Missouri's Eli Drinkwitz on being spotlight of coaching carousel rumors: 'This stuff is just a distraction'

College football's coaching carousel is spinning wildly in the SEC and elsewhere this season and Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz has been linked to various openings. Rumored to be a candidate for Florida and LSU (behind Lane Kiffin), as well as schools like Penn State and Auburn, Drinkwitz addressed the job noise Tuesday ahead of Saturday's game at Oklahoma.

Missouri started 5-0 this season but has lost three of its last five games to drop to 7-3. The Tigers' season took a turn when starting quarterback Beau Pribula was injured in the loss to Vanderbilt. Without Pribula, Missouri lost at home to Texas A&M before rebounding over the weekend with a decisive victory over 49-27. 

With the Sooners visiting Columbia, Drinkwitz tried to deflect the attention away from the coaching carousel and toward Saturday's game.

"You know, I'm not going to comment on message board chatter, tweets, sources. I've maintained with you and our team that my complete focus is on the task at hand," Drinkwitz said. "You know, last week, people were tired of me because I couldn't win the big game. People had me meeting with my team and telling them that I was going to another school, none of which were true. 

"Now, this week, it's a different story, because we scored the second most points in the SEC this year at 49 (against Missisippi State). So you know, all of this stuff is just a distraction. You know, I would like to remind everybody, including our fans, we absolutely love Mizzou. We love what we're building. We've been to six straight bowl games. We got the sellout streak going. Our administration has been nothing but phenomenal to me."

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Drinkwitz won 11 games at Missouri in 2023 and beat Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl prior to last season's 10-3 finish. He's 45-27 overall in six years, including a 25-23 mark in SEC play.

The SEC's 2023 Coach of the Year, Drinkwitz is signed through the 2029 season and trails only Kirby Smart, Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian for most overall wins in the conference over the last three years.

"Since I've been here, I've signed multiple extensions. In fact, I signed one this past summer. So all the speculation is really a tribute to [the administration], and it's a tribute to our team success and their commitment to our team," Drinkwitz said. "And that's where my focus is going to remain, on our team and our current situation. And I'm not going to get into all that stuff, because, again, it's just a distraction."

The book on Drinkwitz is impressive -- he's consistently been one of the SEC's best at his job who does more with less and has a penchant for finding gems in the transfer portal. Missouri signed 22 players out of the portal in the 2025 cycle and landed the seventh-best transfer class nationally per 247Sports.

Former Louisiana-Monroe ballcarrier Ahmad Hardy leads the SEC in rushing this season with 1,346 yards and 15 touchdowns while former Division II Truman State running back Cody Schrader became the program's single-season rushing record holder in 2023 after registering 1,627 yards on the ground. Last season, former Appalachian State star Nate Noel rushed for 818 yards with the Tigers.

While the NIL situation has improved at Missouri in recent years, including the signings of five-stars Luther Burden III and Williams Nwaneri, Drinkwitz has acknowledged his program falls behind the SEC's elite in terms of resources and funding.

"There's teams that we're playing with larger NIL budgets than we have," Drinkwitz said this week. "Doesn't mean 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, we want every advantage that we can possibly get."

During the broadcast of Missouri's win over Mississippi State in Week 12, commentator Tom Hart mentioned Drinkwitz's yearning for help from the eight Fortune 500 companies in Missouri. Any way the Tigers can find more pieces of the pie, they're going to do it, Drinkwitz said.

"If we want to get more and more opportunities for our student-athletes, then that's something that we need to lean into," Drinkwitz said. "I'm always going to be pushing and trying to create whatever advantages we can for the University of Missouri in the NIL space."