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That’s how Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz presented himself on the main stage Thursday morning at the Southeastern Conference’s preseason media days.

He wanted to contrast what he saw as “whining� from his peers who’d spoken earlier in the week, and in doing so offered plenty to the smaller group of media who attended his press conference from on-the-nose conspiracy theory zingers to a thought-out vision for a 30-team College Football Playoff.

"I was sent a text message the other day by one of my good friends,� Drinkwitz said early in his opening remarks, “that said, ‘What a privilege it is to be exhausted by a challenge you choose for yourself.’ That’s something I think about a lot. When we talk about college football and college athletics, we choose to do this.�

His emphasis was on the choice, the agency that coaches still have amid widespread cynicism toward the direction of college football’s changes. Drinkwitz is as willing to critique those shifts as any other SEC coach, if not more so — and did exactly that Thursday morning with the concession that he might draw the ire of conference commissioner Greg Sankey for his suggestions.

But before he dug into the college football topics du jour, Drinkwitz fired off some wit from his hip.

“I know there’s a lot of burning questions in this room by the 14 of y’all that showed up,� he joked. “But just as a reminder, I’m not going to answer any questions about the Epstein files, about the radiation belt and whether or not it was possible for Lee Harvey Oswald to get three shots off in seven seconds.�

There went the Post-Dispatch’s planned lines of questioning.

If Drinkwitz entered the event with a reluctance to bite on any big-picture debates, his inhibitions vanished when he was asked about his preferences on a 12-, 14- or 16-team format for the College Football Playoff in 2026 and beyond.

“This is not going to do me any favors with our commissioner,� Drinkwitz began. “When I think about college football right now and think about what we need to do, I think it really comes down to two things: what’s best for our players and what’s best for our fans. The rest of us are really only important because of the players and the fans. So when you think about whether it’s 12, 14 or 16, to me, if we’ve decided to go into this expansion of the playoffs and we’re trying to follow the NFL model, well, the NFL takes 44% of their teams into the playoffs to keep the passion or keep the fanbase engaged. If we’re talking about 12, that’s 9% (of FBS teams). If we’re talking about 14, that’s 11%. If we’re talking about 16, that’s 12%. That’s really not changing the math for the fanbase. So I really don’t understand what the big fight is about.

That doesn't mean Drinkwitz is anti-playoff expansion. Quite the opposite, actually.

"I think we should go back and try to find more ways to include teams," he said. "How do we get more people involved? Because that’s better for the players, that’s better for the player experience. Have more people involved in the potential to play for a championship. It’s better for the fan bases. I think we all would agree that the four college football playoff games at home campuses was a huge win for college football. We need to expand that opportunity, that energy and excitement."

Drinkwitz then outlined his vision for a 16-team CFP format with more automatic bids given to conferences and the introduction of intraleague play-in games, bringing the total number of teams with a postseason game up to 30.

His math would give four spots each to the Big Ten and SEC, and then three each to the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conference. Each of those 14 spots would go to the winner of a play-in game, though — probably requiring the No. 1 team in the SEC to play the No. 8 team, No. 2 vs. No. 7 and so on. That adds up to 28. The final two spots in the CFP field would go to the best Group of Six conference champion and one at-large team, a berth generally set aside for Notre Dame if the Fighting Irish are good enough.

It's a unique and bold proposal considering the idea of any play-in games is up for debate, much less that many of them. Still, Drinkwitz seemed excited to float what's essentially a 30-team model for feedback.

“Now we’re talking about an opportunity for 30 teams, 30 fan bases to be excited and engaged — engaged and getting revenue,� he said.