Eli Drinkwitz, straddling the line between sincerity and levity, will remark that he's just a football coach.
But … right now, by his own admission, he's an obsessed football coach. And he's an obsessed football coach who has arrived at that emotion because of Missouri football's recent history.
He's just a football coach, but in between the things that have made "his plate full" — trying to build on the Tigers' 11-2 2023 season and discussions surrounding the approved upgrade to Memorial Stadium's north end zone — he indulged in a little philosophy.
"There's a fulfillment knowing that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing on a day-to-day basis," Drinkwitz said Wednesday. "And, yeah, I feel comfortable with where that is, and absolutely, I'm obsessed with trying to reach our full potential."
There's a few reasons he's reached that stage, and why now is the time to go full throttle as the coach of the Tigers.
More: Keegan O'Toole could become first Missouri wrestler to win 3 national titles since J'den Cox
Drinkwitz candidly remarked last season that, during the Tigers' run that culminated in a Cotton Bowl title over Ohio State, he had never had more fun coaching football.
The will to win and the act itself go hand in hand.
"I think when you're fully engaged in what your purpose is in life, you have a lot of fun," Drinkwitz said. "You find fulfillment in doing that every day, and I think that's where I'm at right now. I feel like I'm in a really good rhythm of finding fulfillment in my job on a day to day basis, finding fulfillment in my family life."
Why now?
Well … look around.
Mizzou football is currently carrying the MU athletics department on its back.
Elsewhere in CoMo: A search for a new athletic director has hit the one-month mark with seemingly little-to-no progress; men's basketball is reeling and rebuilding from a winless SEC season; and women's basketball has a coach who seemed destined for the door two months ago, but now the program's status hangs in limbo until a new AD arrives to make, or not make, the call on her future.
Back to the gridiron, Missouri, despite its 2023 successes and near-double-digit likely NFL Draft prospects this coming April, doesn't have the feel of a team in rebuild mode.
While Drinkwitz wrapped up the Tigers' spring practices, which ended Saturday with the Black & Gold spring game on Faurot Field, the coach didn't make predictions or place floors or ceilings on MU's 2024 potential, but there was an unmistakable optimism to Wednesday's words.
Like this: "I think we've really recruited at a high level," Drinkwitz said. "I think you can see, this isn't like a program that, man, we had a big season and then next year you're rebuilding. You know, we had a big season last year, and next year the expectation and the standard is that we're shooting for that same platform. And if you look at the way our roster is built, it seems like we can stay at that sustained success for a while."
And this: "You want to utilize whatever the rules or system in place is to maximize your advantage competitively," he said. "And so we'll utilize the portal as a competitive advantage for us. We're under scholarship, so we're not at a full 85. So, we'll be active. … Every single player knows every day you've got to be better today than you were yesterday, and that's an always-compete mindset, so none of us are afraid of competition. And we'll be looking to add competition or add pieces that are available."
The Tigers, for the first time in a long time, are firing on all cylinders.
The Tigers addressed an area of need, securing a commitment from quarterback Drew Pyne out of the portal to bolster the backup role. Now, Missouri will look into the portal for potential offensive line pieces as the right guard competition remains open. Cornerback, linebacker and defensive tackle could be other areas that get a boost.
Missouri doesn't seem to have skipped a beat from 2023. Drinkwitz spent the first five minutes of his media availability praising individual players, ranging from backup defensive tackle to Jalen Marshall to offensive lineman Mitchell Walters to well more than a dozen others, for their development through spring.
More: How Toriano Pride has made case to start in Missouri football's secondary
More: Missouri basketball lands UT Martin standout Jacob Crews out of transfer portal
There appears to be a cohesion among the team in Columbia: He took his entire team to watch the St. Louis Blues play the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday night. Everybody is due to be present at MU's Pro Day on Friday, when 16 Tigers will run drills inside the Stephens Indoor Facility in Columbia.
Will it all translate to wins in 2024? Time will tell.
But Missouri, like its fifth-year head coach, appears to be in a rhythm.
"You know, you step foot here you think, 'Oh shoot, we're just gonna win.' It's hard to win. It takes a lot of things to come together," Drinkwitz said. "It takes a lot of people working together, and slowly but surely we're doing that.
"You know, we had a saying all spring, 'little by little, a little becomes a lot.' … It resonates with me because there were daily battles that we had to win that have, little by little, you start looking back and say, 'OK, it's coming together in a big way.'"
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How fulfillment has made Eli Drinkwitz 'obsessed' to reach potential
