Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz made one thing clear this week: he is not interested in the Florida State opening, no matter how often his name shows up in the chatter.
With the coaching carousel already spinning and Florida State standing out as the biggest job on the board, Drinkwitz has been mentioned in media reports as a possible target. He pushed back on that noise Monday during an interview with the “Brandon Walker College Football Show,” saying the speculation says more about Missouri than it does about him.
“It’s recognition for the job that we’ve done,” he said. “But you’ve got to take it all with a grain of salt because, at the end of the day, anyone can get on Twitter and throw out names.
“In all honesty, what they’re trying to do is take a shot at Mizzou, and that’s the thing that bothers me the most. It’s like you’re really just saying that you think that job’s better than the job that I currently have at Mizzou, and part of the reason I chose Mizzou is because I wanted the opportunity to build something that was kind of like the last frontier. You could accomplish things here that haven’t been accomplished anywhere else before.
“And us building the north end zone at $250 million, us building the indoor facility and adding the things here, I think, are things that I’m going to be proud of long after I’m done coaching here in a few years.”
Drinkwitz followed that up with an even more direct message at his weekly news conference.
“I’m not a candidate at Florida State. I want to clear that up,” he said. “Let’s focus on the main thing, which is Texas, and let’s eliminate all the distractions and clear the clutter from that standpoint for my team and for everybody out there.”
The interest isn’t hard to understand. Drinkwitz is 52-31 in his seventh season at Missouri, and his résumé includes back-to-back 10-plus win seasons, capped by the 2024 Cotton Bowl win over Ohio State. That success helped him land a new six-year contract worth $10.75 million annually around a year ago.
There’s also a financial layer to any potential move. If Drinkwitz were to leave before Dec. 1, he would owe Missouri $5 million in liquidated damages, according to his contract. That figure drops by $1 million each year after Dec. 1, until Dec. 2, 2031, when he could leave in the final year of the deal without paying damages.
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