Scooter Hobbs column: Message behind coach's one-liners

American Press

4 days ago

Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz gets it. I always suspected that, rare in his fraternity, he seems to have a life away from the film room.
Maybe even a handful of outside interests.
Drinkwitz tried to stay serious Thursday, but there's a flippant side to him that he can't hide. He opened his monologue by warning that he wasn't going to answer questions about 'the Epstein files, the Radiation Belt (or) whether or not it was possible for Lee Harvey Oswald to get three shots off in seven seconds.'
Then he wandered off — shades of Les Miles' hey day — into a recap of a recent family vacation at Disney World, where the wife and the oldest of his four daughters conquered the challenging Guardians of the Galaxy ride.
'There is an epic picture of them after that ride where my wife is just like, holy cow, and my daughter looks like … she'd just been arrested. So it was worth it.'
That, apparently, was just an excuse to remind everyone that 'Walt Disney was born in Marceline, Missouri.'
Followed by, 'Y'all (media) remind me a little bit of Disney World: tired, ready to go home, tired of coaches whining up here.'
Actually, Drinkwitz is a welcome breath of fresh air at an affair prone to getting bogged down in depth charts. Drinkwitz is the kind of guy you'd like to drink with.
Make no mistake. He wants to win just as much as the next coach.
But nothing he did with his turn on the podium Thursday was going to beat Kansas in the season's second game, a resumption of Mizzou's bitter 'Border War' that has been dormant since 2011.
We did learn from him that Missouri's 'Tigers' nickname is based on the militia that was formed to protect the Mizzou campus and the Columbia townfolk from the people from Kansas.
That's the kind of information you want from these festivities.
We also learned that Drinkwitz is in hot water with his home owners' association back in Columbia after letting two of his players catch fish in the communal pond.
Details at 10, hopefully with film.
Yet in the midst of all this trivia — perhaps by accident — Drinkwitz might have had the strongest take yet on the state of college football.
It began as an innocent trip down the scheduling rabbit hole after the obligatory question of whether the SEC should go to a nine-game conference slate instead of the current eight.
'Personally, I think eight games is probably great for the University of Missouri. It allows us to schedule what we need for the four (other) games.'
He also seemed to think it'd be easier on coaches. But that's not important now.
What is needed, he said, was 'to ask these questions: what's best for the players and what's best for the fans? And ultimately, I think what's best for both of those is going to be going to a nine-game schedule.
'The rest of us are really only important because of the players and the fans.'
Nine games, eight games, that's not the point, and he kind of lost me when he mentioned a 30-team playoff.
But it's encouraging to see some coach sticking up for the loyal fans.
'We need the fans now more than ever. If we continue to alienate the fans, or we put things in the way that (are) going to alienate the fans, we're not going to continue to be able to pay the players.'
The real trick here is making the fans' wishes mesh with the players new-found freedoms.
I'm not sure what more they can do for the players now that they're paid, can transfer at will and often seem to be running the asylum.
Drinkwitz may have hit on the hidden truth.
'People don't come to watch the actual game,' he said. 'They come because they're connected to people. They're connected to something bigger than themselves. They're connected to the marching Mizzou band. They're connected to the spirit squads. They're connected to friends and family at the tailgates.
'The byproduct is the game … Saturdays are still a place where there's human connection, all right? And we can't lose sight of that.'
Those fans are being asked to ante up more and more discretionary income, not only in ticket prices, parking spots, etc., but 'donations' to pay these new-found (for lack of a better word) salaries. It makes it easier to watch in comfort on hi-def TV.
Still, the transfer portal might be the biggest threat to that team/fan alliance.
It changes things. It just does. The fans' connection to their teams, even if it was always delusional, is that their heroes grew up dreaming of playing for good ol' State U. And many do.
But it's hard to reconcile that when the players for any given year's roster look more and more like mercenaries, often as not going to the highest bidder.
Somebody needs to pay attention to Drinkwitz.
'If you lose Saturday football, you're losing Sunday and Friday night football too, all right? Let's not forget that. We are the peanut butter and jelly behind the bread. If we don't have Saturdays, you can forget Sundays, and you can forget Friday night.'
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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics for the American Press. You can reach him at [e-mail]