COLUMBIA, Mo. — Sandwiched between visits with players in the transfer portal, Music City Bowl preparation and the headache that is retaining a roster in modern college football, Eli Drinkwitz served up a piece of his mind Wednesday afternoon.
It was a sign of the times — and a sign of what his job has become. Drinkwitz talked about coming to grips with the nature of the transfer portal, the things he wishes the Mizzou freshmen who recently transferred away understood and how he worries about the future of the sport.
Drinkwitz is in the middle of the highest-pressure part of his season, and he’s not even one of the 12 head coaches with a College Football Playoff game on deck.
MU is in the mix for a transfer portal quarterback, which is a frenzy, and doesn’t have one yet after missing out on Southern Cal’s Miller Moss over the weekend. Drinkwitz needs to fill other holes via the portal too, like finding three starting offensive linemen. And he lost three promising freshmen — former five-star recruit Williams Nwaneri, running back Kewan Lacy and defensive end Jaylen Brown — to the portal, which has prompted shivers of fear among Missouri fans.
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“We had a plan going into this,†Drinkwitz said. “But you have to try to retain your roster based on the salary cap that you have, based on your perceived needs. We have a perceived value of what our players are. That may not be their perceived value, which makes them maybe want to go to the portal.â€
Salary cap. Value. Portal. All terms that would have seemed antithetical to any conversation about college football in the not-too-distant past, but now they’re the buzzwords driving this offseason with revenue sharing on the horizon.
“The one thing I would say about this whole situation is it’s not our players’ (fault),†Drinkwitz said. “Don’t be mad at the players. This whole situation is not their fault at all. Don’t hate the players, hate the game. At the end of the day, it’s the system — there is no system. When there’s no system, then people will do what they need to do. So not mad at any of the players, totally understand it from their perspective, wish them well.â€
That’s a composed reaction from a coach who just a couple of days prior was surprised by Lacy, the freshman running back, entering the transfer portal on Monday after reaffirming his intent to stay with the team just last week — and then signing his paperwork with fellow Southeastern Conference school Mississippi later that day.
“That’s a new situation, you know?†Drinkwitz said.
So how does he react when freshmen with a path to playing time next season transfer away after spending only a year — “six months,†Drinkwitz corrected the Post-Dispatch’s question — at the school they signed with out of high school?
“I wish I could convince them that Darius Robinson had to wait, really, three years,†Drinkwitz said, referring to the former Mizzou defensive lineman and captain who was a first-round pick in the NFL draft earlier this year. “There’s no such thing as overnight success anymore. Doesn’t matter how highly you’re recruited or how low you’re recruited. None of that matters, man. Just get in there and continue to do the work.
“That’s what I regret. I think everybody, when they come into college football, faces a level of adversity that they have to overcome. But I just wish that they would understand that there’s no such thing as an overnight success.â€
The MU coach, hired five years and nine days ago, mentioned some of the turbulence that NFL-bound wideout Luther Burden III — a five-star recruit in his own right — encountered during his freshman season before earning All-American honors during his second campaign and heading early to the draft after his third.
“I just wish — six months, I think that’s a really short time period to give a program,†Drinkwitz continued. “But again, everybody’s got their own journey. Core value No. 4 for us is ‘enjoy the journey.’ And if six months was all that journey was ...â€
He trailed off, not seeming to be sad or angry or anything other than resigned to the quagmire of what his program and locker room are stuck in.
“I’m to the point now where it is what it is,†Drinkwitz said. “Until — who’s in charge of college football? So what good does it do me to complain? I mean, I don’t know who’s in charge. Coaches, we can vent or say what we want to say, but there’s nobody in charge. Until there’s people that are in charge, we’re wasting our breath.â€
Who’s going to tell him otherwise? Not the NCAA, which loses legal battles to athletes like it’s a nonconference blood donor. Despite Penn State coach James Franklin’s suggestion, there’s no college football commissioner — except maybe U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken, whose decisions on the House v. NCAA case are actively reshaping the landscape of college sports.
“You just got to adapt to it,†Drinkwitz said. “I worry that the game that I love and have dedicated 30-something years of my life to is slowly getting taken away from us.â€
Not that there’s any time to mourn its passing into professionalism or grasp at the antiquated straws of what’s left. Drinkwitz has a bowl game to prepare for, potential transfers to recruit and agents to talk to.
That’s the job these days.
