Mizzou Coach Gary Pinkel On Beating Oklahoma: 'It's Huge, It's Gigantic'

During the ABC broadcast of Mizzou 36-27 victory over Oklahoma, Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit said this would be head coach Gary Pinkel's biggest win in his career at Mizzou.

They also said shortly thereafter that Pinkel would never admit that. While he didn't necessarily say it was the biggest win of his career he does suggest it's gotta be up there.

Way up there.

"It's huge, it's gigantic," said coach Gary Pinkel. "It's a long time coming. I'm just real proud of our team."

A long time coming is right.

The Tigers hadn't beaten the Sooners since 1998. Of course in that time there are some big losses, namely the 2007 and 2008 Big 12 Championship games. In 2007 the winner would have been in the national championship game. So Pinkel has played big games before but Mizzou had slowly been gaining the reputation as a team that can't win the big game.

They proved the doubters wrong on Saturday beating Oklahoma 36-27 in Columbia, MO.

Pinkel understands how important it is to beat Oklahoma. He opened his press conference this week saying to reporters that he knows he hasn't beaten Oklahoma and if you want to be considered one of the best you have to beat Oklahoma.

In his career he was 0-6 against the Sooners before Saturday night. That's a pretty big mountain to climb. Oklahoma had beaten Missouri 19 of their last 20 meetings. The Sooners were 7-0 against Missouri in the Bob Stoops era. That helps describe how huge this was for Missouri.

I didn't even mention that this game was nationally televised. So the world was there to see Pinkel finally beat Oklahoma and it put Mizzou on the 2010 college football map. The significance of this win can't be understated.

Now Mizzou goes from a bubble team in the top 15 to legitimate contenders. The test doesn't stop there though. They'll travel to Lincoln next week to take on Nebraska.