During SEC Media Days, every coach in the conference was asked to give their opinion on the state of college football and the seemingly ever-expanding playoffs.
Nobody took it as far as Missouri football head coach Eli Drinkwitz, though.
He wants the playoffs to expand. Not to 16 teams. Not to 24 teams. All the way to a 30-team format.
Drinkwitz took his time to explain exactly what his thoughts are on the matter. In total, it was a four-minute monologue on his reasoning.
Here’s what he said:
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“When I think about college football right now and think about what do we need to do, I think it really comes down to two things: what is best for our players and what is best for our fans,” Drinkwitz said at the main podium. “The rest of us are really only important because of the players and the fans.
“So when you think about whether it’s 12, 14 or 16, to me, if we decided to go into this expansion of Playoffs, we’re trying to follow an NFL model. The NFL takes 44% of their teams into the Playoffs to increase the passion or keep the fan base engaged. If we’re talking about 12, that’s 9%. If we’re talking about 14, that’s 11%. If we’re talking about 16, that’s 12%. That’s not really changing the math for the fan base. I don’t really understand what the big fight is about.
“The other thing I don’t really understand about this, we have a lot of complaints, whether we’re talking about 68 teams in the NCAA basketball tournament, we’re complaining about the committee. Last year we complained about the committee selections. We produced all kinds of stats and handed them out about why the SEC was so good.
“The problem is we have a human committee that has no standard set of structure, of how they’re going to select. They’re all human beings. They all have implicit bias. Now we’re going to go from seven to 11 and we think that’s going to solve the problem.
“Until we figure out what exactly the standards are, I don’t think that’s good. In my viewpoint of it, I think we should go back and try to find more ways to include teams. How do we get more people involved? ‘Cause that’s better for the players, that’s better for the player experience to have more people involved in of the potential to play for a championship. It’s better for the fan bases.
“I think we all would agree that the four college football Playoff games at home campuses was a huge win for college football. We need to expand that opportunity, energy and excitement. My math could be wrong here, but if we did the 12, you had four automatic qualifiers, everyone thinks it’s limiting. It’s not limiting if you take those four automatic qualifiers and you divide that up into eight opportunities, eight play-in game.
“Now you’re taking the SEC is playing in for eight, Big Ten is playing in for eight. Since we’ve expanded the bubble to 16, give three to the Big 12, three to the ACC, 1-1. Now you have 30 teams. 30 teams. Now we’re talking about an opportunity for 30 teams, 30 fan bases to be excited and engaged, giving revenue. 30 teams with players who have access to compete for a championship.
“So for me, I think that makes a lot more sense. Again, when you’re talking about the NFL Playoff system, not only is it 14 teams, you only have to be the best out of your four-team division, compete against four teams to make the Playoffs. When you’re at the University of Missouri, you say you just have to finish in the top eight to have a chance to play in the Playoffs, that’s a win every day. I’m all for that. I think that’s awesome.
“Eight versus nine? Honestly, I think I’ve been for the nine game. I think if it was about players and about fans, I think it’s a nine-game schedule for the SEC. If it’s about coach preservation, hey, man, I get it. But if we’re going to go to 11 humans deciding on a committee which are the 11 best teams, and we stay at eight, we ain’t getting in.”
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Drinkwitz took over the Missouri program in 2020. In that first year, the Tigers went 5-5 in an all-SEC schedule, including an early loss to Jeremy Pruitt’s final Tennessee team. Missouri made the Music City Bowl, but the game was ultimately cancelled.
In 2021, Drinkwitz was blown out by Josh Heupel in the Vols’ head coach’s first year with the program. The Tigers finished 6-6 in the regular season before dropping the Armed Forces Bowl to Army.
2022 saw another blowout in the favor of Tennessee in the series. Missouri finished the year 6-6 again before losing to Wake Forest in the Gasparilla Bowl.
2023 was the only season that Drinkwitz has beaten the Vols to this point. The Tigers had their best year to date under the coach, finishing 10-2 before winning in the Cotton Bowl vs. Ohio State. In his proposed 30-team playoff, this team certainly would have been in the field.
His 2024 team also likely would have made the 30-team cut he is proposing. That squad, without playing the Vols, finished 9-3 before beating Iowa in the Music City Bowl.
