Mark Stoops clarifies beach vacation interaction with Missouri's Eliah Drinkwitz

Kentucky and Missouri have formed an unexpected rivalry on the gridiron since Mark Stoops took over as the Wildcats’ head coach over a decade ago. Although, it hasn’t exactly been much of a “rivalry” as of late, considering Kentucky has won seven of the last eight outings, including a controversial 21-17 victory in Columbia last season that resulted in a change to roughing the kicker penalties that should be called the “Colin Goodfellow rule“.

But Stoops and Missouri head coach Eliah Drinkwitz don’t seem to share the same disdain for each that the fans and players taking the field have shown — or at least not in public. During this week’s SEC Media Days in Nashville, the two traded some laughs at each other’s expense.

It started with Drinkwitz on Monday, who went on The Paul Finebaum Show to share a story about how he incidentally bumped into Stoops during their beach vacations earlier this summer. It was a harmless conversation, where Drinkwitz joked about how he can’t escape SEC coaches and later told Stoops that “Kentucky sucked” before they laughed it off and parted ways.

“In this country, in this league, you can’t avoid SEC coaches, they’re everywhere,” Drinkwitz said. “Told him Kentucky sucked, he had a good laugh about it. Traded a few lines and both of us said ‘Hey man, we’re on vacation, let’s go our separate ways.’”

But that’s not the entire story. Not the way Stoops tells it. Following his SEC Media Days appearance on Wednesday, Stoops also went on Finebaum to give the lowdown on what actually happened with Drinkwitz.

“I’ve been getting asked this question, so I was ready to bust his chops a little bit,” Stoops told Paul Finebaum with a smile. “First of all, my house sits right there and so it was private beach that he was sitting on, my private beach. Number one, I’ll tell him I’m gonna boot him out of there next time I see him. And number two, what he didn’t talk about was when I walked out, I was walking out of the water and then he was just sitting right there and I was like half out of breath. And I was like did you just see that? And he said see what?

“So my oldest son and I were actually in the water, full-blown wrestling. And so we’re in the water and I was trying to show him who’s still dad, who’s still boss. And we’re having a full-scale wrestling (match) and I’m tired, out of shape. My lips half-bleeding. And I walk out and right in front of me Drink’s right there. I said ‘Did you just see that?’ And he says ‘No, what?’ And I was like ‘Oh good, I’m glad you missed it.’ Because Drink, if you know anything about him, he would have filmed it and he would have put it out there. That would have really been a bad sight to see.”

I think I speak for all of the Big Blue Nation when I say that Drinkwitz should have recorded that for our viewing pleasure.

On Monday, Eliah Drinkwitz teased a story about bumping into Mark Stoops by chance on the beach this summer…but he missed a few details.

The @UKFootball coach fills in how it really went down: pic.twitter.com/UAyo6a7nyd

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) July 19, 2023

Also, don’t hurt yourself out there, Mark. We saw your son at the football camps last month — he could take you down in a wrestling match if he really wanted to. But let’s not get too chummy with Drinkwitz either, who’s on the hot seat ahead of year four at Missouri. The Tigers come to Lexington on October 14 and it’ll likely be a huge matchup for both programs.

Luckily, the two head coaches only talked for about 10-15 minutes before moving on. But it was nice to see some light-heartedness from Stoops, who had nothing but good things to say about Nick Roush’s least favorite person in all of college football.

“Coach Drink’s a great guy and you have a lot of admiration for the coaches in this league. They do things right,” Stoops added. “I have a lot of respect for Coach Drink and the job that he does and we always have good close games. He does have a unique sense of humor, so he always will keep you entertained. It was really good seeing him. Really we just visited for 10-15 minutes. We were there laughing and he has young kids and he offered me a cigar and of course, I had some good fine Kentucky bourbon. We went our separate ways after about 15 minutes, but it was good seeing him. It’s always good.”