SEC, ESPN release kickoff times and TV designations for Mizzou's full 2025 schedule
COLUMBIA, Mo. — ESPN and the Southeastern Conference unveiled the full programming slate for the 2025 college football season, giving Missouri only two morning kickoffs but chances for both of those games to air on ABC.
Most of the Tigers’ SEC games currently carry flex designations, which means they’ll kick off between 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., and no specified network at this time. The league and ESPN will assign those kickoffs and TV slots during the season, traditionally 12 days before those games are played.
Mizzou’s first SEC game of the season, against South Carolina on Sept. 20, will be one such flex game.
MU’s homecoming game, set for Sept. 27 against Massachusetts, will be a night game on a to-be-announced network. That’s considered an improvement from last year’s morning kickoff that cramped the timing of homecoming festivities.
The Tigers’ season-opening six-game homestand will wrap up with an 11 a.m. kickoff against Alabama on Oct. 11, a matchup that will be televised on either ABC or ESPN.
Road tilts at Auburn and Vanderbilt on Oct. 18 and 25, respectively, are flexes. So is a Nov. 8 home game against Texas A&M.
Missouri’s home finale, taking place Nov. 15 against Mississippi State, will be a night game.
Mizzou’s trip to face Oklahoma on Nov. 22 will kick off at 11 a.m. on either ABC or ESPN.
The Tigers and Arkansas will duel for the Battle Line Trophy in the last weekend of the regular season under the lights, with a night game on top for their Nov. 29 meeting.
The radio broadcasts for all MU games air locally on KTRS (550-AM). Beginning with the 2024 season, all SEC-controlled games air on the ESPN family of networks, which includes ABC, the SEC Network and the SECN+ streaming platform.
Gordo: With their shopping done, Gates, Underwood, Schertz get back to coaching
Missouri coach Dennis Gates wants to return to the NCAA Tournament and make a deeper run.
The same goes for Illinois coach Brad Underwood. Like the Tigers, the Illini suffered an exasperating late fade last season.
SLU coach Josh Schertz just wants to reach the Big Dance, period, after his depleted team fell short during his first season on the Billikens bench.
All three coaches like what they gained through player retention, frenzied transfer portal shopping and traditional grassroots recruiting.
Gates filled needs but left room for three returning members of his 2024 recruiting class to grow. Underwood reloaded while once again exploiting the international market.
Schertz built much-needed roster depth with proven performers after enduring an injury- and illness-marred first season in the STL.
But will their puzzle pieces fit together? That process starts — or doesn’t — as the teams do their summer work.
Last season, Gates went to camp with 18 players, counting walk-ons, so he had much sorting to do. This time around, he should start with a clearer vision for constructing his rotation.
The Tigers retained forward Mark Mitchell and guard Anthony Robinson II to lead the way. That was the big victory of the offseason, as these two had big value in the NIL marketplace.
While fans clamored for blockbuster additions via the transfer portal, Gates and his staff made sensible additions while building around the Mitchell/Robinson axis.
Guard Sebastian Mack can attack the basket. Center Shawn Phillips offers an upgrade over Josh Gray at center. Forward Jevon Porter adds length, scoring and rebounding. Guard Jayden Stone adds scoring depth, and big man Luke Northweather offers additional length and perimeter shooting.
But this team will test Gates’ ability to develop players. Incumbent forward Trent Pierce flashed potential with his shooting and passing last season, but he must defend tougher, rebound more and assert himself offensively.
Forward Jacob Crews asserts himself. There’s no issue there. The voice inside his head screams “Shoot!†over and over. That aggression is welcome, but like Porter, he must become more efficient offensively.
Guard T.O. Barrett was similarly aggressive in limited duty last season, playing fearlessly as a freshman. This season, we’ll get to see how much potential he possesses.
The same goes for fellow ’24 recruits Annor Boateng, who hardly played last season, and 7-foot-5 Trent Burns, who didn’t play at all.
Meanwhile, the staff must also develop the freshmen, forward Nicholas Randall and guard Aaron Rowe, to keep the regional recruiting pipeline flowing.
Does this team have enough 3-point shooting? Can Gates instill better ball and player movement in his half-court offense? Can the Tigers learn to succeed when forced to play a slower pace?
Those are three questions that need answering, starting this summer.
Illinois will be a fun team to watch again this season. Like SLU star Robbie Avila, returning Illini center Tomislav Ivisic is a unique big man. From the top of the key, he hits 3-point jumpers and finds cutting teammates with sharp passes.
Mizzou fans got a look at multi-skilled forward Andrej Stojakovic when he played for California against last season. They won’t enjoy seeing him in the Braggin’ Rights game.
Returning guard Kylan Boswell and redshirt swing man Ty Rodgers provide toughness and glue. Imported point guard Mihailo Petrovic will take the keys to the offense and (hopefully) take fewer risks than predecessor Kasparas Jakucionis.
Ben Humrichous must shoot the ball better, and we expect he will. Last year’s 3-point shooting slump was baffling. Zvonimir Ivisic and incumbent Jake Davis can add perimeter shooting off the bench while David Mirkovic can do work inside.
All in all, this is a team that should make Illini fans happy with Underwood’s contract extension. Once again, their team will be a factor in the hyper-competitive Big Ten.
By retaining Avila, rebounder Kalu Anya and promising sophomore guard Amari McCottry, Schertz got a good start on building another upper-tier Atlantic 10 team. If Kellen Thames moves past last season’s medical issues and plays, that will be all the better.
Depth is the story here. Last year, Schertz had to steal bench minutes from the likes of Dylan Warlick, who burned his redshirt year midseason to address the emergency player shortage.
Warlick is back this season to compete with an army of transfers and recruits for minutes. Guard Trey Green, Dion Brown and Quentin Jones are most interesting.
Forward Paul Otieno gives SLU an inside threat who can actually convert free throws. Brady Dunlap and Ishan Sharma are wings who could add perimeter scoring.
The Billikens added four freshmen, too, but they will be headed for a development season if the veterans perform as expected.
Year 2 of the Schertz era looks promising. This team should able to practice at a higher level, defend tougher sustain Schertz’s preferred offensive tempo.
But like we said, it’s summertime and the work has just begun.
ESPN's prediction algorithms project middling season for Mizzou football in 2025
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Who’s up for some offseason number-crunching?
College football games are still more than two and a half months away, but projections of how many Missouri will win are available now. The offseason is no time to wait for real action when there are algorithms’ predictions to unpack.
ESPN’s College Football Power Index and SP+ rankings are both up and running for the 2025 season, and they share a similar view of a Mizzou team that will be replacing key talent while seeking a third consecutive 10-win season.
Both metrics have the Tigers as a top 25 program, largely based on the strength of the Southeastern Conference — but one that’ll be in the bottom half of the league.
To understand just how highly the FPI, for example, rates the quality of the SEC, take a look at its strength of schedule rankings. MU has the weakest — that being a very relative term here — schedule of any SEC team. The Tigers still have the 20th-toughest schedule in the nation. The 11 toughest schedules and 15 of the top 16 all belong to SEC programs.
Such a view of the league’s gauntlet is hardly surprising and will undoubtedly be a talking point when the leaves have fallen from the trees and playoff places are being awarded, if not sooner.
To further reinforce the perceived strength: The SP+ rankings, which are meant to factor in returning production and transfer/recruiting ratings, have Missouri as the No. 21 team in the country. That’s only good for 11th-best in the SEC, though, behind South Carolina and ahead of Auburn.
FPI tabs Mizzou as the No. 23 team and 13th in the SEC, bypassed by Auburn and Arkansas.
The chances of an SEC team going undefeated are quite low. Texas, Georgia and Alabama, the three highest-rated teams in the FPI, have only 8.9%, 6.3% and 3.9% chances, respectively. Yet all three have 66% or greater chances of making the College Football Playoff, which shows what the 12-team model does for getting SEC teams into the field.
MU’s chances of making the playoff are 9.2%, per the FPI predictions. Those are the 33rd-highest odds in the country, with Georgia Tech just ahead of the Tigers in playoff likelihood and Indiana just behind. Mizzou’s 0.2% — or 1 in 500 — chance of winning a national championship is the 25th-highest.
More pragmatically, the SP+ algorithm gives Missouri a 5% chance of winning at least 10 games this season. Never in program history have the Tigers won 10 games in three straight seasons, and that benchmark is one of the team’s goals in 2025. A 10-2 regular season would probably be enough for a playoff bid, but schedule strength relative to the rest of the SEC could challenge that notion for Mizzou.
Overall, the metrics are not especially bullish on MU’s 2025 outlook. FPI projects only 6.9 wins and a 77% chance of making a bowl game. That’s even a bit below the line of 7.5 wins offered at major sportsbooks.
The obvious question mark around the Tigers is how they’ll replace several skill position players, plus key linemen, on offense. According to the SP+ tabulation, Mizzou brings back just 44% of its offense from 2024, which is evidently seen as a limitation. But Notre Dame has just 47% of its production back and ranks sixth in SP+. Ohio State, which will, like Mizzou, use a new and unproven quarterback in 2025, tops the SP+ table.
So while the computers aren’t ruling out an eye-popping season, they seem to think Missouri will be bogged down in the SEC while fighting on the fringes of the top 25.
Mizzou gets verbal commitment from 3-star tight end
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri football continued its uptick in recruiting pace with tight end Isaac Jensen verbally committing to the Tigers on Monday.Â
Jensen is ranked as a three-star prospect by 247Sports and hails from Omaha, Nebraska.Â
He's the fourth player in Mizzou's 2026 recruiting cycle, joining wide receiver Jabari Brady, SLUH linebacker Keenan Harris and quarterback Gavin Sidwar.
The Tigers are likely to continue accumulating commitments over the next few weeks as rising high school seniors take their official visits and firm up offers.
Mizzou football coach Eli Drinkwitz speaks with the media on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. about the NCAA House settlement lawsuit. (Video by Mizzou Network, used with permission of Mizzou Athletics)
Start of revenue sharing in college sports raises key questions for Mizzou
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Welcome to the freshest stretch of uncharted territory in the college sports universe. There’s been a lot of this metaphorical sort of land recently, but the post-House settlement landscape is undeniably new.
In case you missed it: The landmark legal settlement in the House v. NCAA case was approved by U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken on Friday night, just a few weeks before the agreement’s new framework for college athletics takes effect on July 1.
As a result, a class of athletes who were unable to profit from their name, image and likeness while they competed will share billions of dollars in back pay. Most of the House settlement’s implications, though, are forward-looking.
Schools can now share up to $20.5 million in revenue directly with athletes. In an attempt to reign them in, NIL deals worth more than $600 will be subject to approval from a clearinghouse called NIL Go.
None of that arrives as a surprise. Athletics departments have been planning for this reality for months, if not more than a year.
Still, there are questions about how college sports’ revenue-sharing era will go at a place like Missouri.
Some of those questions are procedural and answerable. Mizzou athletics director Laird Veatch declined to speak with media over the weekend but is expected to do so after this week’s National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics conference in Orlando, Florida. Unburdened by a need to hedge plans due to ambiguity over whether the settlement would be approved, he will hopefully be transparent about MU’s plans.
Other questions will need time and follow-up lawsuits for resolution. College sports rule changes come with consequences that are unintended but hardly unforeseen, and the settlement will produce some of those ripples.
For now, here are the three most pressing questions facing Mizzou athletics as it enters the revenue-sharing world:
How will MU distribute shared revenue?
In to fans published Sunday, Veatch didn’t offer much he hadn’t said pre-settlement approval. He did, however, clarify that MU will create “more than 60†new athletic scholarships at a cost of roughly $3 million for the next sports year — a byproduct of the settlement, which removes scholarship restrictions.
Veatch has been clear since the fall of 2024 that Missouri will be spending the full $20.5 million in shared revenue on its rosters. What he has yet to specify is how that will be distributed across the 16 sports teams sponsored by MU.
Mizzou FY24 attributable revenue
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FY24 revenue
% of attributable FY24 revenue
Football
$56,307,996
73.10%
Men's Basketball
$16,461,185
21.37%
Wrestling
$899,749
1.17%
Softball
$752,718
0.98%
Women's Basketball
$745,492
0.97%
Women's Golf
$433,606
0.56%
Volleyball
$348,746
0.45%
Baseball
$307,788
0.40%
Gymnastics
$281,978
0.37%
Men's Golf
$182,930
0.24%
Men's Swimming & Diving
$89,852
0.12%
Soccer
$81,283
0.11%
Women's Swimming & Diving
$79,009
0.10%
Men's Track & Field, Cross Country
$26,106
0.03%
Women's Track & Field, Cross Country
$20,058
0.03%
Tennis
$13,282
0.02%
The general rule of thumb across college sports is that football teams will get 75%, men’s basketball 15%, women’s basketball 5% and the remaining 5% distributed across the remaining sports. That would be roughly $15.4 million for football, $3 million for men’s basketball, $1 million for women’s basketball and another $1 million across the others.
It would be surprising if Mizzou deviated from that formula to any significant degree, but it’s still an important recipe to get on the record.
In fiscal year 2024, which comprises the 2023-24 sports year and is the most recent available financial snapshot of MU athletics, football brought in 73% of the department’s revenue considered attributable to a specific sport. Men’s basketball brought in about 21%.
Giving football three-quarters of the revenue sharing pool would be commensurate with the money that program brings in, but giving men’s hoops 15% would be a slight step down — but 90% of the funds would go to the two sports that haul in a combined 94% of Mizzou’s attributable revenue.
While 13 teams get lumped into the “others†category that will split somewhere around 5% in revenue sharing, that exact formula could be telling at a school like MU.
Outside of football and men’s basketball, wrestling was the biggest earner in Missouri’s FY2024. Gymnastics, which was ninth among the school’s programs in revenue generation, is coming off the best season a Mizzou sports team has had in a while. Veatch has pledged more investment in a baseball program that sat eighth in revenue. Which becomes a priority?
Can donor, NIL base sustain contributions?
To those who’ve seen rumored compensation figures for college football and men’s basketball stars, the aforementioned revenue-sharing pool of $20.5 million seems like too little. It is.
National stories peg top-level college football rosters at $30 million or more. Top-level basketball rosters run above $15 million.
Even if Mizzou is below that level, it will need to be able to provide NIL funds on top of the revenue sharing to be competitive in the Southeastern Conference.
Can Missouri get those deals, which now need to be approved by the NIL Go clearinghouse, lined up? Are they sustainable?
MU is far from unique in that it has asked donors for a lot to sustain the skyrocketing spending taking place across college sports — a trend showing no sign of slowing down. Veatch has been preaching a need for more corporate support of Mizzou athletics.
He continued that message in his weekend open letter: “We will be asking the Mizzou business community to embrace these (NIL) opportunities and will provide more information in the near future.â€
Getting that quite literal buy-in might well be shifting from a luxury to a need.
Should Mizzou follow new rules?
An important preface here: This is not an insinuation that Missouri, or any school in particular, will bypass some of the new rules created by the House settlement. A couple of weeks ago, all 16 SEC schools signed an agreement that they’ll play fairly.
How many did so with a wink?
If ever there were rules made to be broken, the NIL clearinghouse policies fit that bill. NIL Go will determine whether each reported deal falls within an approved range of compensation.
Range of compensation “is anchored in valuation principles to determine if a student-athlete’s third-party NIL compensation is commensurate with compensation paid to similarly situated individuals with comparable NIL value,†reads . “The RoC is a deal level calculation that is intended to capture a student-athlete’s unique NIL value based upon multiple factors, including but not limited to, the deal’s performance obligations, the student-athlete’s athletic performance and social media reach, the local market and the market reach of his or her institution and program. The RoC will also be informed by external benchmarks.â€
That’s hardly airtight. And what if the clearinghouse, say, never finds out about a deal? There seems to be a real risk that college sports relapse into under-the-table payments with this model.
Scrutiny into NIL deals could be a good thing, but how likely is it to stop anyone? Aside from any legal challenges of this clearinghouse system (which experts think will arise), it feels like a matter of if, not when, a school challenges the new rules by not following them.
A level playing field sounds great, but is that what the new NIL landscape will be? The House settlement stands to test rule-following just as much as it tests revenue generation.
Mizzou football coach Eli Drinkwitz speaks with the media on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. about the NCAA House settlement lawsuit. (Video by Mizzou Network, used with permission of Mizzou Athletics)
Mizzou coaches using summer to learn from college, NFL peers: 'Looking for that edge schematically'
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri’s football coaches have been in study hall.
While players spend hours in the weight room and running up and down the Faurot Field bleachers, coaches have leaned into their own developmental regimens, too. These informal courses of study just tend to involve more numbers — in stats and Rolodexes.
Along with recruiting and some family time, this is the time of year when Mizzou coaches — particularly head coach Eli Drinkwitz and his two coordinators — conduct their own studies into schematic tweaks they might want to make in time for the 2025 season. It’s part retrospective on 2024, part idea generation, part co-opting what works for other teams.
Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz speaks to the press after Mizzou won the TransPerfect Music City Bowl against Iowa on Monday, Dec. 30, 2024, at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tenn.
Zachary Linhares, Post-Dispatch
“The first thing you do is evaluate what you’re doing and try to find people that are doing what you’re doing, similar to what you’re doing — but better,†defensive coordinator Corey Batoon said.
Such a process could be particularly useful for Batoon, for whom 2024 was his first season as the Tigers’ defensive playcaller. He declined to offer specifics of what defensive ideas he’s explored this offseason but suggested some of it comes down to verbiage and the process of installing schemes during the preseason.
“Maybe it’s not a big, wholesale discussion but maybe there’s a way that (other teams are) teaching something,†Batoon said. “How are they verbalizing something?â€
On the offensive side of the ball, MU’s priorities are clearer.
“There were some things that we were not good at — straight up,†Drinkwitz said in April. “Yards after catch was not good. Pass efficiency was high but yards per attempt was not good.â€
Those were areas that showed the offensive regression Mizzou suffered in 2024. Overall receiving yards after the catch dropped to 1,482 (5.9 per reception) in 2024 from 1,665 (6.7 per reception) in 2023, according to Pro Football Focus.
Missouri’s yards per passing attempt declined even more steeply, from nine in 2023 to 7.2 in 2024.
There will be plenty of inherent change to the Tigers offense with a new starting quarterback and only three of the eight players who were targeted 15 or more times last season returning, but Drinkwitz wants the passing scheme to improve regardless of who’s out on the field.
So it’s a point of study for Drinkwitz and Kirby Moore, MU’s offensive coordinator.
“There’s some things in the pass game we’ve got to get cleaned up, and we’re really looking into that,†Drinkwitz said. “We’ve got to be more explosive, vertically, down the field. We’ve got to figure that out.â€
In a macro sense, Moore’s study will be similar to one he conducted a year ago. Ahead of the 2024 season, Missouri’s emphasis was red zone offense — and how to avoid settling for short field goals inside the 20-yard line. During that process, Moore homed in on his 3rd-and-goal playcalling.
He’d felt it was needed after finding it understandably difficult to adjust to any significant degree during his first season calling plays.
“Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees during the season, and the stuff that you’re doing, you’re staying with it,†Moore told the Post-Dispatch last summer. “It was looking at all those different concepts, NFL, college — going to try and implement some of those things and see if it fits our personnel.â€
To get these ideas, coaches have turned to their connections in the industry, including those at the professional level.
“That’s a big part of what we do on the daily in regards to professional development: calling people,†Batoon said, “whether it be NFL teams — we’ve had coaches go out and sit in on OTAs.â€
Once fall camp convenes in less than two months, Mizzou coaches will bring back what they learned from observing those NFL practices and talking with other college coaches and put it to the test.
“You’re always, constantly, looking for that edge schematically,†Batoon said.
Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz looks on as the Tigers take a 34-0 loss to Alabama on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., their second blowout defeat of the season.
Mizzou football coach Eli Drinkwitz speaks with the media on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. about the NCAA House settlement lawsuit. (Video by Mizzou Network, used with permission of Mizzou Athletics)
Mizzou picks up commitment from 3-star wide receiver
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri football's string of summer official visits from recruits has yielded its first commitment.
Wide receiver Jabari Brady, who hails from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, verbally committed to Mizzou on Saturday. He's ranked as a three-star prospect by 247Sports.
Brady is listed at 6-foot-1, 210 pounds. He's a three-sport athlete, also having played basketball and run track. Earlier this year, he participated in the Navy All-American Bowl.
The Tigers now have three verbal commits in their 2026 recruiting class: Brady, quarterback Gavin Sidwar and SLUH linebacker Keenan Harris. That number is expected to rise significantly in the coming weeks as more players visit the MU campus on official visits.
Mizzou football coach Eli Drinkwitz speaks with the media on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. about the NCAA House settlement lawsuit. (Video by Mizzou Network, used with permission of Mizzou Athletics)
