New Year's Six bound: Mizzou football and Ohio State to play in Cotton Bowl

Happy New Year.

Mizzou football is heading to Dallas.

Nine days on from the Tigers’ resounding 10th win of the season and five days after the College Football Playoff committee handed Missouri a third straight vote of confidence by ranking it No. 9 in the nation, MU got the nod it earned.

Missouri will play in a New Year’s Six Bowl for the first time when it faces Ohio State on Dec. 29 at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, in the Cotton Bowl. The news was announced Sunday during a live selection show on ESPN.

The game will air on ESPN and kicks off at 7 p.m. CDT.

The Tigers have been to ‘Jerry World’ in the past decade, defeating Oklahoma State in the 2013 Cotton Bowl, but that was before the CFP era and the introduction of New Year’s Six Bowls and the Cotton Bowl was elevated to selection-committee status.

MU coach Eli Drinkwitz’s team has been bowl-eligible in each of his four seasons at the helm, but until now it was often by the skin of the Tigers’ teeth.

Mizzou has finished each of the past two regular seasons at 6-6 and was 5-5 in the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign — Drinkwitz’s first in Columbia.

The Tigers lost to Army in the 2021 Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas, and to Wake Forest in the 2022 Gasparilla Bowl in Tampa, Florida. They were scheduled to face Iowa in the 2020 Music City Bowl, but that matchup was canceled due to COVID-19 cases within the MU program.

But the dog days, for one remarkable moment, are done.

The Tigers stormed through their regular-season slate, romping by SEC East rival Tennessee at Faurot Field, stealing last-gasp winners against Kansas State and Florida, handing Arkansas a hammering in the Battle Line Rivalry and, when all was said and done, winning 10 games for the first time since the Gary Pinkel-led 2014 team.

MU’s only losses came to SEC champion Georgia on the road and to likely Heisman winner Jayden Daniels and LSU in Columbia — a game the Tigers led late into the first half.

Missouri’s reward for defying the preseason predictions, when Vegas set the over/under at 5.5 wins?

A trip to Dallas; a game in the Cotton Bowl and a matchup with Ohio State.

And who saw that coming?

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: New Year's Six bound: Mizzou football and Ohio State to play in Cotton Bowl