Drinkwitz Explains Mizzou's Evolving Approach to High School Recruiting

Before taking his first question at his press conference to recap Missouri's 2026 signing class, Eli Drinkwitz reminisced on a different era of college football.

"This used to be a really big day, man," Drinkwitz said. "What happened?"

The answer to Drinkwitz's rhetorical question is unavoidable. The way the transfer portal, and now, revenue sharing, has changed and devalued high school recruiting is more than an elephant in the room.

How much can a recruiting class really matter when over half of Missouri's 2024 recruiting class have already transferred away. That level of departures is the norm across college football.

Missouri has built most of its core through the transfer portal. 32 players played over 200 snaps for the Tigers in the 2025 regular season, and 19 of those players transferred to the program.

But Drinkwitz still sees high-school recruiting as an essential piece to roster building.

“I think we're always going to (have) a foundational recruiting of high school players, and we always have to have a foundation of guys that we want to recruit and develop that become players for us," Drinkwitz said.

The model of being able to constantly develop your roster from within with a pool of homegrown players years at a time is simply no longer possible. But, Missouri has still been able to keep players on the traditional path of consistent development and retention. Especially on the 2023 and 2024 teams, when Missouri was still building itself to the recruiting power it is in the transfer portal.

In Missouri's 2022 recruiting class, only two players spent their whole career with Missouri — center Connor Tollison and Daylan Carnell. Tollison started four years and Carnell started three.

Overall, the resume of what Missouri has been able to do with high school recruiting under Drinkwitz has been undeniable. The 2026 class was the fourth class in the last five years that was rated in the top 25 across the country.

"We're continuing to recruit at a high level, even in a time where high school recruiting has been de-emphasized because of the portal," Drinkwitz said.

But still, roster holes are inevitable and unpredictable from year to year. For the most part, Missouri has been able to balance high school recruiting with replenishing and improving the roster through the portal.

"I go in the portal and either A, replace people who are wanting to leave, or B, replace people who or fill in gaps that maybe we weren't as right on in their development. Or their development is slowed or not been as fast as we anticipated," Drinkwitz said. "I think we're kind of in this 18-22 range of high school players each year, and that's probably what it will be moving forward."

Drinkwitz expects retention of players to be especially difficult this season with the introduction of revenue sharing and the cap it places on team's roster spending. . A redshirt freshman and a true freshman for Missouri have already announced plans to enter the portal once it opens Jan. 2.

"I think this will be a very, very active portal season," Drinkwitz said. " I think you'll see more players in the portal probably than we had before, because they think, or are being advised, that that's going to be a way to create leverage. And again, I again, what we're being asked to do has never been done in the history of college football before."

The introduction of revenue sharing has also changed how recruits and agents approach high school recruiting, according to Drinkwitz. But it's not as much a change of approach, but rather the time it's taking to navigate the changes of the contracts revenue sharing has introduced.

"I don't think there's an awareness nationally or with agencies or parents that the previous style of NIL, pass-the-hat fundraising, renegotiate. ... That's not possible anymore. You have a rev-share amount. You have a 3PN, third-party NIL, that is potentially there, but not guaranteed. And so you have a budget, and much like people have to balance their checkbooks, you have to balance the budget based off of this is what we have slotted for this player."

Missouri has looked to lower the amount of quick departures from high school recruits by first signing them to multi-year deals. There's a risk of a missing on the evaluation, but there's a large benefit of the guarantee of being able to carry out a player's development.

"We utilize them, because, again, we want to be a developmental program," Drinkwitz said of multi-year deals. "We understand that that gives them a level of security to grow and develop, and it gives us a level of security of not getting investing in somebody who's already trying to negotiate the next opportunity."

Being aware of the risk of investing in a prospect, Missouri has also had the timeline of recruiting a class.

The program's class this year took longer to acquire than typically expected. At the end of July, Missouri only had nine commits, leading to its class ranking near the bottom of the SEC. Nine of the prospects committed in October or November.

The longer process was intentional, with the program wanting to see the prospect's senior tape before finalizing the financial offer.

"We'll take June commitments, absolutely," Drinkwitz said. "But we're going to reevaluate your senior tape before we send you the offer that you can finalize from your financial because we want to make sure that you really all who you say you were, and that's how we're going to operate moving forward."

Predicting how the careers of Missouri's 19 signees in the class will play out is a fool's game. Not only is their potential and development unpredictable, but so is the opportunities that will be available for them.

Roster building has become a balancing act programs have to constantly adapt to.

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