JIM FALL: No matter the outcome, football is about to end

As a season which has tried the souls of even the most resolute of football fans comes to its ultimate conclusion, there are a few things for certain that we as fans need to understand.

First among them is that it will begin again next August.

In the meantime, however, there are significant changes taking place, not the least of which is that the Missouri Tigers have made the leap out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak.

After several false starts, the move from the Big XII to the SEC is a fait accompli. The University of Missouri has joined the big boys of college football, and it remains to be seen how they will fare. I’m betting they will post a record in 2012 much like they did this past season, which they concluded by running roughshod over the Carolina

Tar Heels in the less-than-desired Independence Bowl in beautiful Downtown Shreveport, Louisiana.

That experience may not have been all bad, however, as a solid performance jump-started their exposure in the fertile soils where other SEC schools recruit. Now, rather than playing Ole Miss in occasional home-and-home early season games, they’ll face them in conference competition, albeit not on an annual basis. One-time Tiger bowl victim, South Carolina, will, however, become a familiar foe as a fellow member of the East Division of the conference, which also includes Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Kentucky and Vanderbilt, the Kansas of the South.

Although both schools currently have a corresponding open date, the outlook for any continuation of the Missouri-kansas Border War presently seems remote. The obedient jayhawk hierarchy is emphatic in its position that if Missouri does not see fit to remain under the dominant influence of the universities of Texas and Oklahoma, they want nothing to do with the Tigers.

I’m betting that it will not take them long to tire of trying to compete financially on the backs of maybe 30,000 fans at their Memorial Stadium when they could realize a much more lucrative payday by attracting more than 70,000 to Arrowhead Stadium on a regular basis. Sure, they have not been competitive these past several years, but as much as I hate to admit it, that will not last forever and the jaybirds can be competitive again.

Twice-a-season basketball matchups are a thing of the past, but why not agree to a continuation of the series, which ku has dominated since Norm Stewart’s days, every year at the Sprint Center. It has worked with Illinois in St. Louis for more than 30 years, why not with ku in KC?

As I’ve noted before, I grew up in SEC territory, so I am a bit more familiar with how things are in those parts than some others might be. Even though it has been several years since I have really experienced the passion that is college football in the South, some gathered quotations from various coaches and players who have been a part of it, past and present, will give you an idea of what we as Missouri fans can expect.

It was former Alabama quarterback Joe Namath, he of the terrific arm and terrible knees, who perhaps put it most succinctly.

"When you win, nothing hurts."

It was his coach, the infamous Bear Bryant, who set the tone for football players everywhere. "I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game," he said.

Familiar TV personality Lou Holtz is still known for a quick comeback, just as he was when he coached at Arkansas.

"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it,” he once said.

It was, however, legendary coach John Heisman — yes, the one the trophy is named for — who put possession of the ball into its proper perspective.

"Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble THIS football," Heisman, who was most successful first at Auburn and then at Georgia Tech, once told his players.

Notre Dame’s Knute Rockne is a well known for his appropriate quotes as he was for his formidable football teams.

"Show me a good and gracious loser and I'll show you a failure," he said. "It isn't necessary to see a good tackle, you can hear it,” is another Rockne line. But his best was probably, "I've found that prayers work best when you have big players."

Another Irish coach, Frank Leahy, observed, "A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall." Bear Bryant had the same idea, expressing it a little differently: "It's kind of hard to rally around a math class."

When LSU plays for the BCS Championship, they will perhaps benefit from the words of their legendary coach, Paul Dietzel, "You can learn more character on the two-yard line than anywhere else in life."

As Missouri embarks on its SEC career, perhaps Gary Pinkel would do well to heed the words of former Texas coach Darrell Royal: "Three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad."

Probably won’t happen though, so we might have to take heart in these words from Auburn’s legendary Shug Jordan: "Always remember — Goliath was a 40 point favorite over David."

My only hope is that we do not have to join ku in falling back on the assumption of Minnesota’s Murray Warmath, "If lessons are learned in defeat — our team is getting a great education."

Jim Fall is a local weekly columnist. He is a former publisher of the Maryville Daily Forum.