'Don't Lose Sight': Mizzou's Eli Drinkwitz Discusses SEC Future and Conference Realignment
Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz is accepting the future of college football. Is he a fan of the ultimate plan? Perhaps not. Does he understand this is the future of the sport?
Without question.
"It's such an incredible game that we have," Drinkwitz said Monday at SEC Media Days. "Through great moments, through tailgates, through bitter rivalry defeat, through incredible rivalry wins, it's what makes college football awesome.
"It's my hope that we don't lose sight of that. I know that the college football world and college athletics is changing. For any of you Simpson fans, I'm not the old man yelling at the clouds that we want to go back to the way it was."
Ten years ago, Missouri joined Texas A&M in departing the Big 12 for the SEC. Come 2025, two more programs are slated to join the conference with Texas and Oklahoma.
Since the news was announced last July, the landscape of college football has continued to change. The Big 12 poached three schools from the Athletic Conference to join BYU in 2023. As a corresponding move, the AAC added six schools from Conference USA to replace the programs leaving next July.
Most recently, USC and UCLA announced they would be leaving the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten starting in 2024. With the departure of the two flagship programs, there now are questions about the future of the conference with the Big 12 looking to expand past 12 teams in the coming months.
Drinkwitz isn't a fool and understands that in large part, most of the moves being made are for marketing and not tradition, thus raising the question if the current status of the sport is being made for all parties.
"What are the guiding principles for college athletics moving forward?" Drinkwitz said. "I hope it's bigger than TV deals guiding principles."
Several coaches have been outspoken about the latest rulings of NIL and the transfer portal. Drinkwitz isn't one of them, stating how deals such as these were necessary for the future of the sport.
"We’re entering, and rightfully, into a new era of college athletics with student-athlete rights, the ability to transfer through the transfer portal, generating of earnings through NIL, all things that were much needed and need to continue to be embraced," Drinkwitz said.
Currently, there are questions surrounding the future of not just the conference but also the sport as a whole. Drinkwitz believes college football needs to set a clear course for the future if it hopes to be in sync with the programs that will benefit or suffer from the latest fallouts.
Said Drinkwitz: "I’ve heard so much and got so many questions about NIL, conference expansion, all that stuff. That’s not really the question. The question is: What do we want college football to look like moving forward? Let’s start moving that direction, then we can answer those other questions."
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