ROLLA, Mo. — Eli Drinkwitz tried to avoid standing in the middle for the picture.
As he and several University of Missouri administrators were arranging themselves for a posed photo in front of splashy renderings showing the planned $250 million Memorial Stadium renovations, the football coach attempted to slide over to the side of the group. But UM System President and MU Chancellor Mun Choi shifted him to the center with the square technique of an offensive lineman.
Get in the spotlight, the moment seemed to say, but not as loudly as the project itself did.
With Drinkwitz involved in the design process and an invaluable asset that gave the Board of Curators reason to splash cash at this scale in the first place, a quarter of a billion dollars is the latest and most pressing investment in the fifth-year coach.
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He knows it, too.
When Drinkwitz took to a lectern inside a Missouri S&T conference room to address UM System leaders and media, he brought handwritten notes with him, thoughts jotted onto lined notebook paper.
Glancing at those folded pages, he called the poster-size renderings lining the room a “big dream and bold investment.â€
“I was hired in December of 2019 with the same mindset,†Drinkwitz said. “Our program wanted to deliver results worthy of the investment that the Board (of Curators) had for us. That’s the same mindset we have today: We want to be worthy of the investment.â€
That’s his next challenge.
“It’s kind of hard to put into words the level of excitement that I have,†Drinkwitz said after Thursday’s meeting, “but also the level of responsibility that we have.â€
And, as he later added: “Not only as a coach but as the staff and our players, we got to work really hard to make sure the shareholders get a return on that investment.â€
To this point, returns on Drinkwitz have largely been measured in wins and losses. The jury was out through his first three seasons until a decisive fourth campaign — last year’s 11 wins and Cotton Bowl victory — significantly raised his standing within Mizzou.
After Drinkwitz was named the Southeastern Conference’s Coach of the Year for that performance, the Curators gave him a significant raise to jump his salary from $6 million to $9 million, a number that will rise annually through the duration of the new five-year deal.
That investment is tethered to on-field results, with the freshly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff looming in the minds of more than a few Mizzou folks. Drinkwitz isn’t calling that the bar for success, though.
“We haven’t even set those conversations in motion,†he said at an offseason caravan stop in Overland Park, Kansas, on Monday. “Until we finalize what our roster’s gonna be and who we are, we’ll figure out what the expectations for the upcoming season are then.â€
To keep himself and his team grounded in that way, Drinkwitz has routinely turned to a very coach-like phrase: “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.†You know, like the early morning weight room reps, the individual-focused spring practices, the nuances of technique work.
But on Thursday, that phrase wafted away from the field, through the north concourse targeted for renovations and into the past tense, capturing just how ingrained in Mizzou athletics Drinkwitz is.
“Little by little, little became a lot,†he said, referring to past financial investments in his program. “When we first got here, we needed lights on a practice field. We needed a new grass practice field. Then we asked to have a new indoor facility. Then we asked to redo the weight room. And now we’ve asked for a $250 million stadium renovation.â€
Drinkwitz has gotten what he’s asked for and, to this point, seemingly provided the returns that university leadership would like to see. The MU administration is actively asking him to, well, ask for things.
It did so by involving Drinkwitz in the planning and design process for the north concourse project, which will include a recruiting-specific space to further one of Drinkwitz’s primary strengths as a coach.
“With Coach Drinkwitz, I mean, why wouldn’t you have the person who’s been in every SEC stadium, who’s had to recruit players in a stadium (on the committee)?†Curator Bob Blitz said. “We can lose players because they want to go play in Austin, Texas, in that stadium. Coach Drinkwitz added that element to it.â€
And so the Board of Curators decided to make its biggest-ever bet on a Mizzou sport by making its biggest-ever investment in an athletic facility. Choi, during a presentation at the Curators’ annual retreat in March, listed Memorial Stadium improvements as one of the university’s three highest priorities.
That’s the importance of the project for the future of MU and the stakes of the investment. And for Drinkwitz, could someone go so far as to say that qualifies as pressure?
“It is the right word,†Drinkwitz said. “But pressure is a privilege and it’s an opportunity. You live up to expectations and standards. By raising the bar, it just raises the amount of energy and work ethic that we all have to put into it.â€