As Mizzou’s Gary Pinkel enters Hall of Fame, Mike Alden lends rare insights to hiring

Days into yet another search for a new football coach after the University of Missouri had fired its fifth in less than 20 years, then-athletic director Mike Alden and his advisory committee in November 2000 had whittled their list down to eight candidates and arrived at certain conclusions.

“There are no head coaches in the six major conferences that we will pursue,” Alden wrote on Nov. 22 that year in notes he recently simultaneously released to The Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

That was both a financial reality and a key realization about the MU brand at the time.

“We can sit there and turn around and say, ‘Well, we can pay $10 million to a coach and get him,’” Alden said in an interview with The Star and the Post-Dispatch.

Mizzou, though, didn’t have that money. Or that profile. It was less a Porsche or a Mercedes, Alden said, than a Chevy Silverado or Tahoe or Ford F-150.

Beyond that point about a foundation of grit, what MU also had was a complicated, contradictory image when it came to football: that of both a sleeping giant, nestled between two major metropolitan areas, and as a job that ended coaches’ careers.

So it would take just the right person to catalyze a program more than 30 years past its last sustained successes.

No Pinkel, no SEC

Between the search process, alignment in university leadership and the relentless will of the man MU ultimately turned to in Gary Pinkel, Mizzou both found and enabled a unique force that resurrected Tiger football when it truly needed it most.

On Tuesday in Las Vegas, Pinkel will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in large part for his team’s 118 wins, 10 bowl appearances and four conference title game appearances in 15 years at MU. His resume also is amplified by 73 wins in 10 seasons at Toledo, the basis of his hiring by Mizzou.

But perhaps the most profound and enduring aspect of his legacy is Missouri’s departure from the then-volatile Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference in 2012.

Asked if MU would be in the SEC without what Pinkel achieved, Alden instantly said: “Nope. That was a pretty quick answer, wasn’t it? Nope. Nope. Nope. There’s no way.”

While relationships between Alden and then-SEC commissioner Mike Slive and between then-MU chancellor Brady Deaton and then-Florida president Bernie Machen became building blocks, Alden said, MU football was the driver.

“No way that they’re (engaging as they did) if Missouri football isn’t winning,” Alden said. “No way.”

No way it could have worked out, either, without a few indulgences of fate that Alden underscored in both his notes and the interview that offered a rare glimpse behind the scenes.

‘That was like, bam, right?’

Pinkel’s success didn’t just hinge on such pivotal moments along the way as freshman quarterback Chase Daniel saving the day against Iowa State in 2005 with starter Brad Smith hurt and MU trailing 24-14 in the fourth quarter.

Pinkel would later suggest that comeback was the difference between going to a bowl and retaining his job or not after going 5-6 in 2004.

While Alden says now that he was too committed to Pinkel for his job to be in danger at the time, he allows that the game was a vital variable.

Beyond that, though, the search that led to Pinkel was subject to twists that easily could have changed the dynamics and the result.

“That’s right,” Alden said.

With Larry Smith’s final team off to a 1-3 start following a 4-7 finish in 1999 and with Alden already dismayed by a broader sense of corrosion in the program, he began compiling a list of around 40 potential replacements in September.

“When people talk about that infamous list that athletic directors have, that was it,” he said, smiling and adding that it wasn’t in his wallet but on his computer.

Pinkel was on that preliminary list for a number of reasons, but it was reinforced by his Toledo team’s 24-6 season-opening win at Penn State.

“That was, like, bam, right? Bam,” Alden said. “Then he just kept winning.”

As MU was headed toward a 3-8 finish, Alden had increasing conviction that it was time to turn elsewhere. He could have done it earlier.

But in general, he was philosophically opposed to making the sort of mid-season change he orchestrated in 2005 amid the chaos of the Quin Snyder regime.

He was expeditious, though, as soon as the season ended. After MU’s 28-24 loss to Kansas State in the season finale, Alden consulted with staff and advised chancellor Richard Wallace he was going to make a change. In Smith’s office that evening, he told him Smith had the option to retire, resign or be terminated.

Smith opted for the third, and the search was on in earnest.

By Monday, Alden and part of his search entourage were en route to Florida to see Florida State offensive coordinator Mark Richt and, after an unexpected detour, Florida defensive coordinator (and former Mizzou assistant) Jon Hoke.

“Alden drives the van and gets lost” some 14 miles away from Gainesville in Waldo, his notes read.

Waiting to see Hoke, the group that hadn’t eaten all day soon ended up at a Hooters.

Good wings, Alden wrote, adding “but is this the right place we should be?”

After meeting with Hoke, they were off to what proved the right place to be: Toledo, where they met with Pinkel early the next morning.

In a word: ‘Impressive’

Alden’s notes have just a single word his takeaway from that hotel-room meeting: “Impressive.”

Asked to elaborate on what went into that word, Alden said it was the level of detail and discipline about the process of his program.

“He talked about (mentor) Don James,” he said. “And he kept giving credit; he never took it.”

There was a general sense Pinkel was in the lead after that point, but it was early.

When the group went to Kalamazoo the next day in a foot of snow, Alden’s notes used the same word (“impressive”) to describe Western Michigan coach Gary Darnell.

And the search still could have gone any number of directions.

MU would see Purdue offensive coordinator (and Missouri native) Jim Chaney at a small airport terminal near the Indiana campus the next day, for instance, and still was putting out feelers for the likes of Oregon coach Mike Bellotti (not interested).

Northwestern coach Randy Walker intrigued Alden but never returned multiple phone calls from MU.

Conversely, Alden was turned off when he received a fax from the agent of Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster.

That might be the way of the world today. But at the time Alden wrote, “Can you believe this? A coordinator with an agent … Funny thing, I like this Bud Foster and was planning to call him to talk … no more. Forget him.”

While he didn’t think he would emerge with the job, Alden also wanted to interview Brent Venables, then a defensive coordinator at Oklahoma. But Venables, now the head coach at OU, thought it would be inappropriate to be interviewed while Oklahoma was preparing for the Big 12 title game.

Then there was the matter of TCU coach Dennis Franchione, his longtime friend and colleague at New Mexico and Texas State. Over the years, Alden had talked to Franchione about the possibility that one day as an AD he might be able to hire him.

Franchione told Alden the only reason he’d consider MU was because of their relationship. But not only was he in a great job at TCU but Alabama also was about to offer him a job.

MU also interviewed then-Nebraska quarterbacks coach Turner Gill and former Mizzou and NFL star Kellen Winslow in Chicago and then-Wisconsin defensive coordinator Kevin Cosgrove at Big Boy’s restaurant in Wright City.

‘Aren’t you offering me the job?’

By Nov. 29, nine days after the true search began, the finalists had emerged as Pinkel, Darnell and Chaney.

Comparing it to the basketball search that came down to Snyder and Bill Self (notably with Snyder still thriving at the time for MU), Alden’s notes compared Chaney to Snyder and Pinkel and Darnell to Self.

Alden liked them all but there was something about Pinkel that just kept coming back to him. Both about Pinkel but about what the program needed and the fit.

Their conversations, in the first interview, another in Chicago and another in which MU brought him to Columbia, were so much about the program and the process and facilities and doing right by his staff.

Adding to the urgency to make the hire, Pinkel also was being courted by Arizona State, Rutgers and Maryland. ASU most worried Alden. When Pinkel was in Dallas interviewing with the school, Mizzou flew there to bring him to Columbia.

In his notes of that day, Nov. 27, Alden indicated his lean when he wrote, “By the way, Gary, did any of these other schools jet all over the place to meet with you? Keep that in mind!”

By that night, Alden wrote that the preference was Pinkel, Darnell and Chaney in that order. Over a club soda with Pinkel, he began to gauge his interest.

Without offering the job, he asked Pinkel how interested he was. While it’s not in his notes, Alden rested assured Pinkel was very interested.

Two days later, after Darnell had become the only other interviewee MU brought to campus, Alden framed the question a bit more directly but still with wiggle room when he called Pinkel from a Pizzeria Uno in Chicago.

“‘If it’s offered to you,’” Alden recalled asking, “‘are you going to accept it?’”

But the no-nonsense Pinkel bristled over the semantics.

“‘Are you offering me the job? Aren’t you offering me the job?’” Alden remembered a suddenly “fired up” Pinkel saying. “‘What’s going on here? What are we talking about?’”

Alden suggested getting Pinkel’s attorney, John Capanigro, on the phone with MU general counsel Bunky Wright and resuming their conversation after that.

But when Alden failed to call back in the time he had hoped to since the attorneys still were on the phone, Pinkel called him angry that he was late and said, “I don’t know if this is what I’m going to do.”

“So it was really tense for him and us at that time,” Alden said.

Finally, though, with all the cautionary wording sorted out, Alden directly offered the job.

After accepting, Pinkel was so elated that he forgot to hang up the phone as he celebrated with staff and family in his home. Before he hung up himself seconds later, Alden heard Pinkel yell, “ ‘We’re going to Missouri.’ ”

Meanwhile, Alden and associates Gene McArtor and Ross Bjork went to Smith and Wollensky for their own celebration with steaks and cigars. The next day, Nov. 30, Pinkel was introduced as MU’s head coach.

The rest became history, in more ways than one.

Because of a singular combination of the right man at the right time in the right place.

Perhaps another decision would have worked out fine.

But among those MU was most interested in, Richt was the only one to enjoy notable future success as a head coach (145-51 in 15 years at Georgia).

Hoke never became a head coach; Gill went 5-19 in two seasons at Kansas and left coaching at Liberty in 2018 to spend time with his ailing wife. Franchione went 69-65 the rest of his career at Alabama (17-8), Texas A&M (32-29) and back at Texas State (20-28).

As for the rest of the final three, after going 9-3 in 2000, Darnell went 15-31 in his final four at Western Michigan. Chaney never became a head coach beyond one interim game at Tennessee.

Meanwhile, Pinkel would become the winningest and second-longest tenured MU football coach (with Alden as its second-longest tenured AD) and drive a generationally transformational change to the SEC.

It was all about the right fit, as it happened, and not about breaking the bank or making the splash.

“Pretty amazing,” Alden said, “how it turned out.”