Победившая Арканзас-Пайн-Блафф Миссури получила четыре медали храбрости за игру против «Льва-труса»

When’s the last time you watched The Wizard of Oz? Personally, I’ve never cared for the Golden Age classic in any of its forms. Not even the one where you get high and sync it up to Dark Side of the Moon. But last year, I got curious again. It’d been approximately 25 years since my last viewing, and I wanted to see if maybe I was wrong; maybe something magical really does happen when the sepia-toned Kansas becomes the technicolor Oz. I wouldn’t say my mind was blown this time around, though I did enjoy myself more than I remembered as a child. I will say I was thoroughly taken aback when Dorothy and her motley crew roll up to the Wicked Witch’s house and the scarecrow is packing heat! But I think my single biggest issue with the film isn’t technical at all. It’s the cowardly lion. In my opinion, cowardly is a bit of a misnomer. To me, he gives off more pervert energy than anything. I don’t want to disrespect Bert Lehr’s memory here, but the growls? Heinous. The weird bark thing he does? Foul. If you ask me, the Scarecrow was pulling his piece on the wrong character. Wouldn’t surprise me to see him show up in the new Chris Hansen film. Apart from being physically and emotionally repugnant, I also find the cowardly lion’s character arc incredibly lacking. The stated motive for his character is a desire for courage, which he achieves in the end by… I don’t know, being a part of the group that gangs up on the Wicked Witch? For simply being present when Dorothy, feminist icon that she is, murders another woman in cold blood? You’ve seen Wicked, you know how the witch is misrepresented here. If anything, the cowardly lion’s refusal to step up in the face of a plain injustice only doubles down on his lack of moral fiber. Not only does he give off creepy uncle vibes, he’s still a coward by movie’s end… just a coward with a medal. Don’t worry, he also becomes co-president of the land of Oz. Somewhere watch out for the Munchkins, please. By my handy word count tool, that’s 362 words about the Wizard of Oz and not a damn thing about Mizzou’s season-opening 54-14 win over Arkansas Pine-Bluff. You may get where the connection comes from…. either the, “Lions and Tigers and Bears,” moment stuck in my head at a young age or UAPB’s Golden Lion mascot was a tenuous enough connection so as to stick in this column. I did, however, want to contrast their performance against that of the Pervert Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. Whereas the latter does nothing but cry and weep and heave his discomfiting baggy skin around the yellow brick road, the former actually earned a medal of courage in my book. While it didn’t win them any moral victories - no such thing in football, as we all know - I was impressed by the way Arkansas Pine-Bluff pushed Mizzou around for a decent portion of the game on Thursday night. Mizzou’s offensive line struggled to establish a run game, the bread-and-butter of the program’s offensive success, and the Tigers’ backups got punk’d in the third quarter by a more motivated UAPB unit. It was enough of a showing that Eli Drinkwitz took multiple opportunities to call out his own team’s sloppiness and lack of execution on national TV. If you’re an FCS school that can get a Top 25 team’s coach to scold them publicly, you’ve done something right in my book. And ultimately Mizzou should benefit from UAPB’s courageous play as well! If the goal of a buy game is to walk away uninjured with some tape to chew through, then consider Thursday night a rousing success. Mizzou gets a win, does so with no (new) major injury concerns, and gets to iron out some wrinkles ahead of their trip to kansas this weekend. Oh shoot, should I have saved The Wizard of Oz for next week… Anyway, there’s not much to say about a 54-14 game that was over before halftime, so I wanted to offer UAPB some ups for their performance on Thursday night. And also get a chance to resolutely say that the Cowardly Lion can get slapped by 1,000 Judy Garlands. You deserved it, you animal. For a valiant performance in the face of adversity, the UAPB Golden Lions get four out of five medals of courage. For what it’s worth, four out of five is how I’d score Mizzou’s performance as well. See More: