Eli Drinkwitz describes what it's like inside the room at SEC meetings

As Eli Drinkwitz enters his fifth season as the head coach at Missouri, he insists that a lot has changed over the years at the SEC meetings.

Drinkwitz recently spoke on the College GameDay podcast about how the SEC meetings are different now compared to when he first got into the league.

“So the first time I was in the SEC head coaches room, I walk in there and you’ve got Coach Saban, you’ve got Jeremy Pruitt, you’ve got Gus Malzahn, you’ve got Dan Mullen, OK. You’ve got Mike Leach, you’ve got Will Muschamp is the head coach at South Carolina, Jimbo Fisher. So it’s the elite of the elite,” Eli Drinkwitz recalled. “And I’m like, ‘Welp, this ole dorky dude’s got no shot in this league.'”

There was some animosity back then in 2020, according to Drinkwitz.

“There were more accusations… It was supposed to be a seven-hour meeting. And it boils down to just accusations of ‘This guy cheated here and he’s cheating here and he’s cheating in recruiting and blah, blah, blah.’ And it’s intense,” Drinkwitz said. “And I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what it is.’”

As it turned out, that’s not how it always is. Drinkwitz, who is now a veteran when it comes to the SEC meetings, said everyone gets along much better now than they used to.

“Now there’s none of that. Like there is so much mutual respect in that room,” Drinkwitz said. “We’re all pushing on ‘How do we come together?’ I mean Lane Kiffin and Kirby Smart were asking us to stay after the meeting so that we could have a formulated plan so that all 16 of us would be united in our approach to roster limit conversations.”

That’s not to say that there aren’t still occasional disagreements. But overall, everyone is working together to try to do what works best for everyone in the SEC, according to Drinkwitz.

“There’s a group text message that is sharing information so we can be on the same page, making sure that the conversations we have about roster limits are united,” Drinkwitz said. “So it’s just a totally different dynamic than when I first started.”

Eli Drinkwitz has done an excellent job at Missouri thus far, including leading the Tigers to a Cotton Bowl victory over Ohio State to cap off the 2023 season. Missouri is 28-21 overall under Drinkwitz and has a ton of momentum as the 2024 season gets underway.