Missouri hires Drinkwitz as head football coach

By Benjamin Herrold
After a busy week of coaching search news, Missouri hired Eliah Drinkwitz to be its next head
football coach.
It’s always exciting when your team hires a new coach, but Drinkwitz, 36, is a relatively new and
young head coach who brings a lot of potential. He is far from a proven commodity, but he also
has tremendous upside.
Drinkwitz has one season of head coaching experience, and it went pretty well. He took over an
Appalachian State team that in 2018 went 11-2 and won the Sun Belt Conference championship
game. Drinkwitz led the Mountaineers to a 12-1 season this year, defeating Louisiana 45-38 in
the Sun Belt Conference Championship Game on Saturday.
Drinkwitz and Appalachian State had a big win at South Carolina, where Missouri hasn’t won
since 2014. Hopefully he can also hang onto that beating-Louisiana mojo, since Missouri hosts
the Ragin’ Cajuns for Senior Day next fall.
Although Drinkwitz only has one season as a head coach, he has some experience coaching with
Gus Malzahn and Bryan Harsin, two successful coaches. Drinkwitz was an assistant coach for
Malzahn at Arkansas high schools, and then went on to be an assistant coach at Auburn,
Arkansas State, Boise State and North Carolina State. Drinkwitz was on staff at Auburn for the
2010 national championship, and he was the offensive coordinator at Boise State and North
Carolina State.
Arkansas also seemed to be in the running for Drinkwitz, but the Razorbacks eventually hired
Georgia offensive line coach Sam Pittman and the Tigers got Drinkwitz.
It was at times a tumultuous week that led to the hiring. There were reports of a tense
relationship between athletic director Jim Sterk and former coach Barry Odom. Some of
Missouri’s board of curators were also apparently underwhelmed with the initial list of coaching
candidates, which didn’t include Drinkwitz. But at the end of all that, I like this hire for
Missouri.
Even if it’s brief, this is a guy who has head coaching experience. He’s had success as an
assistant. And, just as important, he seems to bring an energy to a program that had become
somewhat stagnant. His offensive mind should help get the offense going again.
When you’re a program that occupies Missouri’s place in the college football pecking order,
sometimes you have to take a risk to get a good coach before the traditional powers of the sport
would hire the coach. You have to spot the talent a little earlier, buy the unproven stock before it
takes off.
Missouri could have taken a safer, more established hire, but that might have been just looking to
be reliably decent. Instead, they took more of a gamble, hiring a coach who has not yet proven he
can be a consistent winner. He’s a coach who hasn’t shown his ceiling. There’s a chance
Missouri has hired the next great college football coach. In any event, this is a hire Tiger fans can
get excited about as the long countdown to the 2020 season begins.