It’s around the time of season where the coaching carousel begins to die down, but in 2020, it’s actually picking up.
Over the last week we’ve had Mike Leach arrive in Mississippi State — the trickle-down economics of Elijah Moore’s mime micturition led to new coaches at Ole Miss, FAU, Mississippi State, Washington State and Hawaii.
Really, there’s no way to disprove that everything that’s occurred since the Egg Bowl hasn’t been the direct result of Moore’s No. 1-celebration.
We’ve seen Matt Rhule leave Baylor for the NFL, taking LSU wunderkind Joe Brady along with him. That’s not to mention the retirement of Rocky Long at San Diego State, followed almost immediately by the re-ascension of Brady Hoke to the same position he last held when TJ Moe was roaring down the east sideline against the Aztecs in 2010.
It seems like a decade ago that Missouri hired Eli Drinkwitz to be its head coach. Given how much has changed since Dec. 10, I found myself wondering if anything that’s happened over the last month has changed my initial bullish reaction to his introduction.
Some would say it’s too early to evaluate a coaching hire after one season. Even more would say it’s too early to do so after a few games — those people were not subjected to the Kim Anderson era, however.
Me? I think it’s time to re-evaluate Drinkwitz’s hire after a mere month on the job. Of course, this has nothing to do with anything he’s doing — although I am enjoying his more robust, consistent presence on social media and at basketball games. It was Leach’s hire at Mississippi State that led to me re-thinking my initial reaction to the announcement of Drinkwitz, just because the news out of Starkville was such a jarring surprise.
At the start of Missouri’s search, reports indicated that Jim Sterk wanted an offensive-minded individual with head-coaching experience. Leach, obviously, checks both boxes in a huge way, with 18 years as the front man for Power 5 schools, developing one of the most explosive passing offenses along the way.
Not that millions of dollars are ever a bargain, but in this age of skyrocketing coaching contracts, Leach’s $20 million base contract over four years also seemed, relatively, surprising. He’s making more than Dan Mullen ever did in Starkville, but that’s one million dollars per year more than Drinkwitz’s Missouri contract, which is $24 million over six years.
Could Missouri have actually made a serious run at Leach?
I’m long past the brief and infrequent days where I had actual intel about Missouri news — so don’t take this as anything more than a fan speculating. But those factors, at least on paper, sure makes it seem that Leach and Missouri wouldn’t have been a non-starter. A million dollar difference is nothing to sneeze at, especially not when the athletic department has had revenue issues for the past few years. But Leach’s Mississippi State contract is at least in the same ballpark as Drinkwitz, so negotiations wouldn’t seem that far-fetched.
Leach was never mentioned as a realistic target for Missouri, even when the Phase 1 coaching search settled on three names that left much to be desired in the eyes of the fanbase — and the Board of Curators. Maybe there wasn’t interest by Sterk in Leach; maybe there wasn’t interest by Leach in Mizzou.
With all that speculation in mind, I think Leach’s hire in Starkville has left me more conflicted about Missouri’s search. It shows that, maybe with some better planning and certainly with a bit more money, Missouri could have gotten an established Power 5 coach to replace Barry Odom. It could have made a splashier hire and gotten in the national news cycle.
But I still don’t think Leach (or a Leach-like coach) would have been the right fit for Missouri in the long run. With Leach, you know (very much) what you’re going to get. He’s going to average between 8-9 wins a year and get to bowl games; if you throw out two three-win years early in his Wazzu tenure, he averaged 8.3 wins a year and made a bowl in each of those 16 seasons. But he’s never played for a conference championship (coming close in 2008 and 2018).
Barry Odom had Missouri bowl-eligible in his final three seasons (if not for the NCAA in 2019, of course), but that clearly wasn’t good enough for Sterk or the fanbase — myself included. A high-risk, high-reward hire was needed; Missouri needed to do something different to attempt to raise the ceiling of the program. Drinkwitz does that.
I’ve got some fan-envy because of the attention Leach brought to Mississippi State, but in the end, I still feel like Missouri made the right call and took the appropriate risk with Drinkwitz.
