Eli Drinkwitz reacts to idea of hiring GM at Missouri, jokes about Andrew Luck's power at Stanford

As the college sports world deals with changes in roster construction, general managers have become more prominent on coaching staffs. The role differs by program, but so far centers around helping build rosters while also navigating the NIL landscape.

At Missouri, however, Eli Drinkwitz said he doesn’t plan on hiring a GM at this point. As he detailed his reason, he noted the power Andrew Luck has at Stanford.

Luck became the GM at his alma mater last year and is the head football coach’s direct supervisor. Therefore, he was the person who decided to move on from Troy Taylor last month following accusations against the coach, On3’s Pete Nakos reported. That power structure is why Drinkwitz joked he’d want to know what the true role of a general manager is before bringing one aboard.

“No, because I don’t even know if we have a structure in place,” Drinkwitz said when asked if he thought about hiring a GM. “I was waiting – honestly, I haven’t made any of those decisions yet. One, that would be a conversation Laird [Veatch] and I would have to have because some places, the GM’s firing the head coach. I don’t necessarily know if I want to hire somebody that can fire me. That’d be dumb, right?”

Eli Drinkwitz also reiterated he wants clarity on what a post-House v. NCAA settlement world looks like. If it makes sense to hire a general manager to handle the business side, he said he’d be willing to do so. As for whether there’s an urgency to bring someone in, Drinkwitz said that’s not the case.

“Again, this goes back to, I don’t know what the rules are,” Drinkwitz said. “I don’t know. If that’s the structure that we go down because of the new settlement that’s in place, then, yeah, awesome. I think that’s something that would make a lot of sense, if there was a partner that needed to partner with me and handle a little bit of more of the the business structure side of it, great. But until I really know what that looks like, I think there’s [not] a rush to do that. … Not yet. Not yet.”

After Luck made the decision to fire Taylor, Stanford brought in former NFL coach Frank Reich as the interim head coach for this coming football season. Luck also had to focus on keeping the roster together after the change, considering Taylor’s departure opened a 30-day transfer window.