Mizzou football savors bowl eligibility thanks to victory over Florida

This time last year, Missouri head football coach Eli Drinkwitz used every avenue at his disposal to coax starting center Mike Maietti into returning to the Tigers.

With an extra year of college football available to the West Orange, New Jersey, native, Drinkwitz deployed Maietti's roommate and starting quarterback Connor Bazelak to hype up what 2021 would look like in Columbia.

Drinkwitz openly campaigned at a press conference to have the 6-foot-1, 290-bound behemoth return to the collegiate gridiron for a sixth year.

More: What we learned as Mizzou defeats Florida 24-23 in overtime to earn bowl eligibility

After four long years with Rutgers where the Scarlet Knights accumulated a 9-39 record, and then a pandemic that drastically changed his debut year with Missouri, Maietti on Saturday secured an elusive chance to play in a bowl game.

The Tigers' 24-23 overtime victory over Florida on Saturday night at Faurot Field clinched bowl eligibility.

"I promised Mike Maietti he'd go bowling if he came back. That's the only reason he came back because he'd never been to a bowl game," Drinkwitz said, fighting through teary eyes and choking up to get his words out. "We came through today for that."

Missouri's most recent and upcoming postseason trips bookend the only two seasons in program history where the Tigers reached the threshold of bowl eligibility, but didn't participate.

In 2019, MU finished 6-6 but didn't play past Black Friday because NCAA sanctions for past academic fraud stripped the program of postseason access for that season.

Last year, the NCAA instituted no quota for the amount of victories a team needed to play in the postseason after a pandemic-shortened regular season.

Missouri was selected to the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tennessee, against Iowa, scheduled for Dec. 30, 2020. An outbreak of COVID-19 caused the Tigers to drop out of the game.

Missouri's turbulent road to a bowl game in 2021 made clinching a postseason berth that much sweeter.

Close losses to Kentucky and Boston College limited the Tigers' safety net to get to six wins. The 38-point home blowout to Tennessee got rid of it completely and sent the program into a temporary freefall.

Heading into the final five games of the regular season, Missouri was 3-4, with a game against No. 1 Georgia on the horizon representing a likely fifth loss, which happened.

Close wins over Vanderbilt and South Carolina brought Missouri back even to 5-5 heading into the matchup with the Gators.

Looking at Arkansas' impressive effort Saturday in a 42-35 loss to No. 2 Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Missouri's pathway to a bowl was most attainable against Florida, much better than its hopes hinging upon a must-win, day-after-Thanksgiving matchup.

The Tigers can stuff themselves with turkey and pumpkin pie not wondering if their final time suiting up together would be at Razorback Stadium.

They know it won't be now.

"There's just tons of things that were feeding into me. Never been to a bowl game," said Missouri linebacker Blaze Alldredge, in his only season as a Tiger and his final year of college football. "My whole time at Mizzou has just been so emotional, in a great way. To tie in with the team and the community and everything that I've done here, it was a really beautiful experience. That's definitely a roller coaster throughout the game.

"... It really has some added meaning to me because I've never been bowling before. I've never even had a winning season before at Rice. It just a really beautiful send-off."

Before Saturday, the fewest points Missouri had given up all season was in its first game, 24 to Central Michigan, led by former Florida head coach Jim McElwain.

The Gators' uncharacteristic late-season spiral won't dampen the Tigers' spirits.

"Pretty high," said Missouri tight end Niko Hea of where making a bowl game ranked on his bucket list as a college football player. "That, right beneath a national championship."

The game-winning catch by Daniel Parker Jr. handed Missouri the victory over Florida and bowl eligibility.

Missouri quarterback Connor Bazelak overcame a barrage of boos from the home crowd to throw a critical fourth-down touchdown pass to Hea and find Parker, his third read on the game-deciding play, to take down the Gators.

The win also gave Drinkwitz a chance at a 385-day callback, a long, long time ago, with Columbia being far from the Star Wars location Tatooine.

"May the force be with you," Drinkwitz said as his parting words, holding a light saber, a not-so-subtle response to Gators coach Dan Mullen showing up to a press conference after last year's victory over Missouri dressed as Darth Vader, a notorious villain.

The Tigers don't need hope from a galaxy far, far away to properly visualize making a bowl game now.

And that could be the most satisfying feeling of all.

Contact Eric Blum at eblum@columbiatribune.com. Follow @ByEricBlum on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Mizzou football savors bowl eligibility after victory over Florida