Columbia. Mo. ? Missouri is bowl-eligible.

Somehow that’s the one thing that got lost after Saturday’s 41-10 dismantling of Texas Tech at Faurot Field. That’s probably because just gaining the necessary six victories for bowl eligibility is no longer the goal of Missouri football.

With five games remaining and a loss to No. 4 Oklahoma the only blemish this season, the No. 13 Tigers have their sights set on something bigger.

“We can go to San Antonio,” Missouri linebacker Sean Weatherspoon said.

San Antonio is the home of this year’s Big 12 championship, and while the majority of Missouri’s players maintain they’re taking each game one at a time, there’s no denying that a Big 12 title is their ultimate goal.

However, Missouri (6-1 overall, 2-1 Big 12) still has five games to go, and the season doesn’t get any easier.

With the exception of Missouri’s game Saturday against Iowa State, none of the teams remaining on the Tigers’ schedule has a losing record. Kansas, Texas A&M and Kansas State are in the top half of their respective divisions. Missouri hasn’t won at Kansas State or Colorado in at least a decade.

But the immediate worry has to be whether this Missouri team can keep up its strong play this weekend against Iowa State, the worst team in the Big 12. Iowa State is 1-7 overall and 0-4 in the conference. Its only victory came against rival Iowa earlier this year.

A letdown is possible, especially since the Tigers’ first three Big 12 games have been against rival Nebraska, an Oklahoma team that is in a national championship hunt and a Texas Tech team that went into Saturday’s game with the best offense in the country.

One of the things Missouri has going for it is what happened last season against the Cyclones in Ames, Iowa. Missouri meandered through most of the game and found itself scrambling in the final quarter to get a winning touchdown. When the Tigers thought they had the winning score, it was called back on a phantom holding call that cost them the game. Although the Big 12 apologized for the bad call, it was ultimately the difference between an 8-5 and 9-4 season.

“We have been through every situation that you can possibly go through to not take anything for granted and not let anything slide away,” defensive tackle Lorenzo Williams said. “We know what we’ve got to do because we’ve seen it so many times during the past four years that I’ve been here. It definitely helps in your preparation knowing that you can’t let up any week, especially in the Big 12. You can get beat at any time.”