Eli Drinkwitz advocates for standardized injury reports in the SEC for football

Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz was pretty unfiltered during his press conference at the SEC Spring Meetings this week, dishing takes on topics as wide ranging as NIL to conference scheduling to even injury reports.

Injury reports are not standardized across college sports. Teams are free to do injury reports however and whenever they want to — if they even want to at all.

That goes against the trend of the NFL, which has a very set and standardized injury report system. Every single day NFL teams practice during the season, the NFL releases an injury report that labels their participation in practice that day. Teams also give expectations for if the players will play in the games that weekend.

Other professional leagues also have more standard injury reports.

Something as in-depth as the NFL will probably never happen at the college level but could be achieved. Drinktwitz already releases an injury report every Thursday.

“I do,” Drinkwitz said at the SEC Spring Meetings when asked whether he was for standardizing injury reports at the college level. “The NFL is the best sports league in my opinion — which is not very well educated. In my opinion the best sports league in the world for a reason. So the more that we can streamline, do some of those things, the better — especially now that we’ve kind of moved away from our collegiate model into more of a business model. I think that we need to put those safeguards in place. I do think providing information. We provide an injury report every Thursday. Don’t have to but that’s what we believe in doing and that’s what I believe in doing.”

The professionalization of college sports was a recurring topic of questioning for coaches at the SEC Spring Meetings.

That was expected with all the changes going through the sport right now and all the mysteries facing its future. Drinkwitz admitted that he is not sure what is going to happen with NIL with a funny quote.

“I think the future’s unknown. I think we’re in a very unknown situation,” Drinkwitz said. “If I had the right answer I’d probably give up coaching football and be Miss Cleo, 1-800-ELI and you can get information from me. I’m not sure what it’s going to go to. I know in my opinion right now what we have is a broken system that needs some sort of guidance.”