BenFred: With six new hires on opposite sidelines, Drinkwitz's experience should boost Mizzou (2024)

COLUMBIA, MO. — I’m guessing this will be both the first and last college football column this season that connects Murray State and Alabama.

Stick with me.

Racers coach Jody Wright and Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer have something in common.

So do (checks notes) four other opposing head coaches featured on Missouri’s schedule.

Did you know six coaches on sidelines opposite of Eli Drinkwitz will be navigating their first season with their new teams?

More math: That’s half of Mizzou’s regular-season slate.

And no, wisecrackers, the six-coach total does not include a prediction of an interim coach leading Arkansas by the time that game rolls around. That would make seven — if Sam Pittman’s bacon burns before late November.

Murray State’s Wright was specializing in coaching South Carolina’s tight ends a season ago, his final stop on a long and well-traveled career as a college and NFL assistant before finally securing this debut.

Buffalo’s Pete Lembo has been the head man at Lehigh, Elon and Ball State before, but he’s brand new at Buffalo, which Mizzou hosts in Game 2.

Boston College’s Bill O’Brien — you either know him from his time at Penn State or with the NFL’s Houston Texans — is the new coach on campus for Mizzou’s Game 3 foe.

But wait. There’s more.

Still getting familiar there when Mizzou takes what could be a massive trip to Kyle Field will be new Texas A&M coach Mike Elko. Maybe it would have been Kentucky coach Bob Stoops instead, if not for a strange coaching search that took a sudden turn. Elko jumped into the A&M pressure cooker after just two winning seasons at Duke. Do we think paid-out Jimbo Fisher will be watching?

The other whopper of a road trip Mizzou takes this season also comes against a new-to-his-school coach in Alabama’s DeBoer. He’s a heck of a coach, as evidenced by how he elevated Washington. He’s also earned the hardest job out there: filling Nick Saban’s tassel loafers.

If we all agree, and most of us seem to on this one, that Saban became the best modern college football coach, then isn’t attempting to “replace” him the hardest modern job in college sports? I think so. Duke men’s basketball coach Jon Scheyer, who replaced coaching icon Mike Krzyzewski, and former Tennessee women’s basketball coach Holly Warlick, who replaced Pat Summitt, had daunting tasks. But both were inside hires, at least temporarily easing the transition. There are some Alabama fans, I’m sure, who don’t give a dang what DeBoer did at Fresno State and Washington. And there are some other Alabama fans, I’m sure, who didn’t know Fresno State and Washington existed before their new coach was introduced.

I think Elko and DeBoer were good hires who could do well at their new spots. But I also know even Saban went 7-6 in his first season at Alabama back in 2007. It was the only time he didn’t win double-digit games with the Tide.

First seasons at a new place, even for experienced head coaches with previous seasons spent elsewhere, are a unique challenge, an added degree of difficulty. You can’t know what you don’t know until you do. In short, if you’re going to play A&M and Alabama on the road, this is probably the best time in a long time to have to do it.

Actually, three of Mizzou’s four SEC road trips this season come against programs welcoming new coaches. The third is Mississippi State’s Jeff Lebby, the former Oklahoma offensive coordinator who made headlines for bringing disgraced Baylor coach Art Briles, his father-in-law, on the field after a Sooners win last season. Now he can bring Briles around all he likes. He’s the boss. Just see Mississippi State’s announcement for proof. Lebby was billed as an offensive guru.

Some Mizzou-focused readers will chuckle at that and remember when similar language was used to describe Drinkwitz. That was back before he elevated his program’s trajectory to a higher level by hiring a rising offensive coordinator, handing over play-calling duties and focusing on bigger-picture obstacles as he grew more toward a CEO coaching style.

That’s not a knock on Drinkwitz. It’s a compliment. He got better by trusting Kirby Moore with the offense. He saw what was not working and evolved to improve it.

In this brutal business, you either figure out how to age well or you get replaced. And while you won’t find it mentioned much in the preseason projections and game-by-game analysis of Mizzou’s matchups, you better believe there is strength in having a head coach who has some real seasoning in his current spot. Especially when half of your schedule just so happens to include opponents whose coaches are likely to spend a chunk of their season Apple-mapping their way home to an address they haven’t yet committed to memory.

New guys spend big chunks of their first seasons trying to win despite being new. Established guys have the strength of experience if they have not been exposed. Pittman at Arkansas could become the latter. Drinkwitz has become the former, and No. 11 Mizzou is better for it.

I asked Drinkwitz once last season how much his job has changed since he accepted it entering the pandemic-affected 2020 season. He laughed and didn’t know where to start. Hard to blame him.

The transfer portal has gone from a threat to something Mizzou uses to maintain momentum. Name, image and likeness transitioned from a mystery to a competitive monetary advantage over recruiting foes. Drinkwitz’s leadership of his program has elevated, from a play-calling offensive coordinator who wanted to coach the quarterbacks in addition to the team, to an all-seeing coach who has shown a knack for hiring great coaches and trusting them to do their jobs while he keeps a close eye on the big picture.

He’s perfected his feel for his recruiting reach and strengthened his bonds with campus leaders and fans, as evidenced by his call for a sellout Thursday night and the quick response of supporters to make it happen. Sure, he has a new athletics director in Laird Veatch. But there’s a reason Veatch’s first public comments heaped praise on Drinkwitz and stressed the importance of continuing to elevate his team.

Entering his fifth season at Mizzou, Drinkwitz is a much improved coach with a much stronger program. He would have a lot to tell that first-season version of himself, just as all of these coaches who are starting new jobs will too one day.

That’s if they get to one day start Year 5 at their new spots. Some will. Some definitely won’t.

Make no mistake. Head coach seasoning will be a hard-earned advantage for Mizzou in half of its games this season, regardless of whether the Tigers win all six of them. It’s an overlooked reason to feel optimistic.