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Eli Drinkwitz says CFB calendar is ‘greatly hurting the Playoff’
By Paul Harvey
Published:
The college football calendar has gotten out of hand in this modern era, and Mizzou head coach Eli Drinkwitz believes it is time to make a change.
The head coach of the Tigers since 2020, Drinkwitz has produced one of the best two-year stretches in Mizzou history with back-to-back bowl wins and 10+ wins in back-to-back seasons. And while Drinkwitz has been utilizing the portal to the benefit of his program, he admitted things need a facelift when it comes to the current calendar in place.
Drinkwitz made a recent interview appearance on “The Rich Eisen Show” (with a guest hosting appearance by Bobby Bones), and he described the fundamental problem facing programs across the country:
“One of the fundamental problems that we have in sports right now is we try to run a multi-billion dollar industry through the lens of 22 sports, specifically within the SEC, and you cannot find rules that adequately work for football and wrestling, or baseball, or men’s golf, or women’s soccer. They’re all different,” said Drinkwitz.
The timing of the transfer portal windows was also a topic that Drinkwitz covered. He said the portal being open during March Madness is “ruining” the later rounds of the college basketball season, and the head coach also described the timing of the football transfer window as “greatly hurting” the College Football Playoff by being open throughout the postseason.
“We’re ruining an awesome Sweet 16 and Final Four, or we’re, in my opinion, greatly hurting the Playoff because the conversations aren’t about the teams on the field, they’re about the players in the portal and what are their teams going to look like next year,” Drinkwitz admitted. “It just takes all of the focus off the wrong things.”
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Drinkwitz is far from the only head coach with some issues involving the current structure of college athletics, but no one has yet come up with the answers for the dilemma at hand.
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
