{"id":353431,"date":"2025-12-17T04:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T04:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353431\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T04:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T04:57:07","slug":"eli-drinkwitz-details-conversations-with-other-coaches-about-challenges-facing-college-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353431\/","title":{"rendered":"Eli Drinkwitz details conversations with other coaches about challenges facing college football"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eli Drinkwitz<\/a> is frustrated with a lot of aspects of the current world of college football, and he believes other coaches share that sentiment. The Missouri<\/a> head man opened up about his gripes in a recent press conference, prompted by a question about the recent College Sports Commission finalizing a participation agreement<\/a> with the power conferences. <\/p>\n

The agreement ushered in the era of revenue sharing in college sports and put NIL guidelines on schools. But Drinkwitz believes there\u2019s still more that needs to be done to come up with a system of rules that everyone can be happy with. <\/p>\n

SUBSCRIBE to the On3 NIL and Sports Business Newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of coaches discussing it and frustrated, in my opinion,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cI understand the national sentiment because of the salary ranges of head coaches, it feels like we\u2019re complaining. But we\u2019re really not. We\u2019re trying to sound some warning bells. \u2026The system that we\u2019re in is really sick right now. College football is sick and showing signs of this thing really cracking moving forward, and we need to get something under control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Per the agreement, a copy of which was obtained by On3\u2019s\u00a0Pete Nakos<\/a>, schools are required to waive their right to sue the CSC. Additionally, schools are to agree to the rules in place following House settlement approval, including roster limits and other\u00a0NIL<\/a>\u00a0compliance rules.<\/p>\n

If a school violates any of the rules in place by the participation agreement, they \u201cshall be subject to fines, penalties or other sanctions for these matters,\u201d the 11-page document reads. While punishments are not yet finalized, schools could lose out on conference revenue or receive a limited postseason ban if they \u2013 or other associated entities\u00a0\u2013 file suit against the CSC.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the only issue Eli Drinkwitz and other coaches are watching. The Mizzou coach also pointed to an ongoing lawsuit that could potentially grant a fifth-year of eligibility to numerous players, as well as the topic of tampering, which he claimed is not punished at all. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re all waiting with baited breath trying to wait on what\u2019s going to happen with this fifth-year lawsuit in Nashville, where you could have a flurry of fifth-year guys now being eligibile,\u201d Drinkwitz said. \u201cThat would just throw a completely new wrinkle in the system. Tampering is at the highest level. There is no such thing as tampering because there\u2019s nobody that\u2019s been punished for tampering. Everybody on my roster is being called. I had a dad call me and say \u2014 and I called the head coaches at their schools \u2014 that, \u2018This school and this school and this school called offering this much money.\u2019 You\u2019re putting a lot of pressure on young men. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re paying them, as 1099 employees, a lot of money. We\u2019re not offering any type of retirement. We\u2019re not offering any type of health benefits. We\u2019ve worked around the system and then tried to create that as the system instead of creating a functioning way moving forward and making sure that it works for everybody. Whether that\u2019s collective bargaining, whether that\u2019s making them employees, whether that\u2019s antitrust legislation that protects the commissioner of the SEC or the NCAA from lawsuit, something needs to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, Eli Drinkwitz invoked Nick Saban<\/a> with his final point. He mentioned how, during meetings, Saban would always talk about making sure that his players were prepared for life after football, especially for those that didn\u2019t end up playing in the NFL. <\/p>\n

Drinkwitz believes that might be getting lost a bit with the worry about revenue and all the changes being made to increase it. But he stated that he got into coaching for different reasons, and knows many other who still feel the same way.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of us got into college athletics because we wanted to help these young men grow and develop, and I think we\u2019re still doing that mission,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s getting really hard because coach (Nick) Saban used to talk about all the time, creating value for yourself. When he talked about it, he wasn\u2019t just talking about value for the NFL. He was talking about creating value for yourself with a college degree. You\u2019ve lost that aspect of it. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese guys are going to create tremendous value for themselves playing the game of football, and that\u2019s awesome. We love that these guys are getting paid. I love that last week, these guys went out with their own money and bought gifts for Coyote Hill. But also, my job is to look at them three or four years down the road. How many of them are in a better position because they played football because they transferred four times? That\u2019s just the system that we\u2019ve created. Not all freedom is good freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eli Drinkwitz is frustrated with a lot of aspects of the current world of college football, and he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[131549,399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-353431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-eli-drinkwitz-01-alma","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}