Eli Drinkwitz is trying to keep up with college football’s latest legal mess, and he’s not pretending it’s simple.
Missouri’s coach said Sunday he saw the news from last Friday night - U.S. District Court judge Charlotte N. Sweeney in Colorado granting a preliminary injunction that gives all college athletes from the Class of 2022 another year of eligibility - and had the same reaction a lot of coaches probably did.
Here we go again, he thought.
“What that means for the University of Missouri and future player acquisitions, I'm going to tell you the same thing I told our staff,” Drinkwitz said during his pre-fall camp press conference. “I have no idea what's going on.”
The ruling added another layer to an already tangled eligibility picture. It came after the NCAA’s newly-approved age-based eligibility rules, which were unanimously passed in June and gave all college athletes five total years of eligibility. But lawsuits started moving fast after that, with successful challenges in Ohio and Texas among the early flashpoints.
Missouri has already felt the impact. Sterling Webb, a defensive lineman for the Tigers in 2024-25 who also played two years at New Mexico State in 2022-23, was granted a temporary restraining order last week that allowed him to play a fifth season just days before Missouri opened fall camp.
Sweeney’s ruling Friday night widened the door for other players in the same situation. Still, the NCAA asked for clarification, and Sweeney said her injunction did not block NCAA transfer portal rules, roster caps, or other rules created by the House v.
NCAA settlement. That likely narrows what returning players can actually do.
Even now, the whole thing remains unsettled. The NCAA plans to appeal, and the Protect College Sports Act could give the NCAA antitrust exemptions to enforce eligibility rules if it passes. For the moment, nothing is clean or final.
Drinkwitz, though, has spent enough time in this sport to know chaos is part of the job now.
“This is my seventh year at the University of Missouri,” he said Sunday, “and in seven years we have had complete chaos from year to year.”
He then laid it out one year at a time.
“My first year was COVID. My second year was the COVID exception for players, where you had players who didn't count against your roster.
My third year was NIL. My fourth year was unlimited transfers.
My fifth year was free cap space. My sixth year was revenue sharing, and now my seventh year is another court case.”
That’s the world Missouri is operating in, and Drinkwitz made clear he’ll keep looking for ways to work within it if the rules allow. He left open the possibility that the Tigers could add to the roster for 2026, while stressing that the school will try to do what’s best for both the program and any players affected by the ruling.
“So again,” Drinkwitz said, “this is something that we have gotten used to, where there is a lack of understanding and a lack of organization - or I guess rules - so we will do the very best that we can for the University of Missouri to operate within the structure that that they've given us.
“If that means that we can add somebody at this late date, we will explore every avenue possible to help the University of Missouri football team be successful while also helping the kid, the young men or players that are affected by this.”
Missouri began fall camp Monday, and Webb was there wearing No. 90 after wearing No. 10 last season. The Tigers open the 2026 season on Sept. 3 against FCS Arkansas-Pine Bluff at Faurot Field in Columbia, with kickoff set for 7 p.m. CT on SEC Network.
Whether Missouri can or will add more players before then is still unclear. Every other player who left the program after playing four years or fewer has signed an NFL contract, which makes them ineligible to return to college football. And with appeals and the PSCA still hanging over everything, the rules could change again before anyone gets comfortable.
Drinkwitz ended by saying he feels for the Class of 2022 and for players like Webb, who have been pushed around by one wave of change after another.
“The Class of 2022, this is the second time they have been negatively affected by decisions that have been made again,” Drinkwitz said. “Not pointing anybody out, but they were negatively affected by the COVID exception ruling, and now they've been negatively affected by the five-for-five ruling.
“I feel for them, and do want to be a place that they can come and find another year if that's what is in their best interest - and obviously, if that's what the court cases say that they can do.”
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