The spread will get you 8-4 or 7-5 every year and that coveted berth in the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl.

Problem is that Pinkel is too stubborn to implement some conventional sets into his gimicky spread playbook.

When you see Mizzou lining up in a 5 wide shotgun on 4th and goal from inside the one...you have to know that it's insane.

USDS, one of Mizzou's earlier opponent, defeated Air Force today.

The spread is only good for 8-4/7-5, huh?

Or 12 wins and a half away from playing for a national title?

Or 30 wins over a three-year period? Or the best five-year period in school history?

The spread has taken Missouri to the point where 8-4 is the minimal expectation. It certainly looks like Pinkel has Mizzou poised for more than 8-4/7-5 this season as well, with 10 wins - and possibly more - pretty easily within sight.

And Missouri doesn't always line up in five wide in short-yardage situations, especially inside the goal line. Today, for example, on the fumbled snap.

Like I said, I'd like to see them be a little more multiple. They did use ace-back sets a little last year and have used Gabbert in some sneak situations. But the spread offense has brought Missouri a greater run of offensive success than the school ever endured under a more traditional or power-oriented scheme.

The spread works against lesser teams. Like I said, it'll get you to 7 or 8 wins and not much else.

Against the big boys like Texas and Oklahoma...it has never failed to come up short. 12 wins and a half away from a national title??? You mean when they choked against the Sooners and gimmicked thier way into the Cotton Bowl? Isn't that the game where they ran a silly-assed trick play on the first play of the game, blew it and set the tone for thier eventual loss?

Yeah...they ran under center today on goal to go...and look what happened..

The spread sucks and they should chuck it.

Would you prefer us take a bunch of 3 star athletes and line up in the pro-set against teams that are physically superior to us across the board?

Or would you like to go into the homes of skill position recruits in Texas and tell them "yeah, we do the same thing everyone else in the country does, but we do it in a program with 1/2 the financial backing of the major national powerhouses"?

Yeah, it'd be great to be able to line up 5 guys that weigh 325 lbs and run like gazelles. It'd be fantastic to just blow teams off the ball and impose our will on them.

But just exactly how do you go about doing that? This isn't Texas. It isn't Alabama and it isn't Oklahoma. Hell, it isn't even Nebraska. We're the University of Missouri. Until we're considered among the national elite, we have to do things differently than they do to win.

If that means a non-traditional offense, so be it. That offense attracts scores of athletes to the school that wouldn't have given us a second thought without it. That offense is why we will have no worse than a four-star quarterback for the duration of Pinkel's tenure. This offense allows us to take two-star WRs and make them some of the best TEs in the country.

Pinkel's offense is our best chance to win with the tools we have. I don't believe Yost runs it efficiently (Christensen did), but that's an execution issue more than a philosophical flaw.

Ask Texas Tech how much they enjoy that conventional offense that Tuberville brought with him. Tech has many of the same disadvantages we have. It's in a very similar situation to MU. When Leach was there, they used that offense to be greater than the sum of their parts. Now that Tuberville is there, they're an also-ran.

While I disagree with how Yost uses it - the spread offense is the right fit for this program at this time.

You're right.

Bring in Tuberville.

You're a moron.

Right. 7 or 8 wins only. Except for all the times it has produced more than that.

The 07 championship game was tied at halftime. A key holding call on LT Tyler Luellen (moved Mizzou out of FG position on the drive to open the second half) and a tipped interception turned the momentum and OU wore Missouri's defense down in the second half.

But yes, Missouri should chuck the thing responsible for its most stable and successful period since Dan Devine was on the sideline.

Revise? Tweak? Of course. But chucking it? That makes no sense.

Are you really predicting only 1-2 more wins this year?

The spread shotgun is a problem, because the running game is getting devoured. I enjoy the fact that we spread the field out, but we need to be using an ace package at least 30 percent of the time. Otherwise, our running plays take too long to develop, and the more athletically talented back 7 can blow up the bubble screens too easily.

You can't succeed when you run Jet Sweeps and Bubble Screens on 70 percent of your plays.

The running game isn't getting devoured. Colorado was the only game where our running backs were not effective. We had a few games where we did not run enough, but even in those games we got yards on the ground, when we actually ran the ball. The running game was effective today.

When we averaged 2 yards a carry? What the hell are you smoking?

A&M had the fifth ranked run defense in the country going into this game. Gabbert's five carries for -22 yards also is factored into that yards per carry average. Our run game was effective when we were actually trying to score.

LOL

Our running backs averaged just under 4 ypc. They averaged over 4 ypc for the first three quarters.

That's my opinion. Serious revision of the offensive playbook is required.

Looking at the schedule, I'm thinking 9-3.