Inside Mizzou’s extension for a ‘unique talent at this time in college football’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mizzou extended Drinkwitz to secure continuity and push program upward.
- Deal boosts staff salary pool to $16M; pledges efforts for NIL and revenue support.
- AD Veatch cited Drinkwitz’s adaptability and staff investment as keys.
Anticlimactic as it might seem in a season in which Mizzou had College Football Playoff ambitions, the Tigers’ matchup with No. 19 Virginia on Dec. 27 in the Gator Bowl looms as a potential milestone:
With a victory in Jacksonville, Florida, the Tigers (8-4) would match the most wins in any three-year period in school history (30) previously established under Gary Pinkel.
Yes, they play more games nowadays than they did in most of that past. And, no, winning wouldn’t undo the sting of four losses to top 10 teams, two of which were within Mizzou’s grasp but for a play or three.
Win or lose, though, that context helps explain why MU was eager to extend head coach Eli Drinkwitz’s contract — and bolster his resources — as it seeks to move up a rung from good to great.
Where some might see a plateau, Mizzou sees a foundation. And a runway to more.
Not merely as a matter of continuity, alignment and stability — though those are crucial points amid all the general upheaval in college sports, with six Southeastern Conference rivals changing coaches and at a school with its fourth athletic director since Mike Alden retired in 2015.
It’s also quite particular to what Drinkwitz has demonstrated since being hired in December 2019: his energy, sense of fit and, perhaps most of all, nimbleness and adaptability in a time of profound change.
His capacity to implement a program at the start of the pandemic (and go 5-5), embrace the advent of the transfer portal and the NIL era along the way to winning 21 games the previous two seasons were all part of what compelled Mizzou to extend his contract amid buzz he could be poached by another school.
“So much of it is proof to what he’s done to this point,” MU athletic director Laird Veatch said in a recent interview with The Star in his office. “To build a program, get to consistent success, it is really really challenging in our environment. …
“He’s just proven his ability to navigate all this in such an intelligent, strategic way that a lot of coaches haven’t been prepared for. But he has that capacity.”
Elaborating on what it takes because of today’s circumstances, Veatch pointed to Drinkwitz’s “willingness to adjust how you think, how you operate, how you approach things (while) still staying true to your character and your values and core beliefs of how you operate.
“He has clearly been able to do that and has indicated a willingness to adjust his strategy and approach that is just hard for a lot of (people), particularly coaches. Coaches are brought up in this profession in certain ways and methods, and it’s hard to get outside of those boxes unless you have a mindset like he does.”
The faith that Drinkwitz is the right man and close to establishing more also is reiterated in other elements of the extension.
It includes substantial increase in the staff salary pool to $16 million, believed to be competitive with the upper half of the SEC after years of being below that tier. And the deal features language that commits to the school working to equip the program “with economic resources, including funds for name, image and likeness opportunities, revenue-sharing initiatives and/or related funding.”
While the six-year, $64.5 million deal certainly personally benefits Drinkwitz, Veatch stressed that this was about much more as MU seeks to see Drinkwitz improve on his 26-24 SEC record and 1-11 record vs. top 10 foes.
“From the beginning of the conversations with him, it was really about continuing to position him to have further success and be able to empower him with the resources he needs to get that done,” he said. “And that is ultimately driven by talented people: players through NIL-type resources and elevating what we do in terms of our investment in staff.
“And while his individual salary is highly competitive, the staff pool salary overall was not as competitive in our league. So that was a real area of focus in those conversations.”
As are the NIL initiatives that Drinkwitz has been outspoken about. Asked why that was so important during a November news conference, Drinkwitz paused, chuckled and put it this way:
“I mean, you want better results? You’ve got to get better players. And we’ve got great players right now. But you can always use more. … You’ve got to offer them the same amount of money that other people are, and that’s the reality: There’s teams that we’re playing with larger NIL budgets than we have.
“Doesn’t mean that 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, I mean, don’t we want every advantage that we can possibly get?”
Rather than feeling put on the spot by such talk, Veatch said that he had appreciated Drinkwitz being so emphatic about making the “absolutely essential” point.
Speaking largely in generalities about what’s become a deeply consuming part of the job, Veatch said “the engagement’s there” with a number of potential partners as they work toward structures that are “really meaningful for those companies so that they feel good about the investment, right?”
“Doing it the right way” was a term Veatch used repeatedly, and it was all the more striking since our talk was two days after Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor had denounced the excesses of the current system and those seeking to circumvent it.
Veatch, who played football at Kansas State and was an administrator there from 2014-2017, echoed Taylor’s concerns that were largely focused on entities seeking to reject the College Sports Commission’s proposed participation agreement to add regulation.
“Not that that’s necessarily anything new in our profession, but the instability and sort of lack of legal authority for college athletics to govern is really challenging. There’s no question,” Veatch said. “What he said, we all feel and we all talk about: Every AD, every president, every coach, everybody who’s working through the system. Because you don’t have the clarity and the real guardrails of knowing where the rules are …
“It’s a challenging environment to operate in when it’s not clear that rules are in place and that they can be enforced. So there’s constant speculation, concern, rumors, worries that you’re not doing enough because school X, Y or Z is doing X, Y or Z, right?”
While there’s a constant pressure “to wondering about” those who abuse the system, Veatch added, he also sees the climate as exciting because it lends itself to more innovation and opportunity.
Especially through the constancy that can harness that — embodied now in a coach Veatch called a “unique talent at this time in college football.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2025 at 10:00 AM.