The Missouri Tiger athletic department was prepared for change.
Athletic Director Laird Veatch had the Tigers’ ready for the implementation of revenue sharing and roster limits, prepared to take advantage of new rules and opportunities as soon as they arose.
But then, the House settlement wasn’t passed immediately, and now the Tigers are stuck in a holding pattern, waiting to find out if they cut all their walk-ons and prepared for revenue sharing for nothing.
“You’re kind of building the plane as you fly, so to speak,” Veatch said. “... There’s a lot of challenges, a lot of unknown, but we get enough information where we’re able to make some of the key decisions. And, you know, we’re now right at a point with the settlement, where we’re waiting to hear, what’s that kind of final piece with the roster limits and how does this work out? So, we made a lot of decisions up to this point and we continue to adjust and work through that as it finalizes.”
The delay has directly affected the Tigers’ ability to build rosters moving forward.
From the football team having December discussions to the basketball team working in the portal.
“I spent a ton of time trying to figure out the new revenue sharing system and how do you, how are you going to divide the money and the cap,” Missouri football coach Eliah Drinkwitz said. “And what are we going to do with NIL and how do we get to 105, then … the judge says we may grandfather in roster limits. I don’t know what the crap is going on.
“We wasted a lot of mental energy and I’ve heard from a lot of players, we told all our guys in Decemver, you know, ‘This is what we think the new framework is going to be,’ and now, if they go back to grandfathering it in, it’s just frustrating.”
That frustration isn’t new for Drinkwitz. Every year he has been at Missouri, there has been some type of major change to how college football, and sometimes college sports in general, operates. From NIL and the transfer portal to the college football playoff expanding to the still likely implementation of revenue sharing.
And while the Tigers have grown into one of the most successful programs in the sport these past couple of years, that frustration continues to build for the coach.
“Let the practitioners have a say in what we’re doing,” Drinkwitz said. “... We’ll adapt, we’ll adapt to whatever they say, we’ll find a way, we’ll figure it out. But I hope, my hope, is that we understand this is an unbelievable game. College athletics is a worthwhile fabric of the culture of the United States of America, not just football, not just basketball, not just revenue-generating sports, but also the olympic sports, they all matter. We need to have some sort of governing structure that doesn’t have a lawsuit every single day.”
But even if the House settlement passes soon, that wish for a more centralized governing body would still take time to develop and more major changes would have to be implemented almost immediately for a semblance of stability. The clearest example, Veatch noted, is the timing of the sports calendar, largely shown through the football and basketball transfer portals, which occur during the heart of the sports’ postseasons.
“This is one of the many reasons why we need the House settlement to go through and get approved,” Veatch said. “So that we can then move on to all the other things, right? And that is one of the many things we need to really work through is our calendar and how we manage, you know, transfer portals and not only for football, for all of our sports. That there needs to be adjustments that will continue to take place after, after that, after that is settled, then we move on to the next thing.”
The Missouri Tigers have succeeded in recent years because they have been adaptable and willing to change with the times. Taking advantage of NIL early on, building through the transfer portal where possible, investing in the future and making plans for what is to come.
But now the Tigers have spent so much time planning for what was expected to be the next step, they just have to sit and wait for it to happen.
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