Penn State fans hungry for the type of culture Eli Drinkwitz has built at Mizzou

Curt Cignetti and Matt Rhule immediately emerged as the two most obvious candidates to replace James Franklin in Happy Valley, but a coaching search is hardly ever that simple. Cignetti has since been wiped off the board by an 8-year extension to stay put in Bloomington, and Rhule spent Week 8 losing to Minnesota 24-6. So, it could be worth looking elsewhere for Penn State’s next head coach. 

Maybe the place to look is the SEC, the same league that Franklin came from, and to another head coach who is winning at a non-traditional power. While it’s not quite as difficult as posting nine-win seasons at Vanderbilt was when Franklin did it, Eli Drinkwitz’s back-to-back double-digit win seasons at Missouri are relatively unprecedented. 

Drinkwitz has Tigers fans thinking College Football Playoff this season, and the energy from the fans who made the trip to Jordan-Hare Stadium after Missouri came back to beat Auburn in overtime, 23-17, on Saturday is what every program is hoping to cultivate. 

It could be the perfect time for Drinkwitz to jump ship

The early adopters in the NIL and transfer portal era prospered, and Missouri was one of them. Drinkwitz didn’t spend a year or two clutching his pearls and extolling the virtues of amateurism. Instead, he quickly built a robust NIL program at Missouri, embraced the portal, and the state legislature even passed laws to allow in-state recruits to be paid for NIL deals while still in high school, the type of savvy move that subtly shifted the balance of power in recent years. 

However, with the introduction of revenue-sharing and the proof of concept of portal programs like Missouri, Ole Miss, and plenty of others, that advantage is going away. Every head coach is adopting similar philosophies, or falling by the wayside like Dabo Swinney at Clemson, so it stands to reason that his success at Missouri won’t be sustainable. 

That’s not to say that Drinkwitz isn’t a good coach. It’s just to say that Missouri is not a traditional powerhouse program, and with so much money in the SEC, likely, the programs that were left behind at the start of this new era will catch up quickly, if they haven’t already. 

In the Big Ten, there isn’t quite so much competition at the top of the conference, and Penn State is firmly positioned to be one of those top teams. Drinkwitz is the type of coach who has proven he can do more with less at Missouri. Now with Penn State and Florida already open, and Auburn expected to fire Hugh Freeze in the coming weeks, he has the perfect chance to see what he can do with more. 

Drinkwitz is my favorite candidate for the job, assuming that Jeff Brohm isn’t ever going to leave Louisville. He’s proven more than Rhule, who hasn’t beaten a ranked team since 2016.