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1976 Missouri Opens With Upset of USC

After leading the Arizona State Sun Devils to a 27-3-1 record in three seasons back during the 1950’s, the Missouri Tigers hired Dan Devine to take over their program.

In 13 seasons at Missouri, Devine posted an impressive 92-38-7 record including an unbeaten season in 1960. Missouri has never been a complete juggernaut in football, but for them, Dan Devine set the standard.

The Green Bay Packers hired Devine away from Missouri after the 1970 season and he took his turn trying to replace Vince Lombardi before going to Notre Dame and winning a national championship with Joe Montana.

Missouri hired Al Onofrio to replace Devine mostly because Onofrio was a long time assistant at Missouri. But, in 1971, the Tigers flopped to a 1-10 start for their new coach. Oh, it got better and

Onofrio took his 2-3 squad in 1972 up to South Bend, Indiana and upset 8th ranked Notre Dame, 30-26. The following week, at home, the Tigers upset 8th ranked Colorado.

After beating horrible Kansas State, the then ranked 14th Tigers, lost in Norman, Oklahoma to the 7th ranked Sooners. The following week, they did it again by upsetting higher ranked Iowa State.

But, in spite of their frequent upsets, this team still finished with a 6-6 record.

In 1973, the Tigers did it again when they beat 2nd ranked Nebraska by a single point, 13-12. The Tigers were unbeaten at the time and dropped to 7th in the polls, but it didn’t last. They dropped 4 out of the next 5 games and and finished with an 8-4 record. Not bad, but like everyone else, the Tiger fans wanted more. They wanted consistency.

In their third game of 1974, the Missouri Tigers beat the 7th ranked Arizona State Wildcats. Then, in their fifth game, they beat the 5th ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers and this time in Lincoln, Nebraska which was a major feat. Geez, who were these guys? Giant Killers?

Even so, the Tigers didn’t remain tough and lost a couple more games to end the season to finish 7-4.

I recently wrote about my memories of Missouri upsetting Alabama in 1975. Alabama upset 1975

Well, Missouri was ranked 5th right after they shoved Alabama around, but they would finish the year with an underwhelming 6-5 record.

1976 was another big opponent standing in Missouri’s way. They opened with 8th ranked USC.

USC was a power in the 1960s and 1970’s. Head coach John McKay was one of the best around. The Trojans were national champs in 1967, and they played for another title in 1968, losing to the Super Sophomores and Ohio State. They finished unbeaten in 1969 and again in 1972 and were crowned champs then as well. After the 1975 season, McKay left to take over as the first head coach of the brand new expansion NFL team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

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Oddly, it just happened to be raining on that September 11th, 1976 opening day for each team. It

doesn’t rain a lot in Los Angeles, but the weather definitely affected this game.

On USC’s opening drive, a bad snap on the punt gave the Missouri Tigers the ball at the USC 22 yard line. Possibly, the wet ball caused the ball to sail over the head of the punter.

Tiger running back Curtis Brown scored from 5 yards out to give Missouri the early lead.

Back in those days, USC was known for it’s tailbacks starting with Mike Garrett, then to OJ Simpson, and later to guys like Ricky Bell, Charles White and Marcus Allen.

The 1976 version of the Trojans had Ricky Bell at tailback and he was backed by future Heisman winner Charles White. With Ricky Bell running the ball, USC drove it down and made up for the earlier miscue to tie up the game.

But, the day belonged to the Tigers of Missouri and Curtis Brown struck again on the following kickoff with a  95 yard return. USC had weapons, but Missouri had probably the best tight end in football history with Kellen Winslow who was a primary target of Tiger quarterback Steve Pisarkiewicz.

The Tigers moved out to a 30-10 half time lead and improved that to 40-10 before coasting to a huge 46-25 win over USC that opened a lot of eyes.

Did those eyes remain open? Nah, after surging from unranked to 6th in the latest polls, the Tigers stuck to their norm of the time period and got pushed around by a really bad Illinois team the following week.

However, they maintained their Jekyll and Hyde image with yet another upset the following week and this time against 2nd ranked Ohio State and to top it off, the game was in Columbus, Ohio.

Missouri finished the 1976 season with a 6-5 record and although Al Onofrio never quite got the Tigers to the top, they were good for a few more upsets before he was done.

USC, on the other hand, won the rest of their games in 1976 and finished with an 11-1 record and a number 2 national ranking at the end of the year.

Missouri was a team that needed to be feared if you were a ranked team back in the 1970’s. I remember it well.