Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz stood atop one of the brick walls that surround the field at Jordan-Hare Stadium, celebrating with the Tigers' fans who were in the northwest corner of the end zone following the 23-17 double-overtime victory over Auburn on Saturday night.
It wasn't precisely a rare show of emotion, but you could tell that the victory meant more to Drinkwitz than a typical SEC road win would. On Wednesday night, during his weekly talk show appearance, the head coach explained why he was so emotional after the game.
"It wasn't just about me," Drinkwitz said on his "Tiger Talk" radio show. "There's a lot of guys on our staff who were told they didn't coach well enough to stay at Auburn.
"For us to go back in there and find a way to deliver a heartbreaker like that was special for a lot of people."
Drinkwitz was once a quality control coach for Auburn, serving on the same staff as Gene Chizik and Gus Malzahn, who helped the Tigers win the 2010 national title. And, if you look at his current coaching staff in Columbia, you will notice some familiar names that once roamed the home sidelines in Jordan-Hare.
Curtis Luper, Al Pogue, Erik Link, Ryan Russell, and Casey Woods, all names familiar to Auburn fans, are on his staff, as is Cally Chizik, the son of Gene, who is a defensive graduate assistant.
"All those people were told, 'You can't coach here anymore,'" Drinkwitz said on "Tiger Talk." "It's always good to ride back into town. It's like the 'Magnificent Seven' — 'Nobody throws me my own guns and tells me to leave,' so we got to ride back in."
But there was even more motivation for Drinkwitz, who in 2022 saw his team miss a chip-shot field goal at the end of regulation that would have won it and then fumbled into the end zone in overtime to give Auburn the win.
"That might've been the most deflating defeat I've ever experienced at any level, just because the history of that place and that game being snatched from us twice," Drinkwitz said. "So for us to find a way at the end to finally get over that hump (this past Saturday) was exciting."