Eli Drinkwitz quotes Deion Sanders, points to NIL era when discussing gambling in college sports

Eli Drinkwitz decided to quote Deion Sanders during the SEC Meetings Tuesday and the Missouri coach had a lot to say about NIL in college sports.

The conversation centered around young kids getting paid a lot of money in college athletics. Drinkwitz even compared those numbers to the salary of his brother-in-law who’s a pediatrician.

But getting paid in NIL compared to gambling is a different story and Drinkwitz chose his words carefully.

“Y’all are really trying to get me in trouble here,” Drinkwitz said. “Deion Sanders had a really good quote the other day talking about young men joining a business, but we want to treat them like kids. We’re giving guys 18, 19 … 22 year old kids life changing money.

“People are making more money in NIL than my brother-in-law, who is a pediatrician, who saves lives and we kinda do it cavalier and we think that there’s not going to be any side effects, there’s not going to be any issues. There’s information out there, there’s bad actors always trying to make a dollar.”

Drinkwitz mentioned team camaraderie and the locker room vibes themselves when it comes to issues such as these.

“I think it’s going to become one of the key issues that we face in our locker rooms. I think it’s more prevalent because there’s more money involved. Everyone is trying to make a dollar. These young men are getting a lot of money that is a lot right now, other than trying to hand out, advise and provide some parameters to it. You know, with this NIL situation we’ve created our own problems in college sports.”

In a question about injury reports in the NFL, Drinkwitz made comparisons between the college game and pro game and how the two align.

“The NFL is the best sports league, in my opinion, which is not very well educated, but in my opinion, it’s the best sports league in the world for a reason,” Drinkwitz said. “So the more that we can streamline to some of those things, I think the better, especially now that we’ve kind of moved away from our collegiate model into more of a business model. 

“And I think that we need to put those safeguards in place and I do think providing information, you know, we provide an injury report every Thursday. Don’t have to, but that’s what we believe in doing. That’s what I believe.”