With Faurot deciding to spend his energies fully devoted to the duties of AD, forty applications were received for the Missouri head coaching job. Some, like Bowling Green’s venerable Doyt Perry were very desirable candidates and Perry was told the job was his if he wanted it. He decided to remain at Bowling Green and the position went to Frank Broyles. A former three-sport standout at Georgia Tech, Broyles had served as an assistant at Baylor, Florida, and for the previous six seasons, under his mentor, the great Bobby Dodd, at Tech. Broyles wanted to raise his family in a small town atmosphere and Missouri wanted a bright young coach, but a number of Faurot assistants who were told they could remain on staff immediately resigned. One of them, Hoot Berry, in a statement he laughed about many years later after Broyles was given “genius status” at Arkansas, pointedly asked the new young head man, “How do I know you can coach?” Broyles, copying the “chairman of the board” coaching style of Dodd where much responsibility was delegated, attracted great assistants. Jerry Claiborne came from Bear Bryant’s Texas A&M staff and went on to a College Football Hall Of Fame career at Virginia Tech, Maryland, and Kentucky. Jim Mackenzie was hired from a Texas military academy and was a brilliant member of Broyles’ Arkansas staff before taking over at Oklahoma and unfortunately dying young from a heart attack. Broyles was renown throughout his career for developing his assistants and he did this at Missouri in his first head coaching job. He also introduced a new helmet design. The black shell was adorned with the same striping that Faurot had introduced in ’56, a one-inch center stripe in old gold, a one-inch black gap, and one-inch white flanking stripes. Broyles added white three-inch Auburn style numerals to each side of the helmet and this design was maintained through the 1960 season. The 5-4-1 season of 1957 came with an emphasis on defense due to a lack of team speed and could have been better after a 5-1-1 start. Two defeats came from a total of three points. All Conference FB Hank Kuhlmann ran behind All Big Seven guard and placekicker Charlie Rash to provide most of the offense. Stout tackle Merv Johnson was another All Big Seven pick and the Conference Outstanding Student-Athlete. Johnson had a spectacular coaching career, much of it under Broyles as he followed his head coach to Arkansas as a graduate assistant, came back to Mizzou as an assistant coach, returned to Broyles at Arkansas for a lengthy stay, then served at Notre Dame before embarking on almost thirty years at Oklahoma as an assistant and eventually Director Of Football Operations. The National Football Foundation Integrity Award is named for Johnson and he won four National Championships as an assistant coach. Three weeks after the season ended, Broyles, depressed over the poor finish, took the Arkansas job, believing that the policy of recruiting Missouri only players, even if expanded to the immediately surrounding states, did not offer enough talent to consistently compete within the conference. The lack of emphasis on high school football in Missouri, which included the absence of a state prep all star game and spring practice, limited recruiting talent although the players that Broyles brought in for 1957 would form the nucleus of some of the Tigers’ best teams within the next two seasons.

Stung by the departure of Broyles, Faurot was still determined to get a bright, young coach for the 1958 season and he recalled the strong recommendations he received for Dan Devine. If anyone had earned the reputation of being organized, detailed, and hard-working, it was Devine who had been raised by an aunt and uncle in a small Minnesota town and then played quarterback at the local high school. He overcame a weakness in night-vision by eating carrots and doing eye exercises so that he could serve as a bombardier in the Pacific theater during World War II. Playing QB and attending school at the University Of Minnesota-Duluth on the GI Bill, he married, immediately had children, and juggled three varsity sports and three jobs in order to support his family. He later claimed that this taught him the organization skills needed to become a successful head coach. His first coaching job at small East Jordan, Michigan H.S. where the squad had gone winless in 1947, resulted in a 16-0 record for the 1948 and ’49 seasons. He impressed Michigan State head coach Biggie Munn and assistant Duffy Daugherty and Devine was hired as a graduate assistant at half of his high school salary. He was a tireless assistant as his family grew to one son and six daughters and he proved he could run his own team as Daugherty, who had succeeded Munn as head coach, gave him free reign in directing the Spartan freshmen team. Heading to the small-time Arizona State program as head coach in 1955, he pushed the Sun Devils to a three-year mark of 27-3-1 and a number twelve national ranking. The success earned Devine a reputation as a fastidious mentor who insisted on exacting play, perfect team attendance in practice and class, and he was a natural for the Missouri job.

Devine was immediately behind the proverbial eight-ball as QB Mike Shannon and starting HB Charley James left the program to sign Major League Baseball contracts with the St. Louis Cardinals. FB Hank Kuhlmann refused the baseball offer and returned to play the ’58 season at Mizzou. He entered pro baseball following graduation, and after a minor league career, joined Devine’s coaching staff at both Missouri and with the Green Bay Packers. He later served as the Arizona Cardinals interim head coach, taking over towards the end of the 1989 season when Gene Stallings was fired. Starting at 1-3, the Tigers completed the ’58 season with the same 5-4-1 record Broyles had in 1957 but this was clearly a better squad with great line play from All Conference picks end Dan LaRose, tackle Mike Magac, guard Dan Chadwick, and repeat performer Charlie Rash. HB Mel West rushed for 642 yards in the new Multiple Offense and with teammate Norris Stevenson, became the first African-American players in the program. So impressed was Devine with the leadership of 1958’s co-captains Rash and Chadwick, that the head coach added Rash to his staff and then demanded that the 1959 team and all of his subsequent squads would follow the rules of conduct that the ’58 seniors had established. These included no smoking or drinking in-season, no gambling at any time, and a 10:30 mid-week curfew with a lights-out policy at 1 AM on game day Saturdays. Rash later was an assistant at the Air Force Academy and Tennessee, dying tragically in an auto-train accident that claimed the life of the young coach and two other Tennessee assistants during the 1965 season. Rash was instrumental in recruiting the state’s premiere high school player, Andy Russell out of the St. Louis suburb of Ladue. Beating Michigan 20-15 on a two-yard plunge with but two seconds left on the clock, and a post-game incident galvanized the team and established an attitude that lasted for the next two seasons. Leaving the happy but wet, cold, and exhausted Tigers waiting in the tunnel to their locker room, no one from Michigan would open the doors for the Missouri team. Devine finally ordered big linemen Mike Magac and Rockne Calhoun to “take it down” and they tore the locker room entrance door off of its hinges! The 6-5 record included but two intra-conference losses to strong Colorado and Oklahoma. When the Mizzou coaches took to the sidelines against Iowa State and put their headsets on, they realized that they could hear the voices of the Cyclone staff and this led to the awarding of The Telephone Trophy between the two schools. With center/LB Tom Swaney performing at All Big Eight level, he joined defensive ends Russ Sloan, another All Conference member and LaRose in playing “kill the quarterbacks” and Missouri became a Split-Six, all out pass rush defensive team and remained that way throughout Devine’s tenure. DB Norm Beal covered a lot of ground in the secondary. QB Phil Snowden and HB West provided the offense behind All Big Eight guard Magac who played six NFL seasons with the Forty Niners and Steelers. The 14-0 Orange Bowl loss to Fran Tarkenton’s Georgia Bulldogs did not dampen the coaching staff’s belief that they had the makings of a great team.

Before the start of the 1960 season, ace recruiter and assistant coach Doug Weaver left to head the Kansas State program allowing defensive coach Al Onofrio to move up to the head assistant spot. Devine tried to make the limited substitution rules work for him and he based his offense around a power sweep that included blocking by both guards, a halfback, fullback, and rugged quarterback Ron Taylor. Air Force Coach Ben Martin said, “Devine gets so many blockers out in front of the ballcarrier that he ought to call the play ‘Student Body left’ or ‘Student Body right’” and this was the original quote thereafter applied to a number of programs that utilized an offense that featured power sweeps.  The play of Taylor and HB’s Norris Stevenson, whose breakaway running helped to defeat Oklahoma on the Sooners home field for the first time in twenty-four seasons, and Mel West who was an All Conference choice, and finished his Tiger career as the leading ball-carrier all three of his seasons, provided the rushing attack. The 41-19 thrashing of OU placed the Tigers at number one in the nation. West took his 1848 career yards and incredible kick return ability to the Patriots and Titans of the AFL. Two-way end LaRose captured All American honors, set the Missouri shot put record, and then had a six-year NFL career with four teams, playing on both sides of the ball. The rushing attack was effective due to the interior line play of All Big Eight guard Paul Henley and T Jerry Wallach. Andy Russell was an immediate starter at DB and LB as well as filling in at FB, with DB Beal again, a talented defender who later played with the Cardinals. The squad ripped through the schedule losing only its final game to rival Kansas 23-7 in a game later forfeited by the Jayhawks as they had knowingly used ineligible HB Bert Coan. The 9-1 Tigers hit the lofty heights of the number one ranking in the November 14 poll, dropped after the Kansas loss, and then jumped again after defeating Joe Bellino and Navy in the Orange Bowl 21-14, finishing their finest season with a number five final ranking and a number nine rated defense. Though Minnesota was crowned the National Champion prior to the bowl games, most experts believed that by the end of the season, Missouri was the best team in the nation.