Mizzou's Drinkwitz: Schools Throwing Out 'Crazy' NIL Numbers for Recruiting Flips

Missouri head football coach Eli Drinkwitz is having a pretty good year.

His Tigers finished second in the SEC East Division and are preparing to face the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Cotton Bowl Classic on December 29.

But the grind never ends. Wednesday was early signing day across college football and Drinkwitz was hoping to hold together a Top 25 recruiting class for 2024.

Not that his competitors are helping at all.

Drinkwitz spoke with Siriux/XM Radio ahead of signing day and shared that between NIL and collectives, his competitors are using those tools as an opportunity to flip players away from the Tigers.

In the 48 hours leading up to signing day, those efforts only intensified, he said.

“Every single recruit asks about NIL,” Drinkwitz said. “Something that I encountered in the last 48 hours, which was completely new to me, was a lot of schools are now just calling within the last 48 hours of a kid’s signing and throwing out crazy numbers just to get them to sign with them on signing day. They’re utilizing NIL packages as the main motivation, which is exactly what we don’t want to happen. We don’t want NIL to be an inducement.”

Drinkwitz didn’t talk about any tactics that those around his programs might be using. But like most major athletic departments, Missouri has a collective called Every True Tiger which helps support student-athletes in the NIL space. It is listed as the NIL marketing and branding agency of Mizzou Athletics.

The site includes a welcome video from Drinkwitz, along with his men’s basketball counterpart Dennis Gates.

The NIL space remains fluid. The NCAA would like the federal government to get involved with national legislation to make it uniform. Recently, UCLA football coach Chip Kelly suggested college football need a commissioner and suggested it pool its resources together to help share revenue with players.

Drinkwitz says until something changes, this will be the norm.

“Until we get some uniformed – I’m again 100% for our student-athletes earning money for the product they put on the field,” Drinkwitz said. “The 12-team playoff is a $1 billion media opportunity. These players all deserve it. They deserve to earn some piece of it. But to find some sort of uniformity to it, it’s really going to be crucial.”