Former Missouri coach Warren Powers has passed away after a long battle with Alzheimers.

Howard Richards, the Mizzou football radio analyst, announced the news on Twitter, and wrote, “Just learned from Gus Otto that former Mizzou head coach, Warren Powers, passed away late last night….only weeks after his wife, Linda, passed away. Godspeed coach.”

Powers coached Missouri from 1978 to 1984 during the era of the Big 8, and the Tigers had a winning record the first six seasons he coached, but his last season ended with a record of 3-7-1, and that ended his coaching career. In a 2018 profile of Powers and his battle with Alzheimer’s, the Columbia Missourian reported that when he left MU, he and his wife moved to St. Louis, where she is from, and he worked as a car salesman until retirement.

Now, about 4 decades after he stopped coaching, Powers is remembered for historic victories at Mizzou.

In the last regular season game during his first year as head coach, Missouri beat Nebraska, Powers’ alma mater. The Tigers wouldn’t defeat the team again for more than 20 years, ending the drought in 2003. … After his departure in 1984, the Tigers didn’t make another bowl game until 1997. In the nine seasons after Powers’ .586 winning percentage, coaches Woody Widenhofer and Bob Stull finished with the 2 lowest winning percentages MU had seen since 1932, .284 and .291 respectively.