Gary Pinkel deserved a better ending at Missouri.

The best football coach in school history deserved to go out on a high note, enveloped in applause and sent off with smiles all around.

Gary Pinkel is in his 15th season with Missouri. (Getty) More

Unfortunately, Pinkel is being pushed out by his own health issues. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in May, and after a check-up in late October decided that this season would be his last. It hadn't been a fun season up to that point: The Tigers were a messy 4-4; they had suspended former starting quarterback Maty Mauk for the remainder of the year; and then were dominated at home by Mississippi State in a downpour last week to fall under .500.

And then things actually became even more chaotic: Last Saturday, Mizzou's players declared a boycott of all football activities in support of a student activist group that was seeking the ouster of Missouri system president Tim Wolfe for failing to adequately respond to racial incidents on campus. Pinkel announced his support of the boycott – as if he had a lot of leeway to oppose it – and that became the trigger for Wolfe's resignation Monday.

Now comes the cherry atop of upheaval sundae at Mizzou: Pinkel is stepping down at the end of this season, his 15th at the school.

The announcement was scheduled to come on Sunday, after the Tigers play BYU in Kansas City Saturday. The news conference would come Monday. But rumors started flying early Friday afternoon that Pinkel was stepping down.

The sendoff for Pinkel will be warm and appreciative, as it should be. He took over a program that had become a perennial loser and built it into one strong enough for Southeastern Conference membership – and then he won two SEC East titles in the school's first three years in the league. That was astonishing.

When Pinkel arrived in 2001, Missouri had had 13 losing seasons in the previous 15 years. The Tigers had floundered through an array of coaches and become one of the biggest underachievers in the nation – the only Division I football program in a state that had two major metropolitan areas to draw from, in Kansas City and St. Louis.

The Tigers kept losing for Pinkel's first two years, then had winning seasons in eight of the next nine years. There was a 12-win season in 2007, when Mizzou was actually ranked No. 1 for a time. There were 10-win seasons in 2008 and '10.

Year 1 in the SEC was a 5-7 struggle amid a plague of injuries. Pinkel learned from that, the team got healthy, and what followed was a minor miracle: a two-year run of 23-5, 14-2 in the SEC, capped by victories in the Cotton and Citrus Bowls. Even in his 60s, Pinkel was doing extraordinary work.

Then came the May lymphoma diagnosis and an October follow-up. After that he made his decision.

Gary Pinkel (Getty) More

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