COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri was a legitimate national title contender.
It wasn’t in a hypothetical or what-if world. It wasn’t even about whether the Tigers could win the requisite football games to reach that status. It was about technicalities, and in 1960, Mizzou had as good a case for winning a national championship as anyone.
The hang-up was that the college football authorities of the time had their eyes on different champions. At the time, the sport was more than half a century from settling the title matter with a playoff, and the NCAA wasn’t willing to weigh in, leading to varying opinions on who was the best in the nation.
In 1960, the AP and coaches polls picked Minnesota as their champion after the regular season. But the Gophers went on to lose the Rose Bowl to Washington that year, leading the Huskies to earn the champion honor in some eyes. Separately, other entities opted for Mississippi, which won 10 games and tied another. There was even a stray shout for a one-loss Iowa team.
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And then there was Missouri.
The Tigers finished the regular season with one loss — a painful one to Kansas near the end of the campaign. The Jayhawks had fielded an ineligible player, though, and a few weeks after the game was played, the Big Eight conference voted to forfeit two KU victories, giving MU an undefeated season, with an asterisk.
Mizzou then beat Navy and Heisman winner Joe Bellino in the Orange Bowl, finishing 11-0. But the Tigers don’t claim to be champions.
The NCAA’s modern records list Minnesota and Ole Miss as the champions from that year. Now, some in Missouri circles would like to see their school added to that list.
“I’ve been beating the drum to try to get the university to recognize it because I think they have as much a right as anyone in the country to be national champions in 1960,†author Brendon Steenbergen told the Post-Dispatch on a recent episode of the Eye on the Tigers Podcast. “But, you know, people have different feelings about that.â€
Steenbergen likely knows more about Mizzou’s 1960 football season than anyone else who wasn’t actively part of it: He spent a decade researching and writing “,†a book detailing the season releasted earlier this year.
The story of that campaign, in his eyes, is about much more than whether MU would be justified in retroactively hanging a banner for 1960. What makes that season so compelling 64 years later is how unprecedented the Tigers’ journey was.
“They had the No. 1 ranking in the country for the first time, and they had their first Black player on the team,†Steenbergen said. “First All-American. First time they ever won a bowl game. First Orange Bowl. First, first, first, first, first.â€
He grew up in the 1980s, a rather meager stretch for MU football. After making three bowl games in the four seasons between 1980 and 1983, Mizzou didn’t have a winning season again until 1997.
“I did have a vague recollection that in the ’60s and ’70s, things were different,†Steenbergen said. “Things were really strong, and Missouri had a lot to hang their hat on.â€
When the Tigers joined the Southeastern Conference in 2012, he got to thinking more about that history. He looked back on some of those firsts and had a thought: “Well, this is a really interesting story, and there just isn’t a ton out there about it.â€
Then he had a secondary thought — one that seemed innocuous but turned into something more: “Somebody should write a book about this.â€
The book covers the events of the 1960 season in extraordinary detail, drawing on historical records and a wide range of interviews alike to capture what happened, down to some of the dialogue. Steenbergen scoured material from the Missouri State Historical Society, MU’s archives and old Post-Dispatch coverage. He talked to living players and the widows of those who had died, also sifting through previous interviews that some players had given.
One player’s spouse gave Steenbergen a box full of memorabilia from that time. Because the players still alive from that time were approaching 80, he felt a bit of urgency to get their story out there.
“Several of the key players had passed away already at that point,†Steenbergen said. “Those guys, they know they’re not immortal. They know that if this book is to come out, it’s got to come out sooner rather than later. ... One of my big regrets is some of the guys who I did talk to will never get a chance to read it.â€
Among those who have a central role in the story but won’t read its modern retelling is Norris Stevenson, the player credited with breaking the color barrier at Missouri as the school’s first Black player to receive a football scholarship.
His experiences, from on-field success that fueled a breakthrough season to the discrimination he battled during his career, are what Steenbergen hopes today’s readers find memorable — not just a potential squabble over claims to a national championship.
“Part of the overarching message of this book is that every program, every team, every school, they have their own Jackie Robinson,†Steenbergen said. “Even though they didn’t necessarily get some of the accolades or the glory, they certainly had to deal with all of the same challenges or similar challenges. So I think it’s good that awareness of what he went though and what he accomplished is growing.â€