.

There was just one problem; Max, a free spirit, didn’t want to go there.

“I felt like I’d be selling my soul,” Max says.

Sensing Max’s desire to be in Columbia, Michael overnighted Max’s highlight tape to Missouri’s coaching staff a few days before Signing Day 2009. The staff, which knew of Max because of his performance at one of its camps, offered him a chance to be a preferred walk-on.
Max was elated; he thought it was an easy decision.

His parents were less sure — by picking Missouri, their oldest son would go to school 1,200 miles away with no guarantee of ever playing in a game. For this, they would also pay out-of-state tuition.

“Common sense is saying ‘Gosh, take the scholarship,’ ” Michael says.

Max convinced his parents his heart was in Columbia, but Montana’s coaches tried to convince him that he would never play a down there.

“The University of Montana was pretty upset when he didn’t go,” says Paul Klaboe, Max’s high school coach. “If I was his father, I know I would have tried to talk him into going into Montana.”

Max, however, became even more resolute. Days before he left for college, he brought his mother to tears with another reason why he was leaving.

“He said ‘This is not about me, this is bigger than me,’ ” Joanne recalls. “Mom and dad, I’m doing this for all the kids out there that people tell ‘You’re not gonna make it, you’re not good enough.’ ”

Max told them he would consider his college career a success if he contributed on special teams as a senior. But the rebel inside him wanted more: He not only wanted to earn a scholarship, he also wanted to start on the offensive line.

So Max Copeland, who weighed all of 220 pounds as a high school senior, set about rebuilding his body.

Jack Meiners is one of only two Missouri offensive linemen to grade out at the SEC standard in every weightlifting category. The other? Max Copeland.

“This summer, when the lifting groups were finished, there were two offensive linemen that were in there for another 45 minutes after everybody else left,” co-offensive line coach Josh Henson says. “That was Jack Meiners and Max Copeland. That says it all.”

Copeland, who is now listed at 6 feet 3 and 290 pounds, has been meticulous in his eating and lifting habits for the better part of four years.

“Once it became real that I would have an opportunity to pursue this dream, you’re done having fun, man,” Copeland says. “You’ve got a serious shot to do something that hundreds of thousands of kids across this country can only dream about. … I know I’ll get a return on my investment once I get on that field on Saturday nights.”

Meiners says that Copeland, whose metabolism makes it difficult for him to maintain his playing weight, eats healthy food and chugs weight-gain drinks “like its nobody’s business.”

“He’s constantly eating,” Meiners says. “Like before we lift — I’m not kidding — he’d get like a Ziploc bag full of (scrambled) eggs — probably eight eggs in there — and he would just eat them out of the bag, cold. I don’t know how he does it. It would make me throw up.”

Copeland’s hard work paid off early in camp, when injuries plagued Missouri’s offensive line and Copeland, still a walk-on, kept making an impression on Henson.

“You wouldn’t sit there and say that he’s the most talented guy,” Henson says. “But he plays at a high level because he knows his assignment, he’s good at technique, he’s busted his tail in the weight room to get stronger, he plays with great enthusiasm and he plays hard. He outperforms people based on those things.”

Eventually Pinkel had seen enough. He watched as Copeland’s eyes lit up with the news.

“It’s nice not feeling a like a burden to my family,” Copeland says. “They deserve it, just as much as I do.”

On Monday, Copeland was listed at the top of Missouri’s depth chart at right guard, meaning he will start Saturday’s season opener against Southeastern Louisiana at Memorial Stadium. It was the second significant goal he’d achieved within two weeks, though he now says it matters little.
“Complacency man, that’s the last thing I need right now,” Copeland says.

Besides, the regular right guard, Meiners, could return as early as the Georgia game, meaning coaches will choose between Copeland and true freshman Evan Boehm, a four-star recruit, to start at left guard. The competition never really ends.

Then, there’s also this: Pinkel says walk-ons who receive scholarships for the first time always sign a one-year contract. That means Copeland’s scholarship will be up before his senior year, though Pinkel says it’s not uncommon for players who work hard in the weight room, do things the right way and give great effort to earn a renewal.

“For him, he’s about everybody else,” Pinkel says. “He’s a great visual aide for what it means to be a great teammate.”

For now though, Copeland isn’t even thinking about next year. He’s just trying to get through Saturday, when he knows he will be tempted to wake up early, blast his heavy metal music and down caffeine, just like he did in high school — the last time he started a game.

“I can’t do that because I’ll be exhausted by kickoff,” Copeland says. “My intensity, I consider that a pretty big edge for me. … I need to make sure that I maximize that so I don’t burn too hot, too quick. It’s important that I kind of temperate it a little bit, that way there’s no wasted energy.”

But don’t bet on Copeland completely shrugging off his old pregame routine. His willingness to do the unorthodox has worked out pretty well; this is no time to lose what makes him unique.

“I’ll come up with some loose guidelines,” Copeland says, “because if they start to seem like rules, I’ll resist the hell out of them.”