Eli Drinkwitz Not Looking to Hire General Manager Now, But that Could Change

Dennis Gates and the Missouri Tigers men's basketball program hired a general manager for the first time in program history over the weekend, but don't expect Eli Drinkwitz's program to follow suit any time soon.

"Honestly, I haven’t made any of those decisions yet," Drinkwitz said of hiring a general manager in a press conference on April 8. "That would be a conversation I’d have to have later on."

Filling the role has taken off much more quickly in basketball than football, but a number of football programs already have. It's becoming a growing trend across all sports as the responsibilities of running a major college athletics program continue to expand.

Missouri does have a director of player personnel in Ryan Trichel, who takes care of the scouting and evaluating of high school prospects.

But there's a host of other duties that have been created for team building since the implementation of NIL and boom of the transfer portal. The pending NCAA vs. House settlement could bring in even more complications.

The current college football schedule is unrealistic for a staff built under a model that worked six years ago. Coaches have always had to recruit high school prospects, but now recruiting to retain your current roster is a year-round effort. Not to mention the two transfer portal windows, putting coaches and transfers through a crunched process to align with academic and athletic calendars.

Under the current calendar, the first window of the transfer portal opens in mid-December, when teams are supposed to preparing for playoff or bowl games. The work begins even earlier than that though, with the coaching staff meeting with players over the final weeks of the regular season to discuss re-negotiation of NIL deals and retention for the next season

Drinkwitz made the decision to give up play-calling ahead of the 2023 season in order to be able to devote more time to these other responsibilities.

But, in order to rearrange a staff to better fit the demands of the current college football landscape, it's difficult to avoid some change in power. In all professional leagues, the general manager is above the head coach in the hiearchy, only below the franchise's president or owner.

But, in college, the head coach is the face of the program. The head decision maker on and off the field. Drinkwitz isn't certain what a rearranging of that power structure would look like for Missouri.

"At some places, the GM’s firing the head coach — so who’s really in charge?" Drinkwitz said. "That kind of environment, if you don’t do it right, can go south quick."

Overall, Drinkwitz feels uncertain about where college athletics is headed, and what the next steps look like for his program.

"But again, it goes back to the same thing — I don’t know what the rules are," Drinkwitz said. I don’t know if that’s the structure we’re going to end up with because of the new settlement that’s in place."

Drinkwitz isn't in doubt of the possible benefit of hiring a general manager, however.

Fuller's responsibilities with Missouri basketball of strategic planning, roster constructing, alumni engagement, agent relations and NIL optimization are all areas where it would undoubtedly be helpful to have another figure in.

Especially if revenue sharing is brought in with the settlement. The hesitancy comes from having to find a new structure, and all of the changes the settlement could bring in if passed.

"If that’s the direction we go, then yeah — I think it could make a lot of sense to have a partner who could work alongside me and handle more of the business structure side of it," Drinkwitz said. "But until I know what that looks like, I just think there’s no reason to rush to do that. Not yet."

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