Has Missouri football earned ‘America’s Team’ label? Coach Eli Drinkwitz thinks so
Eli Drinkwitz is many things.
In the football sense, he’s a good coach, a tremendous recruiter and should be the SEC Coach of the Year.
Above all, he’s a listener. He keeps his ear to the ground. You better believe he heard a certain college football coach dub his team “America’s Team.”
Drinkwitz did not agree.
“Earlier in the week I heard a coach talk about being America’s team,” Drinkwitz said. “I don’t know about all that conversation. They’ve got so many different good things going for them — some good, some maybe they stole illegally.”
Then Drinkwitz, standing on his laurels as he’s done before this year and is very much allowed to do, corrected that statement.
“We’re America’s team,” Drinkwitz said. We’re a team built on underdogs.”
He’s right.
Missouri has earned the right to be America’s Team going into the bowl season. The Tigers won’t have a chance to contend for a national title this season — they would if it were 2024 instead — but they’ve put themselves in a position to win a New Year’s Six Bowl with a team that’s easy to root for.
At 10-2, Missouri will play in either the Cotton, Peach or Fiesta Bowls depending on this weekend and the championship week after that. Missouri may very well be an underdog in that game. The Tigers wouldn’t have it any other way.
In the grand scheme of college football, Missouri is certainly easier to root for than the aforementioned coach who crowned his own team as America’s Team.
“America loves a team that beats the odds, beats the adversity, overcomes what the naysayers, critics, so-called experts think,” Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh said on Nov. 13. “That’s my favorite kind of team.”
That fits Missouri better than it does Michigan.
The Wolverines were ranked as the preseason No. 2 team in the Associated Press Top 25. They were coming off a second straight College Football Playoff berth. They play in a conference that’s nowhere near as competitive as the SEC. They have also been without a head coach since Nov. 16.
Three days after Harbaugh called Michigan America’s Team, he accepted a suspension levied by the Big 10; the conference had investigated an alleged scheme where Michigan stole opponents’ play-calling signals.
In reality, the only thing Missouri and Michigan have in common is a Block M for a team logo.
So what constitutes America’s Team in Drinkwitz’s eyes?
“We’re a team built on young men with something to prove,” Drinkwitz said. “We got a Division II transfer running back who’s leading the SEC in rushing. We got a bunch of fighters.”
Missouri set out this season to prove it belongs among top competition — and it certainly has thus far. The Tigers were underdogs in many ways entering 2023.
Whichever preseason SEC poll you look at will show Missouri at the bottom, below Kentucky, Florida, Arkansas, South Carolina and Tennessee, all teams Missouri has beaten on its way to 10 wins.
Missouri was an afterthought. I even picked Missouri to peak at eight wins. This team defied those expectations, unlike a Michigan team that some picked to win this year’s national title.
“We’re the story that people should be really proud to be behind,” Drinkwitz said, “I’m just proud to coach this football team, and it ain’t about me. It’s really about this brotherhood, those guys coming together, those coaches — and they’re coaching their butt off for each other.”
Keep in mind that Drinkwitz wouldn’t anoint his team as American’s Team if Missouri was 6-6 like it was last year. He’s well aware that if MU didn’t prove anything this year, that claim would be ridiculed on social media and among fan bases.
But this year he can make that claim.
Drinkwitz’s roster of underdogs has two wins over teams in the College Football Playoff Top 25 in Kansas State and Tennessee. They took Georgia to the wire.
Michigan has one of those wins over Penn State. The highly regarded Wolverines are undefeated, but they consider getting caught stealing signs as “adversity.” They could all take a lesson in overcoming adversity from Cody Schrader, who had another 200-yard rushing game and most likely earned a few Heisman Trophy votes in the process after his well-documented journey from Division II to the SEC.
“I think this team is meant to play on big stages,” Schrader said.
Missouri will still play on a big stage. A New Year’s Six Bowl will provide MU a chance to face a top team from another Power Five conference or the best Group of Five team in America.
The Tigers have overcome plenty of the naysayers, critics and so-called experts in getting to that point.
And Missouri did all that with a Division II transfer, a lifelong Tiger fan who became a tough-as-nails quarterback, a defense that’s still one of the best in America and a coach who has learned the impressive self-awareness to discern what’s special.
“That’s what America’s all about,” Drinkwitz said.
The Star has partnered with the Columbia Daily Tribune for coverage of Missouri Tigers athletics.
