Eli Drinkwitz reacts to SEC moving to nine-game conference schedule

Eli Drinkwitz has long been a supporter of adding an additional ninth conference game in the SEC, at least until it became the reality. Following the SEC’s announcement Thursday that the league would apopt a nine-game conference schedule beginning with the 2026 season, the Missouri head coach experienced a little buyers remore.

“I changed my mind,” Drinkwitz said with a wry smile Saturday. “Look, I don’t know if … I said this at Media Days and I still believe it: the two most important factors in making decisions, in my opinion, from a conference standpoint or for college football (at-large) are the fans and the players. And everything else is really secondary. … So I think from a fan standpoint, it’s awesome. I really do think adding those games are great for the fans. I (just) think it’s going to be a challenge.”

Drinkwitz wouldn’t be the first SEC coach to both support adding a ninth conference game to more align with the Big Ten and Big 12, and also raise concern about the actual implications of making such a move. Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban was a longtime proponent of a nine-game SEC slate, until he learned the Crimson Tide’s three most-likely permanent opponents would be Auburn, LSU and Tennessee when the topic was last discussed ahead of the 2023 season, which would be his final in Tuscaloosa.

Drinkwitz addressed similar “unintended consequences” of going from eight to nine conference games, especially when it could mean one fewer home game in seasons where SEC teams must travel as part of previously-scheduled home-and-home series with Power Four opponents, which is now an annual requirement within the league.

“Obviously, I think there’s going to be unintended consequences from increasing the schedule difficulties. I think there’s going to be unintended consequences with having a 4- and 5-game rotation where you only have four conference home games and there’s going to be five conference road games,” Drinkwitz explained. “Which now makes scheduling even more challenging because you just told us that we have to have one Power Four (opponent) outside of that. You could be looking at a six-home game, six-road game schedule, which would make no sense we spent $250 million building the North End Zone Project.”

As Drinkwitz mentioned, the North End Zone of Missouri’s Memorial Stadium is currently undergoing a $250 million facelift that is meant to both enhance and modernize the fan experience on game days. The renovation, which is being done by the Kansas City-based DLR Group, is expected to be completed before the 2026 season.

“So I think there’s a lot of challenges there that we have to figure out and get right. And it’s not exactly like they’re giving us a lot of time to do that,” Drinkwitz concluded. “We don’t even know who our three permanents are, we don’t know what the schedule looks like, and we’ve got to do it here in the next nine months … or really six months. And you’re going to have to buy out some (already-scheduled games). We’ve figured it out before, but I do think there’s a lot of unintended consequences that hopefully everybody was aware of on that stuff. We’ll go from there.

“I will say this, I just hope we get through this season first. Because there’s no guarantee anything for next year. So we’ll focus on being 1-0 this year and we’ll figure out next year’s challenges next year.”