Eli Drinkwitz is coming off his first loss of the season, with Mizzou falling at home to Alabama last Saturday.
The Mizzou head coach is focused on getting his 16th-ranked Tigers back on their feet for a Week 8 showdown at Auburn this Saturday night (7:45 p.m. ET, SEC Network), so there’s no time to look back on what happened against the Crimson Tide. Drinkwitz met with reporters on Tuesday afternoon to talk about Auburn and address something else that’s getting in his way right now — the rumors that are circulating about his interest in taking the vacant head coaching job at Penn State.
James Franklin was fired by Penn State on Sunday afternoon, and with the former Vanderbilt head coach out of the way now in State College, there are many coaches being linked to the high-profile job. Drinkwitz is one of them, and he had a lot to say about that on Tuesday.
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Drinkwitz refuted those rumors tying him to Penn State, just as he refuted the rumors about offensive coordinator Kirby Moore interviewing for the head coaching job at Arkansas.
“I got problems of my own. I think the whole issue right now is the noise that’s associated with people’s programs,” Eli Drinkwitz said. “There’s no such thing as journalistic integrity on social media. There’s just wild, outlandish reporting. As a team, as a coach, we got to ignore the noise and focus on the things we can control, which is winning and losing football games. So, how do I block it out? I ignore it.”
Here are Drinkwitz’s full comments on the rumors about him and his offensive coordinator:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
