COLUMBIA, Mo. • One way to measure the near-euphoria around Mizzou football on Wednesday over the signing of Dorial Green-Beckham was to imagine if the nation's top recruit out of Springfield, Mo., had chosen to go elsewhere.

MU recruiting coordinator David Yost would have been "very depressed," a sensation he felt briefly when his 'stomach sank" Wednesday morning as he heard the word "Arkansas" whispered over the ESPNU airwaves just before Green-Beckham announced he was going to Missouri.

MU receivers coach Andy Hill, the "hammer" in the final recruiting according to Yost, joked that he would have become "a puddle."

The enormous emotions in play were not only because of the prominence of Green-Beckham and the symbolic value of signing the No. 1 prospect in the nation, but also because of the unprecedented measures MU took in the chase.

"We pulled out all the stops," Yost said.

Just what tilted the balance in Mizzou's favor probably wasn't any one move or moment, but MU was creative and relentless in its efforts — from sending coach Gary Pinkel in by helicopter to make a 'splash," as Yost put it, to monitoring what other schools were doing that resonated with Green-Beckham and matching it to calling a sushi restaurant in Springfield to get the recipe for Green-Beckham's favorite food, fried sushi.

"During the whole recruiting process, I talked to Coach (John Beckham, Green-Beckham's foster father) all the time," Yost said. "Any time he'd tell me anything that they did somewhere else, well, if he mentioned it, it meant something. Well, guess what, I put all those into my file."

So since it meant something to Green-Beckham that one school put together a receiver's meeting, that was what MU did Friday night during his official visit. Afterward, his dinner was fried sushi, made by MU cooks after calling the restaurant, Fuji, where Green-Beckham eats it.

"It's all those little things," Yost said.

On a recent trip to Springfield, MU traveled with a rented luxury bus with six coaches in tow.

"Their secretaries (at Hillcrest High) have pictures of all the coaches who come in, and I can guarantee you right now there's more Missouri guys on that wall than anybody else," Yost said. "That was one of our things we were going to make sure of."

As for the bus adorned with a giant Tiger sticker, Yost said that per NCAA rules, if the engine was turned off Green-Beckham and his foster father were allowed to come aboard.

"It was the University of Missouri-Springfield; we had a branch campus down there for a day," Yost said.

No wonder so much emotion was riding on the decision, or that Mizzou was so thrilled by the result Wednesday.

"I was as excited as I've probably ever been about anything," said Yost, adding an allusion to the movie "Talladega Nights." "It's the Ricky Bobby thing: If you're not first, you're last. That's how recruiting is."

Said Hill: "The impact of him coming here I'm hoping will be something of legend in years to come."

His recruitment already figures to be.