The SEC announced Missouri football's 2025 schedule, and it contains some oddities.
Mizzou will open the season with six straight games on Faurot Field. The Tigers won't play at home again after that stretch for almost a month. Neither Missouri's penultimate game of the season nor its regular-season finale will be played in Columbia.
Missouri will play Auburn (Oct. 18), Vanderbilt (Oct. 25), Oklahoma (Nov. 22) and Arkansas (Nov. 29) on the road in 2025.
Coming to Faurot Field in Columbia in 2025: South Carolina (Sept. 20); Alabama (Oct. 11); Texas A&M (Nov. 8); and Mississippi State (Nov. 15).
In the nonconference, Mizzou faces Central Arkansas (Aug. 30), Kansas (Sept. 6), Louisiana-Lafayette (Sept. 13) and UMass (Sept. 27), all at home.
Here are three takeaways from next season's schedule release, including a program-first, two potentially well-placed idle weeks and a possible obstacle on the recruiting calendar:
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All four of Missouri's nonconference games are on Faurot Field and wrapped up by the time October strikes. Before MU hits the road, it welcomes South Carolina and Alabama to Columbia and also has the first of its two idle weeks.
Mizzou has never played six straight home games in its history.
Because of the front-heavy home slate, Mizzou is expected to hold its homecoming matchup for the UMass matchup on Sept. 27, per a post to the Mizzou Homecoming Instagram account.
That's much earlier than normal. The lone home game in October, when MU's homecoming game typically falls, is against Alabama. That matchup is likely to sell out without it being homecoming. The November home dates are too late on the calendar.
So, UMass it is. And a long, long stay in CoMo to start the year.
Missouri's two idle weeks come in Week 6 and Week 10 of the schedule. Or, with a more competitive lens, they come before the Tigers welcome Alabama and Texas A&M, respectively, to Columbia.
Those two teams present as the toughest opponents. It may not play out that way, but looking ahead from mid-December of 2024, there's certainly a possibility it will.
Coming off an idle week is typically beneficial for rest and recuperation for teams. The Tigers struggled to take advantage of that this season, falling to the Aggies in College Station after their first idle week of the year. Mizzou did beat Oklahoma in the game following its second open week.
Under Eli Drinkwitz, Mizzou is 5-2 in mid-season regular season matchups in which the Tigers did not play the previous week. The other loss came at Georgia.
If Mizzou is going to make a College Football Playoff run in 2025, it needs to take down at least one of the teams it lost to on the road this season. The Tigers will get a week off before two of those games.
Courtesy of that opening six-game homestand, Mizzou will play its Faurot Field season-finale Nov. 15 against Mississippi State. After that, the Tigers face Oklahoma and Arkansas in succession on the road.
That presents multiple logistical issues.
First: Senior day will be held with three games remaining. That's not the most pressing issue, but an oddity nonetheless.
Second, and far more noteworthy: Mizzou will not have an opportunity to host recruits at Faurot Field in the final two games. That could — if the early signing period for high school recruits remains the same as it was this year — present late-cycle challenges in recruiting.
Let Drinkwitz, in response to a question Dec. 4 about the earlier early signing date in 2024, explain what's tricky about that:
"This year's change was quite a bit different. You know, normally we spend two weeks going in homes and kind of finishing out the class and making sure everything's right. Now, if you didn't have a home game the last game, you didn't get a chance to see your recruits," Drinkwitz said. "And, obviously, with NIL and revenue-sharing, there was a lot of last-minute changes of heart and different things like that. So, definitely different. And I'm not saying it's good or bad. It's just hard to tell."
This year, Mizzou closed at home. Next season, the Tigers won't be at home after Nov. 15. There is no official date set for the 2025 early signing period, although there are conversations about restructuring the college football recruiting calendar.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Homecoming to recruiting: Takeaways from Missouri football's 2025 schedule
