Tigers

The 1960 season is the one Missouri Tigers fans still point to: a national championship, the only one the program claims outright, though a separate 2007 title run went unrecognised by the major polls. That 1960 team also carried a Big Eight championship, one of six the Tigers took in that conference between 1939 and 1969.

The program dates to 1890, and its conference success actually predates the Big Eight by decades, then collected six more in the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association between 1909 and 1927. That kind of early dominance in leagues long since dissolved is easy to lose track of, but it is where the club's championship habit started.

Missouri play at Memorial Stadium, known as Faurot Field, which sits under the black-and-gold colours the Tigers have carried since the founding. Truman the Tiger works the sideline as mascot, a fixture familiar to anyone who has followed the program through its various conference homes — Big Eight, then Big 12 North, where the Tigers won three straight division titles from 2007 to 2010.

The move to the SEC brought two more championships, in the SEC East in 2013 and 2014, proof the program could still finish on top after changing leagues. That remains the level Missouri measures itself against now: a Power Four programme in the SEC, chasing the kind of division and conference finishes that have defined it since the 1890s.