Eli Drinkwitz explains Missouri's team saying of 'something to prove'

Heading into the 2024 season, Missouri is a trendy pick as a possible College Football Playoff team, in part due to a relatively manageable schedule despite being in one of college football’s toughest conferences.

Coach Eli Drinkwitz, though, has still had his team feasting on perceived negativity as motivation this offseason.

The team has embraced “something to prove” as a mantra, letting that inspire players throughout the offseason as they work toward the 2024 campaign.

“Something else that’s really important to us is little by little a little becomes a lot,” Drinkwitz said on The Jim Rome Show. “And when you’re in a developmental program like the University of Missouri, there’s not always these huge jumps. You’ve got to take those daily steps, those daily processes of just getting a little bit better today, a little bit better tomorrow and all the sudden you look back after four years and you go, ‘Man, little by little, little became a whole lot for us.'”

That bit-by-bit approach for Drinkwitz has worked pretty well so far. Missouri is coming off an 11-win season in 2023 and, again, is projected as a potential playoff team this fall.

For that reason, Drinkwitz doesn’t want to lose focus on the approach.

“That’s really the process that we’re in right now,” he said. “We’re in the middle of recruiting season. Just got done with some official visits and we’re in the process of chasing the best class in school history. We’ve got an opportunity if we can close out to sign the best class the University of Missouri’s ever had.”

With the talent level rising at Missouri and the base level of competence being established, the sky is the limit for the Tigers.

Drinkwitz will get the chance to show what his program is truly made of as it enters Year 5 with him at the helm. The head coach doesn’t want to stop pushing forward.

“For us to continue to build sustained excellence, look, we had seven players drafted last year and that was a Mizzou record,” Drinkwitz said. “But this year we’ve got just as much talent, if not more, on the current roster and so for us to continue to build the way we want to, little by little, keep recruiting elite players, keep developing them in the weight room, keep coaching them up, keep working every day with that something-to-prove mindset, and all the sudden you’ve got a monster in the Midwest.”