Eli Drinkwitz shares funny interaction with Lane Kiffin over player in transfer portal

Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz shared a funny interaction with Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin over a player in the transfer portal.

Drinkwitz appeared on the SEC Network on National Signing Day. There, he explained that coaches know when they’re competing for the same players. In particular, he and Kiffin will actually tease each other with pictures from visits.

“For whatever reason, there is a group chat with a few of us (SEC coaches) that we’re known to post a few players that maybe — there was one portal addition that both Lane and I had seen in the same day and so we were sending each other the pictures from that visit,” Eli Drinkwitz joked. “I don’t think either one of us take it too seriously. So, we’re just having a good time.”

In a highly competitive industry, it’s good to see some coaches take some things a little more lightheartedly. Of course, if there were going to be any two coaches in the SEC to have this kind of relationship, it would be Drinkwitz and Kiffin. Both coaches like to tell a joke and their teams don’t consistently play one another to create too intense of a rivalry. In fact, they’ve never coached against one another.

For his part, Lane Kiffin has become known as one of the coaches who uses the transfer portal most heavily. According to the On3 2024 College Football Team Transfer Portal Rankings, Ole Miss currently has the third-ranked transfer portal class. Missouri, meanwhile, is eighth and has caught plenty of people’s attention.

Eli Drinkwitz is going to supplement that transfer portal class with what is currently the 24th-ranked recruiting class in the 2024 cycle, according to the On3 Industry Ranking. That’s currently 12th in the SEC.

Missouri is coming off a 10-2 regular season in Drinkwitz’s fourth season with the program. The Tigers are getting ready to play Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl.

Eli Drinkwitz shares importance of signing homegrown players in the trenches

For Eli Drinkwitz, one of the most important things on National Signing Day was to sign homegrown players in the trenches.

“I think there’s a development course to the line of scrimmage,” Drinkwitz said.

“You can’t constantly be in this portal cycle. You want to be developing the guys that have the ability. You always, in our opinion, want to start with the recruiting within a 300-mile radius of your home campus. So that’s what we really started with. I think Williams [Nwaneri] is gonna be a key component to that.”