'Job is Not Completed': Drinkwitz Focused on Vision at Mizzou Following Speculation

FAYETTEVILLE, ARK. — After losing to Oklahoma in Week 13, Eli Drinkwitz sent a text message to Director of Athletics Laird Veatch.

"Let's get this done," Drinkwitz recalled texting Veatch.

The "this" was the extension that Drinkwitz ultimately signed Thursday after being authorized by the University of Missouri's Board of Curators on Wednesday.

The desire to put ink to paper came partly from an interaction Drinkwitz had with a group of heckling Oklahoma fans. As Drinkwitz and a group of players waited to take the field, an Oklahoma fan played into the speculation.

"Coach is gone after this season, you're still playing for him?" a fan yelled at Drinkwitz and the players.

"It pissed me off," Drinkwitz said of the heckling fan. "Obviously we didn't win the game, but it bothered me, because it was a distraction to our team, and at that point, it's the first time I realized like, this ain't fair to them. It ain't about me, it's about them. This is their year. This is their season."

Five days after that loss to Oklahoma, Drinkwitz ended the speculation by signing a 6-year contract extension with an average salary of $10.75 million per year.

Drinkwitz had made comments all season on the speculation that he'd be leaving for Penn State or LSU.

"I'm not going to comment on message board chatters, tweets, sources," Drinkwitz said in the week leading up to the Oklahoma game. "I've maintained with you (the media) and our team that my complete focus is on the task at hand. ... I would like to remind everybody, including our fans, we absolutely love Mizzou. We love what we're building."

But until Drinkwitz actually signed an extension, there was now way to completely extinguish the flames of speculation that continued to grow. Especially after other rumored candidates such as Mike Elko at Texas A&M or Curt Cignetti at Indiana signed extensions.

Drinkwitz signed an extension in July ahead of this season. But until he signed one after three of the top jobs in college football became available, the question was still going to be there.

For the larger part of the November, Drinkwitz was the betting favorite to be named Penn State's head coach. There were reports that Penn State made an offer to him.

"We've got Twitter trending with bets on who's going to be leading or get this job, and I was the leading bet getter for a job I never interviewed for," Drinkwitz said. "That's annoying. That's bull crap. And it's just speculation. It's just media throwing stuff on the wall."

Now, extension in hand, the conversation can return to what Drinkwitz is building at Missouri.

The 2025 season isn't the best proof of that, with the Tigers concluding the regular season at 8-4 following a win over Arkansas. With expectations to compete for a spot in the College Football Playoff, there was instead a clear line drawn between Missouri and the top competitors of the SEC.

"I think it's a good season. It's not great," Drinkwitz said following the win over Arkansas. "We had a chance to go to great. We didn't get it done. And as a team, as an organization, as everybody, we've got to find those inches."

All four of Missouri's losses were to SEC teams ranked inside the top 10 at the time of the games. And though three of those losses were decided by just one possession, Missouri was never really in control of any of them.

"But we got to find a way to be better in those games," Drinkwitz said of the valuable games against top-ranked opponents. "I understand that, and that's going to be those inches that we're looking for."

But, the season was a good barometer for the hurdles that Missouri has cleared, but also the ones it still needs to clear.

With a chance to earn nine wins in the bowl game, the 2025 season will be Missouri's worst in the last three seasons. A win in the bowl game would be the 30th for the Tigers over that three-year span.

"We got to have micro goals. Because obviously, the goal that we set out to start the season got taken away from us," Drinkwitz said. "This team has faced a lot of adversity throughout the year."

But, the performance against Arkansas, despite the fact that it was a 14-point win for the Tigers, continued to show exactly why the team this year wasn't particularly close to being good enough to compete for a spot in the playoff. The passing game isn't effective at moving the ball and prone to turnovers in big moments. The offense as a whole can't execute all that well in the red zone. And the special teams has far too many costly moments.

Those problems were apparent on the field all season. Drinkwitz believes those steps on the field need to be taken with growth off of it with more NIL support. Specifically from Fortune 500 companies within the state.

"There's teams that we're playing with larger NIL budgets than we have," Drinkwitz said leading up to the Oklahoma game. "Doesn't mean we're not doing the absolute best we can. Doesn't mean that we haven't put together a really, really good football team, and there's a lot of people helping us, but more is still more, and until there's a cap on it, we want every advantage that we can possibly get."

Since making those honest comments about how Missouri's NIL funds stack up, Drinkwitz says he's heard from several people wanting to aid in those efforts. That's included Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe, Senator Eric Schmitt, Representative Jason Smith and some of the top contributors to the University of Missouri and its athletic department. They see the vision Drinkwitz has to build.

"All these guys wanting to find whatever they can do to help," Drinkwitz said, "and it's going to take all of us. And that's what's going to make Mizzou really special moving forward, is that we're all in this together, and we're all trying to figure out how do we go achieve what we all dream we can do and do it together."

The argument for Drinkwitz to leave Missouri and go to a blue blood like Penn State or LSU was that the resources and foundation would already be set. Instead, he's decided to continue trying to add to what he's built with Missouri.

"I just felt like we weren't done yet," Drinkwitz said. "And so my job here is not completed yet and I appreciate the way our administration handled it."

Read more Missouri Tigers news: