Missouri quarterback Brady Cook and coach Eli Drinkwitz pose with the Battle Line trophy that the Tiger retained by defeating Arkansas 28-21 on Saturday, Nov. 30, 2024, in Columbia, Mo. MU will have to replace Cook, who will be out of eligibility, next season.
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Don’t blink now.
Missouri wrapped up the 2024 regular season with a snow game, senior day win and postgame cigars, but Sunday dawned bright and pressing with the start of college football’s blurry business schedule.
It’s blurry because you can’t really draw a clean line between seasons. The tail end of 2024 and the early stages of the 2025 season will clash over the course of December. Just look at the dates on both seasons’ calendars.
The current season will run through the holidays. Next Sunday, Mizzou will learn which of six possible bowl games — Liberty, Las Vegas, Music City, ReliaQuest, Texas, Gator — it will play in as well as its opponent. Depending on which of those the Tigers are assigned, they’ll play their final game of the 2024 season somewhere between Dec. 27 and Jan. 2.
Next season, from a personnel standpoint, begins in the next week. Wednesday marks the start of signing day for the class of 2025, when MU and schools around the country expect to lock in the vast majority of their recruits. Then, on Dec. 9 — the Monday after the College Football Playoff field and bowl assignments come out — the transfer portal opens.
Of course, portal-related movement can’t be contained to the three-week window when it’s open. Missouri already has issued its first transfer offer of the cycle: to Kennesaw State punter Jacob Ulrich, who was able to enter the portal early because the Owls fired their coach.
And Mizzou’s first player departure is in motion, too: Safety Phillip Roche, who was arrested in the offseason for failing to appear in court and played sparingly during the season, parted ways with the Tigers ahead of the regular-season finale, a team spokesperson confirmed to the Post-Dispatch. Per a source familiar with his decision, Roche plans to transfer.
A move like that — a depth player struggling to find playing time looking for a different season — isn’t particularly surprising at this time of year. Missouri spent the last month of the season preparing for how much of the 2024 roster will carry over into 2025 and how those players will be compensated with the expected onset of revenue sharing for athletes arriving between seasons.
“Fortunately, we’ve been able to handle some of this stuff already,†Tigers coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “We spent the better part of the second bye week having some discussions already with current roster players to retain those guys, so we feel like we’re in a good place there.â€
While plans — on both the programs’ and players’ ends of the bargain — are generally kept close to chests, retention priorities for Missouri seemingly would be veteran players who theoretically could leave college ranks for the pros this offseason.
Mizzou’s coaching staff met Sunday night some 24 hours after the end of the regular season to “finalize what we’ve been discussing for the last four weeks, which is roster evaluation, management and retention,†Drinkwitz said.
Securing the home front seems to be the priority before the portal opens. In addition to Wednesday’s signing day, MU’s coaches will meet individually with each player on the roster this week.
The plan is to “see where their mind is, have discussions on player retention — which means NIL, revenue-share conversations to see where everybody’s at, what those negotiations look like,†Drinkwitz said.
With athletics departments expecting to be able to distribute somewhere around $22 million of shared revenue directly to athletes next season, those negotiations are likely to look different from seasons past. A significant portion of that pool will be allotted to football as a functional salary cap to use — and NIL deals can be stacked on top of revenue-sharing funds to compensate players.
Once the retention finances are pinned down, Drinkwitz and his staff will be able to approach the portal with a clearer snapshot of how much they can spend on acquisitions.
They’ll likely need to fork over a chunk of change, especially if they target a high-end quarterback in the transfer portal — the sport’s most expensive position.
The Post-Dispatch will preview the portal in more detail between now and its opening, but quarterback will be one of the more intriguing positions to monitor through the Missouri lens as the Tigers move on from three-year starter Brady Cook. Offensive line, linebacker and the secondary stand to be other priorities. And positions such as running back and wide receiver, full of young talent but lacking experience, will be telling indicators of how MU wants to handle its recent recruiting success and prospects.
The coaching carousel also will begin to turn soon. Because of the revenue-sharing expenses coming down the pipeline, the expectation around college football is that power conference programs will be conservative when it comes to firing coaches, saving on spending by retaining them versus splashing cash on expensive buyouts.
Even if there aren’t many head coach openings, there will still be a churn of assistants moving places. Mizzou lost its defensive coordinator and defensive ends coach last offseason but otherwise kept its roster of assistants intact. That could be a challenge this time: Many of the Tigers’ position coaches are highly regarded and could be in demand for promotions to coordinator roles elsewhere.
But that’s still an unknown, like much of what will go down during December — college football’s scheduled month of chaos.
“What it looks like is keeping your head on a swivel,†Drinkwitz said, “and making the best decisions you can with the information you have on hand and go from there.â€
