ST. LOUIS--Mizzou head coach Eli Drinkwitz met with the media prior to the Braggin' Rights game. See what the coach had to say here.
What's changed since Wednesday?
"Hired Curtis Luper, which you broke the story quickly so appreciated that. Working to finalize strength, athletic performance coach in the next 48 hours going to be conducting some interviews for the remaining offensive positions on the Christmas break and plan on having a staff in place by January sixth, that's kind of my mindset. Obviously in college football nothing certainly, no timetables are concrete, but that's the plan and looking to to get that done. Restructured the recruiting department, got that in more of a situation I believe moving forward will be beneficial to us, we'll be announcing some hires within that, probably the following week, and making it more recruiting based with a few things, few additions there. Anything else, anything else. Pretty much a lot."
When you say you restructured the recruiting department is that just personnel or can you explain those changes?
"I don't want to get into all the details and all that, just letting everybody know that we're working on the organization of our program and how we're going to organize it. And once we finalize those details, once we get the new people hired officially through HR and all that stuff, you know, whenever Nick and Chad set up another press conference I'll roll out the organizational structure of how we're going to do the recruiting department."
Are you going to have a lot of analysts and quality control guys. Is that the kind of structure you like?
"I don't believe in large, large organizations everybody's got to have a job description and we got to know exactly what they're trying to do. Large organizations create a lot of people not doing what they need to do. I believe we get, you know, they've been very generous with what they pay us, and we have a job to do. And so, we will have some of those people in place but but we won't be an organization of fluff. We're going to be organization rolling up our sleeves and get work done."
After the early signing period do you jump right into February or do you take a few days off to kind of catch your breath?
"There's no time off. There's no time off in college football, you know. Wednesday morning we spent the better part of the morning and yesterday morning and today and Thursday night watching every 2020, 21, 22 kid within the state within the borders of Missouri that have Power Five offers, we've reconfirmed several offers to young men, we've offered new guys, we've got a plan in place for the remaining seven to 10 slots that we have for recruiting in the February 5 signing day. And so that's what we're doing. There's no time off, there's no days off."
Are you able to expand on that plan for the February signing period?
"Based on our roster needs, I mean there's numbers. Obviously we've got to sign a couple more offensive linemen. I'm not going to get into specific numbers that way y'all can't hold me accountable to it. But we got, we got to sign a defensive back. Couple of defensive linemen, couple offensive linemen, and we've got some wiggle room for grad transfers, whether it's immediate impact player, junior college players, that we think can help us score touchdowns. We need a touchdown maker so that's what we're trying to get."
Will Coach Luper be a second set of eyes up in the press box or a co-OC or do you know yet?
"Yeah, we haven't assigned any titles yet, we've announced everybody is offensive assistants. I think it's important for our team to hear from me first what who's going to coach them and not for it to be broken in the media and right now they're all home and away. And so I try to send them a teamworks text message about the person we've hired. And then when they all get back on the 16th , or the 21st, then they're going to have an opportunity to know who's coaching them, and then we'll make it official with everybody else. You know, I know in this day and age of information everybody wants to get it out first and how it works up in the box and on the field and all that good stuff. Yeah, we'll figure that out later. God, I don't even know what I'm having for lunch."
Can you describe your relationship with Coach Luper and how he came into your life?
"Coach Luper and I got to know each other in 2010 when I happened to be at Auburn as the quality control. Obviously we spent two years together. You know he was a guy that helped me get to know and learn about college football. Obviously I learned a lot from him about, you know, recruiting and official visits and interactions and, and just his ability to relate to people, you know. I have driven Curtis Luper to the Atlanta airport more times I than I can count by hand. As my days as a GA and whenever you spend time together you build a relationship. Obviously, you know, as I've gone through my career and he went on to TCU, we stayed in touch and it's one of those things you're always just like, man, if I ever could get a chance to hire him. And that opportunity presented itself and he was ready for a new challenge and a new opportunity, and he's going to do an unbelievable job for us, and I'm excited for our players to get a chance to be around him, and I'm excited for this state to be around him and I'm excited for him to be able to recruit the St. Louis area. And so that's going to be exciting for us."
With his Texas ties do you want him to recruit Texas too or are you going to want him in St. Louis?
"You could throw Luper in the middle of Mexico and he would come back with the five best players. I know, first off, I've, we've got to be great recruiting St Louis and so I'm going to utilize his expertise there. And obviously his connections down in the Dallas area, obviously with Coach Gibbs also, you know, so will be will be able to do both."
So you guys have a rivalry with Arkansas and you play them every year. Now since coach Odom is on their staff, you know, for lack of a better word, it's kind of neat for the fans that there is now old coach versus new coach. Do you sense the rivalry of Arkansas and Mizzou football?
"Did you see signing day? Yeah, it's gonna be a rivalry.Yeah, we got coaches down there that came from here, I'm from there. It's gonna be a rivalry. We're excited to play. You put them on the schedule, you put anybody on the schedule, you play to win the game. Right. Sure, so it'll be a rivalry."
You spoke highly of coach Luper's recruiting ability. What makes him a good recruiter?
"I think it's all about people. He's a great, he's a relational relationship oriented person. He's a great husband, a great father, so he can easily relate to what these young men are fixing to go through, he's played college football. He's experienced a lot of different things in his life. He's got two sons, you know, one of them is playing college football and other one's fixing to play college football, his daughters one of the best volleyball players in the country. So he's got all kinds of experience. It's going to be able to be relatable to what these people are going through."
You mentioned you're trying to finalize a strength coach. What are you looking for in trying to make that hire?
"There's five key people that have to be culture conduits to our program: Obviously the head coach, director o football operations, athletic trainer, equipment manager and director of athletic performance. And those people have to have my message and my vision for our program and they've got to carry that and just going through the process trying to find somebody who is going to be unified with our vision, and that's the biggest thing for Mizzou football. Whether it's recruiting this state, whether it's within our building, we've got to unify Mizzou. Mizzou cannot beat Mizzou, we all got to push in the same direction, and for me that's finding that person has the same values and belief system that I have and bringing those together, and that's what we're looking for, not only physically but through a few other proper connections."
You've got quite a few people on your staff with connections to your Auburn days. What was it about that staff that has made you want to put some of it back together?
"I think it's the relationships you build with people, over time, you know there's some relationships that I developed on that staff that I haven't maintained. When you go through something so unique that we were able to do at Auburn, accomplish a national championship which hadn't been done in 50 something years, obviously there's things that stand out. And there's relationships that you've made. And so that's the, that's one thing and then the other thing is, in the SEC, the national championship is the standard; like that's the expectation at some point in our future, all right. And so I need people to understand what it takes to win and what it takes to win at a high level, and have that experience of this is how you get there. And you have to have credibility, right? And in those guys, we have that credibility. Obviously a lot of us have gone on to be successful in other arenas and other conferences and been fortunate to win conference championships in other conferences and it's a matter of bringing our experiences back and say how can we recreate the success?"
Did you have a favorite NFL team or player or coach growing up?
"Am I supposed to say the Kansas City Chiefs? Christian Okoye? To be honest, so, the Dallas Cowboys were my team. I loved Troy Aikman, Jay Novacek, Michael Irvin, Alvin Harper, those guys, Big Cat Williams. Yeah, those guys. Oh Moose Johnston fullback. Now, to be honest I mean I was a little bit of a bandwagon fan so when not I mean I'm a diehard Cowboys fan but when the greatest show on turf took off, Marshall Faulk obviously Torry Holt was a was a former NC State graduate so I got to know Torry, obviously Kurt Warner coached Ryan Finley in high school and there was a connection there so I got to meet and know Kurt Warner. So the St. Louis Rams and then you know hey Christian Okoye, it doesn't get much better than that. Fun fact I've never been to an NFL game now. Growing up I've never been to an NFL game so I look forward to hopefully the Chiefs hosting a playoff game and hopefully some fan out there hears this and invites me to go to the game."
What have you learned about this city in your short time here?
"St. Louis is passionate about St. Louis, passionate about the kids in St. Louis and they want these young men to have the same opportunities that everybody else does. And I understand that aspect and we want to make sure that we give those young men the opportunity to fit Mizzou. It means more when it's your state, it means more when you do it for your hometown your home state, and, you know, I've got to do a great job of getting us to reconcile the whatever torn relationships or whatever and build bridges from St. Louis to Columbia."
