The College Football Landscape is Changing; Mizzou's Eli Drinkwitz Has Suggestions to Fix its Problems
ARLINGTON, Texas — Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz takes a deep breath.
Sitting in Thursday's press conference alongside Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day, Drinkwitz is asked one thing he would change about the college football recruiting calendar.
"That's a loaded question," Drinkwitz said.
Drinkwitz has been vocal about the rampant changes facing college football in 2024, including a 12-team College Football Playoff expansion and the additions of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC. In front of the largest conference of his collegiate coaching career, he decided to speak his mind.
"There’s no way possible for us to have a 12-team playoff next year, and be recruiting in an open period, and have transfer portal additions and subtractions going on, and preparing for a game," Drinkwitz said. "It's just not possible."
More than ever, the month of December has become an incredibly stressful time for college football coaches. Both Drinkwitz and Day are trying to focus on preparing for one of the biggest games of their respective careers, while also trying to recruit and add transfers to continue their programs' success for the next season. The hot seat for coaches has never been hotter either, adding further weight to every decision made.
There's so much to juggle in one month, not even to mention the responsibilities of parenthood during the holidays, which Drinkwitz jokingly admitted in struggling to keep up with.
"[Day] lives on the beach, man. He's got time to look at the waves and figure out this stuff. I'm trying to figure out what my kids are getting for Christmas, and I had no idea," Drinkwitz said.
A "loaded" December not only effects the coaches, but the players as well. The final month of the calendar year is prime-finals time, and while student-athletes are trying to pass their classes and earn degrees, they must make life-changing decisions about the future of their careers.
That is part of the "unintended consequences" that Drinkwitz has alluded to, which doesn't fully commit to the best interest of the NCAA's players.
This spreads to all collegiate sports, including the likes of volleyball, soccer and olympic sports, whose needs typically get brushed aside when compared to college football.
"For student-athletes that have to play a soccer game all the way across the country on a Tuesday night and then come back and take a final the next day, that's really challenging," Drinkwitz said. "And that's really tough because at the end of the day, those are football decisions that are being made."
Maybe the answer is treating college football separately from the rest of the NCAA. It's impossible for the entire conglomerate of the NCAA to come together at once and make decisions that can benefit all sports, and with the wide-scope of football, it might need to differentiate from the rest of the NCAA's processes to not only continue a successful path for football, but all sports.
There's no easy answer to any of this. As Drinkwitz and Day both mentioned, everyone has to come together to make a decision about where the sport is headed. Day considered looking at the signing date, but the question on where to move it is complicated. If it's moved in the summer, the frequent coaching changes across college football could interfere with that process, causing more issues.
The future is full of questions for college football. The week leading up to the Cotton Bowl has given both coaches ample opportunity to speak about the sport they have loved all of their lives, and their credible worries about it.
"I don't know where the game is going," Drinkwitz said. "I know it's the greatest game in the United States of America. College football is unbelievable, and it's an opportunity for young men to get to do something that they wouldn't get to do outside of the game of football. God has given them an incredible gift and talent to play the game at such an elite level, and I just don't want to see it disappear."
The focus is clearly on Friday for Drinkwitz and Day, but no matter what program leaves Arlington with a win in the Cotton Bowl Classic, drastic changes will soon impact them both.
And both coaches know it. Especially Drinkwitz.
