True Sons: Enter Norm Stewart

Columbia was football crazy in the 1960s, so much so that basketball was an afterthought on campus. In his first nine years at Missouri, coach Dan Devine had presided over nine winning seasons and had taken the Tigers to three New Year's Day bowl games. As such, mediocrity by the hoops squad might have been tolerated. Humiliation, however, was something different. And so it came as no surprise when a pair of football legends accepted Bob Vanatta's resignation. That was the easy part for Don Faurot and Devine, who was set to succeed the retiring Faurot as athletic director. The hard part was to find the right man to revive the program. They made their choice just four days after the end of the 1966–67 season. Missouri would wait thirty-two years to hire another men's basketball coach.