The 1942 Missouri Tigers football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

team that represented the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Universit ...

in the

Big Six Conference The Big Eight Conference was a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored football. It was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Associat ...

(Big 6) during the

1942 college football season The 1942 college football season was the 74th season of intercollegiate football in the United States. Competition included schools from the Big Ten Conference, the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC), the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the Big Six C ...

. The team compiled an 8–3–1 record (4–0–1 against Big 6 opponents), won the Big 6 championship, and outscored all opponents by a combined total of 288 to 107. The team played its home games at Memorial Stadium in

Columbia, Missouri Columbia is a city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is the county seat of Boone County and home to the University of Missouri. Founded in 1821, it is the principal city of the five-county Columbia metropolitan area. It is Missouri's fourth ...

. The team's leading scorer was

Bob Steuber Robert James Steuber (October 25, 1921November 29, 1996) was an American football halfback who has the distinction of having played NCAA college football after playing professional football in the NFL. Steuber played four seasons in the Nation ...

with 121 points, a scoring title that remained a Missouri record for 65 years until Jeff Wolfert scored 130 points in 2007. Missouri was ranked at No. 29 (out of 590 college and military teams) in the final rankings under the Litkenhous Difference by Score System for 1942. During the 1942 season,

Don Faurot Donald Burrows Faurot (June 23, 1902 – October 19, 1995) was an American football and basketball player, coach, and college athletics administrator best known for his eight-decade association with the University of Missouri. He served as the ...

was the head coach for the eighth of 19 seasons. In June 1943, after a younger brother was reported missing in action in the

Battle of the Bismarck Sea The Battle of the Bismarck Sea (2–4 March 1943) took place in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) during World War II when aircraft of the U.S. Fifth Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) attacked a Japanese convoy carrying troops ...

, the 41-year-old Faurot joined the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

where he was commissioned as a lieutenant. A total of four Faurot brothers served in the military during World War II.

Chauncey Simpson Chauncey Simpson (December 21, 1901 – April 20, 1970) was an American college football, college basketball, and track and field coach. He was the interim head football coach at University of Missouri from 1943 to 1945 while Don Faurot, the stan ...

, who had been the school's head track coach and a backfield coach for the football team, was appointed to serve as "acting football coach" during Faurot's military service.

Schedule

References

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

Missouri Tigers football seasons Big Eight Conference football champion seasons

Missouri Tigers football The Missouri Tigers football program represents the University of Missouri (often referred to as Mizzou) in college football and competes in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Missouri's ...

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