Eli Drinkwitz dismisses idea that teams ‘can afford to lose’ games in 12-team Playoff era
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Eli Drinkwitz went on the Paul Finebaum Show on Wednesday afternoon and covered a myriad of topics ahead of Mizzou’s Week 9 matchup with Alabama.
Despite some increased margin-for-error in a 12-team Playoff system, Mizzou acknowledged that his team — and everyone else — still feels immense pressure to win every regular season game.
“I think there’s a lot of pressure on everybody to be perfect,” he said. “I don’t think that this, ‘well, you can afford to lose games,’ line is true at all. I think everybody feels a lot of pressure to win every single game. Now more than ever.”
One of the reasons he feels this way is the lack of a divisional structure in every major conference.
“Without divisions, I think that’s been ramped up quite a bit,” Drinkwitz added. “At least with divisions, you could map your own success by saying, ‘we can control our [destiny] by winning our division … Now, everybody’s schedule is totally different. There’s really not a lot of cross-comparisons. And that’s all across the power-4. You look at it, this Playoff situation is going to be really interesting over the next 5 weeks.”
Here’s video of his comments:
“I don’t think this ‘you can afford to lose games’ line is true at all…”@CoachDrinkwitz gives his thoughts on the unprecedented 2024 CFB season as we hit the halfway mark: pic.twitter.com/YGT3jJJbYd
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) October 23, 2024
The loser of this weekend’s Mizzou-Alabama game will likely struggle to earn a spot in the 12-team Playoff this year. Missouri already has a loss to Texas A&M on its résumé while the Crimson Tide have already dropped games to Vanderbilt and Tennessee.
Kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday afternoon.
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Spenser is a news editor for Saturday Down South and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.
