A Fan’s Notes: On Drinkwitz and Job Openings

As Mizzou wins and continues to stay in the polls, Tiger fans will need to deal with the increasing possibility of head coach Eliah Drinkwitz getting poached. There will be a near-constant discussion if another school with a much larger athletics budget, perhaps one in Mizzou’s own conference, will swoop in and bring his Missouri tenure to an abrupt end. Whether or not it happens will be up to him.

Yes, I realize this is an odd time for this column, as Mizzou is coming off a disjointed offensive performance. There are certainly chicken Littles in the fanbase that read that opening paragraph and said, “humph!! Let them have him!” But the wide view of his tenure shows the incredible job he has done building this program, so it’s a conversation that we will have, and have, and have…

Mizzou has not had to experience much coach poaching – not on the football side, at least. There were some whispers about Gary Pinkel to Washington and Michigan, but overall, Mizzou coaches aren’t stolen. You have to go back to 1957 to Frank Broyles fleeing to Fayetteville to find a Mizzou coach being swiped by another college program.

So this will be largely untrod ground for the Mizzou faithful. You should steel yourself, because the conversations are going to happen: Drinkwitz has thrived in the areas that build modern college football powerhouses. His recruiting and talent acquisition is the best in the history of Mizzou. His mid-tenure pivot to CEO, stripping himself of play calling duties, showed real leadership and introspection. He has proven himself to be a savvy staff builder. He has had success as a politician, fundraiser, and fanbase energizer, and his program was one of the first with a functional and aligned NIL arm. No, he can’t take sole credit for all of these things, but they have happened on his watch and would “translate up” to a blueblood.

So, we are going to have to live through this conversation. Will we have to live through the reality of it? I can’t see the future, and I don’t know the man, but it simply boils down to what motivates him professionally. There seems to be one of two main ways his career can go from this point.

If he is motivated by stability, both for his work and for his family, he will stay at Missouri. He has embraced the town and program, and they have embraced him back. He has put in the work to build something here, and if his program can stay at this level, he can coach in Faurot for a LONG time.

However, the downside of this route is that Drinkwitz would sacrifice stability and a high chance of an iconic legacy for a realistic shot at a national championship. Even with his excellent recruiting, Mizzou football is not in the stratosphere of programs that contend for a title. It’s a painful truth. Gary Pinkel was comfortable with that trade.

If Drinkwitz’s main professional goal is to hold the sport’s shiniest trophy over his head one January night, then he will one day leave for a Florida, a Clemson, or another school that can play in that sandbox of talent. He will sacrifice stability, risk getting canned in three or four years and having to restart and walk away from all that he has built at Mizzou. But he will have access to the kind of blue-chip roster loaded — not just sprinkled — with the talent that can win it all.

So which motivates him? We’ll never know, and that means some uncertainty for the fanbase. Mizzou and Ole Miss partisans will be riding a similar roller coaster, as Lane Kiffin has also demonstrated the qualities that will make him attractive for upper tier schools.

In absence of having an honest answer from the man himself, we can accept that this is one of the painful parts of having a good program. It’s no different than the gameday stress before a big match. The dull ennui of rooting for a losing team is much worse than the acute stressors of rooting for a winning one. I’ll take a dozen coaches stolen by an LSU or a USC to not have to live through a Purdue 35, Missouri 3 again.

So congrats, Mizzou fans. Eli Drinkwitz has built a quality team here, and the best part is that it looks sustainable. Bigger programs than ours are going to want a piece of that action. Mizzou might not be able to offer Eli everything, but maybe there is enough in Columbia to keep him long enough to build a legacy.