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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Seated on a small makeshift stage in a partitioned segment of a Gaylord Opryland ballroom, Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz seemed to be of two minds regarding the game he’s about to coach.

His Tigers, at 9-3 overall, 5-3 against Southeastern Conference opponents and ranked 19th by the College Football Playoff selection committee, meet Iowa (8-4, 6-3 Big Ten) in the Music City Bowl at 1:30 p.m. Monday.

The buildup to the game is mostly ceremonial and intended to be celebratory. Drinkwitz and Hawkeyes coach Kirk Ferentz received acoustic guitars emblazoned with their teams’ and the bowl’s branding. But this type of game — which really is more of a series of events ending with a football game — is drifting toward antiquated status.

When Drinkwitz opened his pregame news conference inside Nashville’s extravagant resort, he assumed — in semi-scripted remarks — the traditional tone toward playing in a bowl.

“Bowl games are still a great experience for our student-athletes and for college football,” the fifth-year MU coach said, “and this is an outstanding bowl game.”

Ferentz, when his turn to talk came around, echoed the notion.

“A lot is written about bowls and said about bowls, and these are changing times in college football,” Iowa’s longtime coach said. “But each one of these games is significant.”

Lately, however, Drinkwitz has been speaking more bluntly about the foundational mechanisms of modern college football, such as the transfer portal, NIL and more. So when the Post-Dispatch asked him about the value of a bowl game, he called it like it is.

“This is really a stand-alone game,” he said. “It’s really different than what you had at the end of the season because of the ‘free-agency’ period that occurs.”

Two quick interjections before his money line. First, he said end of the season — not end of the regular season. Intentional? Maybe not, but telling nonetheless. Second, when he says free agency, he means the ongoing transfer portal cycle — which he has compared to pro sports’ free agency in the past.

“I hate to be like this,” Drinkwitz continued, “but it’s really an exhibition game.”

Shots fired? It’s hard to disagree. The chance to play in or win the Music City Bowl is not worth the risk for Mizzou’s Luther Burden III and Armand Membou, plus Iowa’s Kaleb Johnson and Jermari Harris. All four, who would’ve been the best players on the Nissan Stadium field, opted out to protect their health ahead of the spring’s NFL draft.

With other absentees because of outgoing transfers — namely running back Kewan Lacy, wideout Courtney Crutchfield and defensive ends Williams Nwaneri and Jaylen Brown — plus an injury to starting tight end Brett Norfleet, the Tigers will be without more than 10 players.

Yet exhibition or not, the Music City Bowl is not entirely devoid of significance and value.

A win over Iowa would be Missouri’s 10th of the season, a milestone that the program has reached just seven times before — in 1960, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2023. And as that list reflects, a bowl victory would give MU back-to-back 10-win seasons for just the third time.

“I’m not really caught up in the outcome of that,” Drinkwitz said.

He can say that, but financially, he very much is.

Drinkwitz is due a $150,000 bonus this offseason for bringing the Tigers to a so-called Pool of Six bowl game — the better group of non-playoff bowls with SEC tie-ins. And winning 10 games in a season earns him an extra $25,000.

How much is that to a coach whose salary, before any bonuses, was $9 million? About a quarter of a percent, to be exact. But his staff would benefit from getting to 10 wins, too.

Offensive coordinator Kirby Moore and defensive coordinator Corey Batoon have secured $20,000 bonuses for making the bowl, but they could each take home another $15,000 for getting to 10 victories this year.

There are unique on-field opportunities available to players, too. The Music City Bowl will be a send-off for a senior class that includes team captains quarterback Brady Cook, wideout Theo Wease Jr., defensive end Johnny Walker Jr. and defensive tackle Kristian Williams.

Some young players will get playing time that wasn’t present in the regular season — especially at wide receiver and linebacker.

Second-year wideouts Marquis Johnson and Joshua Manning are “going to step into bigger roles,” Drinkwitz said, with Burden and Mookie Cooper out. Freshman James Madison II and long-time depth receiver Logan Muckey are “going to get some time out there,” Moore added.

At linebacker, where Chuck Hicks was Missouri’s only non-portal or draft-related opt-out, young ’backers Nicholas Rodriguez and Jeremiah Beasley are expected to “get more reps,” Drinkwitz said.

The bowl could, abstractly, set the mood heading into the offseason — but even that idea is punctured by the fact that portal commitments have been rolling in and out of the team facility for a few weeks already.

All in all, the bowl seems like the sort of thing that the winner will say matters and the loser will say won’t — and in the meantime, Mizzou has hedged its philosophy as to which it will be.

“If you are fortunate enough to win, it catapults you into next year,” Drinkwitz said. “If you don’t, then you came up short and you fly back home and celebrate the new year and you start all over. I don’t know that it carries more significance than that.”

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For the father, the relationship with his son is a mosaic of memories — frozen in time, alive in his mind.

The father and son playing catch with a baseball in the backyard — Jim Cook throwing the cherished “divers” to his elementary-aged boy, Brady, who now is Mizzou’s starting quarterback.

The father and son practicing field goals at local schools — Jim dutifully holding the ball, chasing after it and holding it again.

The father and son at a fourth-grade football game (Jim was the coach; Brady, of course, was the quarterback) and Jim actually becoming sad — he realizes that after just four more quick years, he won’t get this experience of coaching his son anymore.

The father and son near the side of their home, young Brady hitting with a skinny bat that Jim got him to improve hand-eye coordination. Except Brady isn’t hitting.

“I’ll never forget,” Jim said, “I was pitching the (little ball), and he started missing. And it’s hard to hit them, they’re very small. He missed a couple — I can see him getting a little bit upset, so I’m like, ‘Hey, let’s go take a break.’ He says, ‘We’re not taking a break, Dad.’ So he’s out there, and he is just breaking down. I mean, he’s crying.

“He wants to hit this ball. ‘Son, we’re going to go take a break.’ He says, ‘No, no, no!’ And then mom’s in the window looking, and she goes, ‘What are you doing to him?’ And I say, ‘I’m not doing anything!’ So that memory comes up as him being just very passionate.”

The father and son on the baseball diamond, Jim watching as a beaming Brady hits a grand slam in Little League.

“I just really remember,” the dad said, “the joy on his face running the bases.”

At a coffee shop last week in O’Fallon, Missouri, I asked Jim about his bond with Brady, who was raised in Wentzville and played high school ball at Chaminade.

Dad got choked up.

“The bond, just from spending the time together, means the world to me,” Jim shared. “Just spending time and trying to impart some of my knowledge to help him along his journey.”

The journey has one more stop, one more day of memories to make. Brady’s final college game is Monday — the Music City Bowl vs. Iowa in Nashville, Tennessee. Brady’s next dream is to play in the NFL — and he’ll begin that pursuit as soon as next week. But this is the last guaranteed game.

“At the end of the day,” Jim said later over coffee, “I tell myself: I’m just proud of him being there, the figure that he is with Mizzou.

“And in the last year to two years, hundreds of times people have come up to me, and the nicest thing is ...”

The proud papa got choked up, again.

“... they talk about Brady as a person. He’s a really freaking good quarterback, but the things that people say — ‘We ran into your son, he’s done this, he smiled, he took time with this.’ Hundreds of people. So that feels very, very good.”

Brady, irrefutably, is a man of character. And the Cooks — Jim and his wife, Amy — have poured into their son, who sure is a good one.

For instance, I liked this from Jim: “I’ve said this for years: ‘Do your relationships. Find one person a week and bond with them, one guy that you’re not talking to, go over and talk to him in the locker room.’”

Oh, and as Jim pointed out, Brady was named the Southeastern Conference football scholar-athlete of the year — for the second consecutive season. Only Florida’s Tim Tebow and Alabama’s Barrett Jones ever won it twice before.

But for all the talent and smarts and charm (and NIL commercials!) that Brady has, college has not been a smooth ride. So many injuries. So many challengers for his starting job. So many boos after a couple particular losses. Still, Brady Cook just kept on navigating adversity.

I mean, he’s the reason they refer to the Auburn game as “the hospital game.” Dude got injured, went to a hospital, came back and led his team to victory.

And so, at this point — win or lose Monday — Brady is a Mizzou legend. The kid who grew up going to games is 25-13 for his career as a Mizzou starter — he’s tied with Brad Smith for the second-most wins in school history by a quarterback. He’ll likely finish third in passing yards. And his career percentage of passes intercepted has been lower than Chase Daniel, Drew Lock and Smith.

And anecdotally, Brady was the man under center during the Tigers’ rise to recent dominance. They went 11-2 last season with a win in the Cotton Bowl over Ohio State. And the Tigers — No. 19 in the College Football Playoff rankings — are 9-3 entering the Music City Bowl.

“I’ve got friends that say, ‘It’s so cool!’” Jim said. “And it is cool. But it’s the exact same feelings that you’ll feel when you’re at your kid’s soccer game and he’s playing soccer, running down and he makes the goal — or he misses the goal. It’s the exact same feelings, it’s just everything’s magnified at this level.”

And so, the end is near.

Jim and Amy attended every single one of Brady’s Mizzou games.

This is the last one.

For all intents and purposes, Jim’s son’s childhood ends Monday night.

“So has it hit me yet?” Jim asked. “Probably not. ... It is fun watching him. It’s fun watching a play come together. It’s fun watching him celebrate, like, hug a player who’s coming off the sideline. It’s fun — on that touchdown he ran in the snow (against Arkansas in the final home game), if you watch it, there are some pictures you can see on his face that he was smiling.

“I just want to see my kids smile.”

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Missouri linebackers coach DJ Smith is departing to become Appalachian State's defensive coordinator.

That Smith is taking a coordinator position at his alma mater is not especially surprising, though the timing — with the news of his departure coming out the night before the Tigers play in the Music City Bowl on Monday — and task of replacing a highly regarded assistant will be challenges. 

The Mountaineers officially announced Smith's hire Monday morning.

"I'm excited and honored to come home to App State," Smith said in a statement. "App is a special place with special people. This is where my collegiate career started as a player and as a coach."

Because Smith is leaving MU to take a coordinator position, he will not owe the school a buyout, according to the terms of his contract. 

He hails from Charlotte, North Carolina, and played for App State during its 2007 FCS national championship run before being taken in the NFL draft. App State also gave Smith his first coaching job.

He followed Eli Drinkwitz from there to Missouri in late 2019. In 2022, Mizzou also named Smith its recruiting coordinator and co-defensive coordinator, though when the Tigers needed to hire a new defensive coordinator roughly a year ago, they went with South Alabama's Corey Batoon.

Smith has been pivotal in developing some the successful linebackers to emerge from Missouri over the last several years, including Nick Bolton, Blaze Alldredge and Ty'Ron Hopper.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The inside of the Gaylord Opryland resort is meant to be a spectacle, where a walk through its halls includes strolling past indoor waterfalls and jungle-ish greenery. Observant Missouri fans taking in the Nashville destination shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday might have caught a passing glimpse of their favorite team’s coaching staff speed-walking through.

They were heading from the Music City Bowl’s pregame news conference to the Tigers’ final bowl practice, held 20 minutes away in Vanderbilt’s indoor training facility.

That’s the shuffle of bowl trips, which are part getaway, part event promotion and part coaching for the Mizzou staff.

And the transfer portal is happening, too. Entries technically are closed now, though players on teams such as MU that have a late bowl game — or playoff game — will get another brief window to enter after their final game of the season.

The portal is where the biggest news has been on the Missouri front lately, with the signing of former Penn State quarterback Beau Pribula. But taking questions from the media for the first time since landing Pribula, Tigers coach Eli Drinkwitz declined to talk about the transfer portal move that likely will define his offseason.

“I want to focus on the bowl game,” Drinkwitz said. “We’ll talk about that when those guys get on campus.”

It’s already a telling sign of the college football times that Mizzou has picked up the likely successor to starting quarterback Brady Cook before Cook has even played the final game of his MU career.

“Yeah, that’s the calendar in college football,” MU offensive coordinator Kirby Moore said. “Building for next season while finishing this season with the bowl game.”

Speaking of Cook, Drinkwitz offered new insight into one of the injuries that sidelined Missouri’s starting QB for a brief time earlier in the season.

The injury that Cook suffered in the Tigers’ Oct. 26 defeat to Alabama was in fact a right wrist fracture, Drinkwitz said. The manner in which the fifth-year quarterback was hurt and the fact that the injury showed up on an X-ray had suggested he had a break in his hand or wrist, but the team had not previously confirmed exactly what was wrong.

Cook missed Mizzou’s next game, a home win over Oklahoma. Even with the week off, X-rays still showed a fracture in his wrist. Heading into the Nov. 16 game against South Carolina, Drinkwitz and the MU staff gave Cook the option not to play with a wrist that still was broken.

He played, and even made one the best throws of his career in the defeat — a fourth-down dime down the sideline to wide receiver Luther Burden III.

Add that to the lore of Cook’s Missouri tenure, which already includes him playing through a torn labrum in 2022 and a high ankle sprain earlier this season.

“He’s a young man who from Day 1 wanted to be here and has had to endure,” Drinkwitz said.

Among the potential candidates to replace Cook next season — even if Pribula is the heavy favorite — is Sam Horn, who missed the entire 2024 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery.

Horn will attempt to play baseball and still participate in Mizzou’s spring football practices, Drinkwitz said previously. Horn’s injury recovery seems to be coming along well.

Drinkwitz had said that Horn was beginning to throw again in practice, and the very brief periods of Saturday and Sunday’s practices that were open to media showed exactly that. The Tigers went through just a couple of drills before directing reporters to leave the indoor facility, but Horn was dressed for practice and throwing well.

Horn has not been cleared for contact, though, so he won’t be playing against Iowa in the Music City Bowl — that will be Cook’s send-off game.

Newson could be back after JUCO rule change

Mizzou outside linebacker Triston Newson could be sticking around for another season after the NCAA modified eligibility rules for former junior college players.

He’d been expected to play his final game in the Music City Bowl but could play another year — if he wants — because of the NCAA’s decision last week following a courtroom defeat in a lawsuit brought by Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia.

“It’s up to him,” Drinkwitz said. “We would love to have him back. We’d welcome him back with open arms.”

Newson played at Northeast Missouri Community College before transferring to Missouri ahead of the 2023 season. His time in the JUCO ranks had previously counted toward his eligibility, but he now can have another year, the NCAA said.

If Newson decides to return, he would change the makeup of a linebacker room that was preparing to lose Newson and two other veterans.

The Tigers have signed two linebackers out of the transfer portal: former Nebraska player Mikai Gbayor and former West Virginia player Josiah Trotter. MU also has Khalil Jacobs, Nicholas Rodriguez and Jeremiah Beasley returning next season.

“Obviously, (the chance that Newson could return) affects a lot of different people,” Drinkwitz said. “It affects our roster count. To do that after the portal has been open and after people have signed and all that is a little bit tricky, but he’s one of us.”

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