The Auburn Tigers' worst-case scenario College Football coaching carousel outcome is officially off the table.
On Thanksgiving Day, the Missouri Tigers extended the contract of head coach Eli Drinkwitz, who took over the team in December 2019. Per ESPN's Pete Thamel's sources, "there’s an increase in salary for Drinkwitz to an average of more than $10.7 million over the deal and an increased commitment to staff and salary pool." Drinkwitz is 45-28 in his six seasons in CoMo.
Good for Mizzou. They weren't going to replace him with anyone better. Missouri needed to give him this extension, even it may come off as aggressive.
The real winner of Eli Drinkwitz's extension with Mizzou is Auburn
Mizzou may have resigned themselves to topping out at eight to nine wins, hoping to make the College Football Playoff in a down year. That's okay for what the expectations are in Columbia, but that's obviously not acceptable everywhere.
One program that cannot handle that right now is the Auburn Tigers. Five years after firing Gus Malzahn, AU is still trying to figure out its identity. Two gambles on dice rolls like Bryan Harsin, who didn't seem like a gamble until he didn't reach out to local high school coaches in Alabama and actually do his job, and Hugh Freeze, who some were skeptical of from the start and made those cynics look like geniuses.
Hiring Drinkwitz, who coached with Malzahn on the 2010 championship staff on the Plains, would've been like resetting the whole timeline. At least with Harsin and Freeze, the team was being aggressive. Harsin was an up-and-coming program builder, while Freeze had beaten Nick Saban before. Ultimately, not enough diligence was done in those searches. Character issues were glaring by the end of both of their tenures.
There was a clear reason why those hires were made at least. Auburn thought they were making progress.
If the team fails with Jon Sumrall at the helm, which is looking increasingly likely as the Tulane Green Wave wind down their season, at least they went for it. They would've risked it to get the biscuit. Hiring Drink would've been too safe for a fanbase that would rather live dangerously if it means beating the Alabama Crimson Tide and Georgia Bulldogs regularly.