En route to an 11-win campaign in 2023 that marked the second time in five seasons as a head coach that Eli Drinkwitz had won 11 or more games, the Missouri football program notched double-digit wins in a season for just the sixth time since 1961.
Heady stuff.
And while the Tigers's suffocating, 14-3 triumph against Ohio State in the season-ending Cotton Bowl punctuated the break-through campaign, their dominant win against Tennessee might have provided the seminal moment.
That's when Drinkwitz told Josh Heupel, a former Missouri offensive coordinator prior to Drinkwitz's arrival atop the program in 2020, that his Tigers stood on business in the aftermath of their 36-7 thrashing of the Volunteers.
"Our defense kicked their ass," Drinkwitz said after No. 14 Missouri had stymied No. 13 Tennessee.
It's the only time in his six seasons as a head coach that Heupel has seen his team held to a single-digit output.
Missouri also toppled MTSU, Memphis and Vanderbilt among its 11 wins last fall.
As the Tigers enter the upcoming 2024 season as the nation's preseason No. 11 team in the nation, ahead of traditional SEC luminaries LSU (12) and Tennessee (15), among others, they aren't letting anyone forget their run through the Volunteer State last fall.
Media outlet PowerMizzou.com showed Tuesday night that current Tigers safety TreVez Johnson had donned his "Mizzou: Tennessee State Champs" T-shirt for post-practice interviews.
#Mizzou safety TreVez Johnson came to media day in his Tennessee state champs shirt pic.twitter.com/ZBr404RWr7
— Power Mizzou (@PowerMizzoucom) August 6, 2024
The Tigers are not scheduled to face the Vols this fall as the SEC expands to 16 teams and welcomes in Oklahoma and Texas; they do have a Sept. 21 date at home against a Vanderbilt team coming off a two-win campaign.
Barring an unlikely postseason meeting, the Tigers won't face Tennessee or Memphis -- the Volunteer State's unquestioned top-two teams -- until 2025 at the earliest.
A five-game winning streak against teams from Tennessee seems a foregone conclusion.
No idea if that, too, will result in a T-shirt.