The West Virginia Mountaineers and the Missouri Tigers have scheduled a home-and-home football series for 2016 and 2019, both schools announced today.
News of the future future football series was first reported yesterday by the Charleston Daily Mail.
In the first game of the series, West Virginia will host Missouri at Mountaineer Field in Morgantown in the season-opener on Sept. 3, 2016. Three years later, the Mountaineers will travel to take on the Tigers at Faurot Field in Columbia on Sept. 7, 2019.
“We are very pleased to add a team the caliber of West Virginia to our schedule,” said Mizzou Executive Associate Athletic Director Bryan Maggard, who oversees football scheduling. “We feel like this is a game that is appealing to the fan bases of both programs, and it helps us both add high-profile non-conference games to our schedules. We’re excited to have a chance to work together, and appreciate everyone coming together to make this happen on all sides.”
West Virginia and Missouri have met five times on the gridiron dating back to 1926. Missouri won the last meeting 34-31 in the 1998 Insight.com Bowl to take a 3-2 lead in the series.
“I believe this home-and-home series with Missouri will be great for both schools,” West Virginia Director of Athletics Oliver Luck said. “Each program will benefit from playing a non-conference game against a team from a highly visible conference, and the fans will be entertained from what I think will be two highly competitive games.”
The addition of West Virginia gives Missouri their first announced non-conference opponent for the 2016 season. It also fulfills Mizzou’s strength of schedule mandate for that season and 2019. The mandate stipulates that each SEC team play at least one non-conference game against another power five team.
In 2019, Missouri is also scheduled to open the season at Wyoming on Aug. 31 and host Memphis on Oct. 19.
West Virginia has now tentatively completed their non-conference schedule for the 2016 season. The Mountaineers are slated to host Youngstown State on Sept. 10 and BYU on Sept. 24 (at FedExField).
In 2019, WVU hosts the NC State Wolfpack on Sept. 14.
Football Schedules