Missouri waited 66 years to do it, but the Tigers finally have a national championship claim from 1960.
On Friday, the school formally honored that team as a national champion after revisiting the historical record. Athletic director Laird Veatch put it plainly: “The 1960 team has an important place in Mizzou history, and after reviewing the historical record, we believe it is appropriate to honor that team as national champions,”
The move gives Missouri something college football alone can still produce: a title claim that arrives almost seven decades after the season ended. It also gives the Tigers a case built on more than nostalgia.
Earlier this month, Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, introduced a Congressional resolution recognizing the 1960 Tigers as national champs.
That resolution, though, would not have meant much without support from an NCAA-recognized selector.
That support comes from the Poling System, the mathematical ranking created by former Ohio Wesleyan player Richard Poling. Poling is recognized as a national-title selector from the 1924 through 1984 seasons, and his calculations pointed to Missouri in 1960.
That alone does not settle the argument, of course. Poling’s history includes some eyebrow-raising choices, including Arizona State in 1970 and Nebraska in 1983 even after the Cornhuskers’ Orange Bowl loss to Miami. So the question becomes whether Missouri’s 1960 résumé can stand up next to the rest of the field.
The answer is yes, at least enough to make the Tigers a legitimate pick.
Missouri started the season unranked and ran off an 8-0 start. The Tigers then went to Norman, Okla., and demolished Oklahoma, the program that had spent much of the 1950s overshadowing the Big Eight.
Missouri later lost to Kansas, then beat Navy in the Orange Bowl in front of President-Elect John F. Kennedy.
The Tigers also picked up a boost from the Border War after Kansas was forced to forfeit because it had fielded ineligible halfback Bert Coan against Missouri.
That forfeit matters, but Missouri’s case does not depend on it alone. Among the teams usually discussed in the 1960 national-title conversation, Minnesota is the traditional answer. The Golden Gophers were named champion by the AP, the National Football Foundation and United Press International.
There’s a catch, though: those selections were made before the bowls. Minnesota then lost the Rose Bowl 17-7 to the Huskies. The Golden Gophers did beat Iowa 27-10 on Nov. 5, handing the Hawkeyes their only loss, but they also suffered a bad loss to 4-4-1 Purdue.
Ole Miss, at 10-0-1, looks strong on paper, but the Rebels tied a mediocre LSU team 6-6 on Oct. 29. Washington’s lone defeat came by one point, but that loss was to Navy, and Navy was the team Missouri beat in the Orange Bowl.
College Football Reference’s Simple Rating System has Missouri at No. 3 for the 1960 season, behind Iowa and 7-2 Ohio State. Ole Miss and Minnesota are Nos. 4 and 5, while Washington sits at No.
- The site also lists Iowa’s 1960 schedule as the toughest in the country, and that makes sense: the Hawkeyes’ first eight opponents were all ranked in the top 20.
So if the goal is to name the best team from 1960, Iowa has a strong argument. But if the question is simply whether Missouri can claim a national championship from that season, the answer is yes.
Better 66 years late than never.
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