Eli Drinkwitz takes shot at Big Ten's title runs at SEC Media Days
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The SEC media days have seen several coaches talk smack with the other conferences. Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz chimed in on Monday, discussing how the Big Ten’s title runs over the past couple of years have an asterisk on them because Big Ten schools weren’t required to play a non-conference Power Four opponent.
“There’s been a couple of reasons (for the Big Ten’s success),” Drinkwitz said Monday at SEC media days, via Brett McMurphy. “I think there was some great decisions by their leadership. There’s some things we look back on in the SEC and maybe we shouldn’t have done it that way.
“There’s also cycles to college football. And once you get into expanded playoffs, it’s all about matchups and draws and our matchups and draws haven’t been as good as we obviously wanted them to be in order to be successful. Obviously, when you don’t play an A4 (Power 4) game as one of your non-conference games, that was the quote you were looking for. It’s pretty obvious.”
The Big Ten is the only Power 4 league that doesn’t require members to play a non-conference Power 4 opponent. Last season’s national-champion Indiana Hoosiers didn’t play a non-conference Power 4 opponent, with their non-conference slate consisting of Old Dominion, Kennesaw State, and Indiana State. This season, the Hoosiers play North Texas, Howard, and Western Kentucky.
The 2024-25 Ohio State Buckeyes’ schedule didn’t feature a non-conference Power 4 opponent, playing Akron, Western Michigan, and Marshall in the first three weeks of their national championship season. The 2023-24 Michigan Wolverines‘ schedule didn’t have a non-conference Power 4 opponent either, with them playing East Carolina, UNLV, and Bowling Green. However, the Buckeyes added the Texas Longhorns to their schedule in 2025-26 and 2026-27, while Michigan added Oklahoma in those two seasons as well.
Still, the SEC’s argument falls flat because of its minimal success in the playoffs over the last three seasons. In the past two seasons, the SEC is 3-8 in playoff games when facing a non-SEC opponent, including 2-8 against Power 4 opponents. The Texas Longhorns are the only SEC team with multiple CFP wins against non-SEC opponents in that span.
That could get more difficult when the SEC moves from eight to nine conference games a season. Drinkwitz and multiple other SEC coaches have come out discussing how they believed the playoff would expand beyond 12 if the SEC added a ninth conference game, but the playoff is still 12.
“I distinctly remember last year being in SEC meetings when we were discussing the 8- to 9-game scenario, and we were being told that if we didn’t vote to go to a nine-game, then the playoffs wouldn’t expand,” Drinkwitz said. “And so we made that decision (to play a ninth league game). But in hindsight, we did not recognize that (the Big Ten) didn’t play a (Power 4 non-conference) game.”
The SEC has been considered the deepest league in the past three seasons, but they haven’t lived up to it in the CFP. It will be interesting to see how the committee values the SEC if teams have more even records with each other.
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This article originally appeared on College Sports Wire: Eli Drinkwitz takes shot at Big Ten’s title runs at SEC Media Days
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