'College Football is Sick': Eli Drinkwitz Talks End of Season Portal Challenges

Drinkwitz is no stranger to managing his team in terms of the transfer portal, but this offseason will be a little bit different.

Nov 8, 2025; Columbia, Missouri, USA; Missouri Tigers head coach Eli Drinkwitz reacts during the first half against the Texas A&M Aggies at Faurot Field at Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images | Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images

The busiest time of the year for college football coaches, players and fans is right now. From bowl games to the College Football Playoff, to the transfer portal, there's a lot to follow and manage at a crucial point in the season.

For Eli Drinkwitz and the Missouri Tigers, juggling player retention and acquisition, while also trying to win the Gator Bowl on Dec. 27 against the Virginia Cavaliers, has been nothing short of a challenge. All of these tasks that need to be completed and thoroughly evaluated are stacking up at an important time of the year, making doing all of them at once a massive challenge.

Drinkwitz has never shied away from criticizing the way college football works nowadays. The case was the same on Tuesday afternoon, when Drinkwitz made his frustrations clear with dealing with a staff vacancy, losing players to the transfer portal and preparing for his team's bowl outing.

Most of Drinkwitz's frustrations start and end with the transfer portal and the contract system. It's no secret that NIL in college athletics is still somewhat messy and it seems to be bubbling to the surface right now.

“We've worked around the system and then tried to create that as the system, instead of creating (a) functioning way moving forward and making sure that it works for everybody," Drinkwitz told the media. "Whether that's collective bargaining, whether that's making them employees, whether that's antitrust legislation that protects everybody, something needs to be done.”

The contract system is still fairly unclear at the moment. Simply hearing coaches talk about it seems like a foreign concept, let alone the players receiving them.

It does make a difference, however, if players are already entering the transfer portal. If a player leaves his team in the middle of a multi-year contract, a buyout will have to be paid. That's a new implementation to the transfer portal and NIL that wasn't once there and it's one that coaches are newly navigating.

"We have a lot of guys who signed contracts who plan on returning or are under two-year contracts," Drinkwitz said. All of our two-year contracts have a buyout. So if guys leave with a two-year contract, you enter into the portal with the tag on it that says buyout, and the next school is responsible for figuring that out. So we'll see how that all plays out in the future."

Another change coaches have yet to experience is the removal of the spring transfer portal window. It makes it so coaching and recruiting staffs only have a 15-day window to build their teams while players also decide whether to stay or leave.

"I think the biggest challenge with the January-only portal is that you're going to have one crack at the egg, and once you get your roster set, it's set," Drinkwitz said. "There's no way to fix it. So it'll be interesting to see how everybody approaches spring football moving forward."

Drinkwitz is aware of how his constant words of wisdom about college football as a whole may come off. To some, it may sound like complaining. Drinkwitz isn't the only coach around the country touching on these serious topics, though, and it does seem to come from a place of love for the sport.

At certain moments, it does seem like there's something new going wrong in college football frequently. As more and more changes and slips away from the norms that once were in the sport, more loopholes and ways to get around rules arise.

"We're trying to sound warning bells," Drinkwitz said. "That's what I believe we're all trying to do, is that there's a warning that the system that we're in is really sick right now, and college football is sick and not in a it's just there's showing signs of this thing really cracking moving forward."

The one glaring positive surrounding Drinkwitz's football program revolves around stability. For the most part, Drinkwitz has done a solid job of keeping a core of players and coaches throughout his tenure. There's really never been any massive shakeups while Drinkwitz has manned the ship for the Tigers.

"We have a ton of stability here," Drinkwitz said. "We have a ton of really good players who want to play here, so it's a great place to be in a lot of known quantities, in a time when there's a lot of instability."

For now, the focus for the Tigers is on the Gator Bowl. Missouri and Virginia will kick off at 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 27 in Jacksonville, Florida, for both teams' final games of the season.