Does Eli Drinkwitz need Fortune 500 investment to stay at Missouri? It may decide future
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As the game clock wound down in the fourth quarter of Missouri football’s win over Mississippi State on Saturday, SEC Network play-by-play announcer Tom Hart dropped an eyebrow-raising anecdote.
Hart said he had talked with Mizzou coach Eli Drinkwitz about his name being tied to open head coaching vacancies around the nation. The broadcaster said Drinkwitz told him his decision will not be based on money directly into the coach’s pocket.
Well, not money in terms of Drinkwitz’s total compensation package.
But make no mistake: Money is talking at this time of relative uncertainty at the head of the University of Missouri football program.
“‘I’ve got the money, it’s about alignment; it’s about getting people invested in the program. It’s about getting the Fortune 500 companies in this state to get behind us,” Hart said Drinkwitz told him. “He said, ‘We’ve got all these Fortune 500 companies, not a single one advertises in this building.’”
That’s a fascinating comment, but also not entirely accurate. We’ll get to that in a second.
Before we do that, the overarching point — the necessary level of support and funding to compete with the elite in college athletics — is far more pertinent to the biggest topic in Columbia, which is whether or not Drinkwitz will be the Tigers’ head coach next season.
Drinkwitz has spoken frequently about trying to attract the eight current Fortune 500 companies based in Missouri to invest in the university. That’s because the untapped potential from the C-Suite realm in the NIL and revenue-sharing era of college athletics is potentially game-changing.
The coach mentioned them after the board of curators gave the initial go-ahead for the north end zone renovations in April 2024. He spoke about it again a month later at a caravan stop near St. Louis, where seven of the eight companies are based.
“That’s got to be an asset for us,” Drinkwitz said at the time.
Now, at least two Fortune 500 companies are partnered with Mizzou athletics.
Edward Jones is a Fortune 500 company based out of St. Louis and has recently partnered with Missouri for a financial education program with MU student-athletes. The company is the presenting sponsor of several postgame social media clips for the Tigers. Their CFO recently joined Missouri AD Laird Veatch for a press conference earlier this fall to discuss the alignment between the athletic department and the company. Both Edward Jones and Ambetter, which is owned by Fortune 500 No. 23 company Centene, advertise in Memorial Stadium.
But, the point still stands. The Mizzou coach said in a pre-production meeting with the SEC Network that he said, “one area that I think we can improve is the utilization of our Fortune 500 companies in the state.” That’s, at the very least, a more
So, are Drinkwitz’s comments of the hint-hint, nudge-nudge vein?
Is Drinkwitz saying he does not yet have the resources necessary to compete at Mizzou? Is this a challenge to Mizzou’s fundraisers?
Going a step further, is it a reason that he might walk?
He was asked to expand on his comments on Tuesday during his weekly media availability.
“You know, we have … (eight) Fortune 500 companies in the state, which is fourth-largest among the SEC footprint,” Drinkwitz said. “And we’ve got to continue to develop the relationships with those companies and get those companies to invest in our athletes. … We need their support. We are the institution of this state. We provide those companies with a lot of workers, and so it’d be awesome if we got to see some reciprocal investments in that.
“I don’t think that’s an unusual ask or unusual request. This is all new. I’m not assigning blame to anybody or pointing fingers at any Fortune 500 company. I’m just asking, if you’re a Mizzou grad in that company, and you’re in charge of marketing, we would love to join in with some NIL opportunities for our student-athletes.”
What Drinkwitz is talking about here is what coaches like to call “competitive advantages.”
And there is no greater competitive advantage in the NIL era — ask Texas Tech and its billionaire booster Cody Campbell — than free-flowing financial backing. Drinkwitz talked about retaining standout freshmen Donovan Olugbode and Matt Zollers, and quipped, “That’s wishful thinking; you’ve got to offer them the same amount of money that other people are.”
Drinkwitz has keyed in on Fortune 500 companies, specifically, because of the obvious: They have money.
But also because of their ability to bypass the new NIL guardrails.
Missouri has opted in at the full amount of revenue sharing, allowing universities to distribute approximately $20.5 million in revenue to student-athletes. That should be considered the bare minimum for an SEC program to compete.
But third-party NIL still exists and can come from just about any avenue. New guardrails set by the College Sports Commission and its clearinghouse NIL Go, however, state that deals worth more than $600 must be submitted and approved. The idea here was to eliminate booster-backed “pay for play.”
Now, the workaround here is that deals with Fortune 500 companies are required to be approved because, as Drinkwitz put it, of the “fiduciary responsibility that Fortune 500 company has to its shareholders.”
If you can get them on board, that’s an advantage. It’s guaranteed money in the pockets of top-end players who you may not otherwise have been able to recruit without it.
So, why is Drinkwitz bringing all of this up now?
Well … his name is tied to other jobs. He’s a young, competitive coach. All indications suggest that if he can win at Mizzou, he will stay at Mizzou.
But are other programs outspending the Tigers? Does he have a clearer path to championships elsewhere?
Well …
“I think we’ve done a really good job of utilizing NIL, (but) I think there’s a misconception that we’re one of the bigger spenders in NIL. I don’t think that’s true,” Drinkwitz said. “I think we’re very good at what we do. I think we’ve been very wise in our investments, but we’re not frivolous, and there’s certainly not unlimited funds, and there’s certainly not — we weren’t in the top 10 of spenders last year when they put out the list.
“So, I just think there’s a misconception that there’s more than there is, probably.”
There’s the multi-million-dollar issue.
Drinkwitz’s name is going to remain part of the coaching carousel until he’s either hired away, signs another extension with Mizzou, or clearly signals an intent to stay. He addressed coaching rumors Tuesday, too, but didn’t definitively say anything about his future or commitment to the program.
Penn State, LSU, Florida and Auburn all will contact Drinkwitz. There is a good chance they have already spoken with Drinkwitz or his agent, Clint Dowdle. Take this for what it’s worth, which could be nothing, but FlightAware shows a plane connected to a company owned by an LSU booster — the same owner, but a different plane, who reportedly flew Lane Kiffin’s family members to Baton Rouge on Monday — made a Sunday morning stop in Columbia, Missouri. Perhaps that’s a coincidence. Perhaps not. Time will tell.
The short of it: If Drinkwitz wants to go, the opportunity will be there.
Now, we expect Missouri will do everything in its power to make him stay.
For starters, this is not a coaching carousel in which you want to be in the second wave of hires. Look at the programs listed above for a look at who will attract this year’s top candidates — and quickly. We are fast approaching a point where there are more job openings than top-end coaches available. Getting to the party late means getting stuck with who is left, which might not leave many premier options.
But, Missouri also has already bet big on its football program and sixth-year head coach.
There’s a $33-million indoor facility that Drinkwitz asked for, standing outside the south end zone. There’s a $250-million renovation to the north end zone under construction as he spoke Tuesday. Mizzou has poured NIL money into the program and frontloaded payments on the current roster to get ahead of the rev-share deadline. That was not cheap.
But Mizzou (7-3, 3-3 SEC) is still in the second-tier of SEC teams — the good, not great tier — and will not be heading to the playoff this year. The Tigers are closer than they were six years ago, but there’s still another — as Drinkwitz put it — “six-inch jump” to take.
There’s sufficient reason to believe Drinkwitz is not holding out for a pay raise. His last contract extension, signed in February 2025 and made public in July, did not include any extra money in his total compensation package but instead increased his assistant coach salary pool by $2.2 million.
Based on USA Today’s most recent head coaching salary database, Drinkwitz was tied for 10th among college head coaches in the country with a $9 million salary. Extensions and raises for the likes of Curt Cignetti and Mike Elko in recent weeks have likely shifted that.
Missouri has committed to Drinkwitz. Now, the coach is outwardly, publicly asking for more.
Everyone, for what it’s worth, is being asked to do more. Fans, who are being asked to dig deeper and deeper into their pockets to help sustain all of this, are included.
Welcome to college athletics in 2025.
Will Drinkwitz stay? Will he go?
The answer may be tied to increased investment. It’s certainly on his mind.
The problem with that is that there isn’t a magic money tree. If it were an easy lever to pull, Drinkwitz wouldn’t be making these comments.
But it could be the difference in who is wearing the head coach’s headset in 2026 in Columbia.
“There’s a lot of really, really good players from Missouri that are playing at other places, and I would love for them to play here. But that’s not free. And so how do we get them here?” Drinkwitz said. “I’ve got to do a better job of recruiting them, but also got to do a better job of raising money so that I can offer them a competitive package that the other schools are offering. And that’s part of it.
“I want to build a championship team. I’ve got to continue to build a championship roster. … The next jump is going to be the hardest jump. Going from good to great is the hardest jump possible. I’ve got to lean into it as the leader of this organization to what it’s going to take, and what it’s going to take is pushing harder than I pushed to get to this point. And so I’ve gotta be ready to do that, and that’s what our challenge is. So how quickly? I don’t know, but the quicker, the better. We’re going to nine SEC games. It ain’t getting easier.”
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Does Eli Drinkwitz need Fortune 500 investment to stay at Missouri?
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