Distraction-Free Football in Missouri

Photo by Eric Blumberg. What were we talking about?

I came across this mildly amusing story during my daily wanderings of the internet (much of which I get paid for, which still blows my mind…) This occurred back in August.

Missouri head football coach Gary Pinkel must be taking the Tigers’ move to the SEC very seriously.

So seriously that, apparently, he feels the presence of coeds at his practices to be an unwelcome distraction for his team.

Sports reporter Eric Blumberg of KOMU-TV in Columbia tweeted a photo on Wednesday morning of two women in athletic shorts and sports bras running stairs at Faurot Field. Blumberg says that a Missouri coach asked the two women to “come back later.”

As has been pointed out on Twitter, maybe the coaching staff feared these were SEC spies.

Coach Pinkel apparently viewed the women as a distraction.

This might not have been such an auspicious start for Mizzou’s entry into the SEC. I don’t really know anything about college football conferences. Apparently the major teams in the South are in either the SEC or the ACC, and I have no mnemonic device to remember which schools are in which conference.

I did confirm that Florida State, the school that produced Jenn Sterger, is in the ACC, so Mizzou players will not have to worry about distractions from the likes of her. That is not intended in any way to impugn the fans of the SEC, of course. It just got me wondering, if Mizzou players are distracted by two women running bleachers in sports bras, how do they handle game days?

In the interest of science, and because I am terrible at valuing my own time, I did a quick Google search for “Missouri football fans” and “SEC football fans,” to see how much distraction Mizzou can expect to face from now on. It was, uh, distracting.