Nov. 30, 2000

MU Chancellor Richard Wallace

"It's my pleasure to welcome Coach Gary Pinkel and his family to the Mizzou family."

On importance of competitive athletic teams:

"I've been a collegiate athletic fan at the University of Missouri for thirty-four years. I've tried to do this job into the fifth year now and I have come to see intercollegiate athletics from a little different perspective. I understand the importance of intercollegiate athletics and a competitive athletic teams to very large number of alumni, fans, and supporters not just this state, the nation, and in fact around the world. I never make a visit to a community in this state and across the nation, when someone doesn't ask me about one of our teams, 'How are the Tigers going to do this season?'"

" It's meaningful in so far that our student body concerned with competitive intercollegiate athletic teams. Our applications increase, our enrollment increases. With successful intercollegiate athletic teams, our financial donations and the private support increase. In general, the mood of the state and the mood of the people is in part tempered by how well our intercollegiate athletic teams do and certainly how our football team does."

On expectations of athletic teams and their coaches:

"I am mindful, the folks of this state and this institution expect other very important things. A clean program, were going to do it right. We also expect our student-athletes to receive the support, the time, and the attention that they deserve. Not only in our competitive athletes, but to also become successful people as they move away from our institution."

MU Director of Athletics Mike Alden

Announcing Gary Pinkel as new head football coach:

"On Monday, November 20th we began a process that would be very quick and cumulating with what we have today, ten years later with the announcement of Gary Pinkel as the new head football coach of the University of Missouri"

On his decision to hire Gary Pinkel:

"We are extremely fortunate to have a person of the caliber and the quality of Gary Pinkel to be here with us at Mizzou. Between Rutgers, the University of Maryland, Arizona State, and the University of Arizona, and all the openings that are out there, he kept popping up that short list, we knew his was on the short list at Missouri as well. We knew that when we identified him as our guy that he was the right person. With the type of reputation that he has built in this country and in football in particular, there was no question why he appeared on the short list of every single one of those programs."

On Pinkel's relationship with his players:

"The kids that I talked to that have played for him and are now in the NFL, I knew that this was a guy that built relationships with his kids and that his kids cared about him in addition to being a great football coach, he was someone they could respect and that was important for us."

On Pinkel's ability to develop complete student-athletes:

"There is no question that it is great to be able to have people who can identify folks that have talents to be able to go to the NFL, of which Gary Pinkel has done so. But beyond that, his ability to focus his kids academically and socially and what we need to do to be able to develop ourselves into young men and productive men in society was critically important."

On Pinkel's ability to recruit:

"Between his work ethic and his ability to analyze and to be able to evaluate talent from a recruiting standpoint was something that we were extremely impressed with."

On Pinkel's winning record:

"His commitment to academics is unquestioned. I don't think there was any doubt that when we were looking at Gary Pinkel we had a winner. In 22 years at the University of Washington and Toledo, its kind of funny that in 21 of those years he has had a winning record."

On Pinkel's passion:

"The first time that I met with Gary Pinkell there was without a doubt when we left that there was a heck of a lot of passion in that room for football and for building young men and to be able to develop their skills academically, socially, and competitively."