Ben Frederickson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — When someone asked recently what would turn the volume up on Missouri football’s Week 4 trip to play Memphis at The Dome, I suggested beating Kansas State.
I suppose a recruiting shockwave that just sent ripples all the way across I-70 works pretty well, too.
Fourth-year Mizzou coach Eli Drinkwitz and his Tigers don’t face the preseason-ranked No. 16 Wildcats in a redemption game following last season’s manhandling in Manhattan until Week 3. Win that one, and it is likely a 3-0 and nationally ranked MU team will be headed to The Dome to play Memphis. Sounds fun, no?
And while Williams Nwaneri won’t be out there for that game or any other one this season, Mizzou fans finding out Monday that the Lee’s Summit North star is planning to join the Tigers in 2024 are feeling more energized about, well, everything.
It had been a pretty quiet offseason for Mizzou football. Not quiet in a bad way, necessarily. Businesslike. Drinkwitz, who carries a 17-19 record into this season, has adopted a prove-it stance for his fourth campaign. His players are following his lead.
The head coach needs to make the right call at quarterback as a tight competition between established starter Brady Cook and lead challenger Sam Horn continues. He needs his hires of an offensive coordinator and an offensive line coach to boom instead of bust. He needs his defense to be as good as advertised — it could be even better — and his offense to be better than some critics assume. So much of this is wait-and-see stuff, the unofficial sound of the offseason was a ticking clock.
Until Monday, when a decision made near Kansas City let out a roar so loud at the football complex in Columbia it could be heard here in St. Louis.
Few things can energize a program like a big recruiting win, and Monday afternoon’s pledge from Lee’s Summit North’s star defensive end was as massive as it was perfectly timed.
Need proof?
Find and watch the video of Drinkwitz celebrating the news by tackling one staff member into a couch before jumping into the arms of another. His feet — were those camouflage Crocs? — were off the ground. His biggest backers, those who have been insisting this season should not be viewed as a hot-seat situation for the coach, were floating along with him. For good reason.
The 6-foot-6, 265-pound Nwaneri is believed by scouting services to be not just the best player in the state, but the best defensive player in the nation in his 2024 class. The Oklahoma Sooners thought he was in their covered wagon, leading to one Sooners writer posting a public meltdown to his message board. The champion pedigree Georgia Bulldogs wanted a bite. Instead, Nwaneri stiff-armed them along with Oregon and Tennessee and decided — at least for now — to stay home.
Nwaneri joins Tigers receiver Luther Burden as the second five-star to pick Mizzou during Drinkwitz’s watch, and there were only four in the seasons before Drinkwitz was hired. Another could be coming, too, if Mizzou can retain its improved recruiting momentum with five-star St. Louis University High receiver Ryan Wingo after making up lots of ground in that game. Wingo has indicated he is in no rush to commit and could wait until December.
One SEC talent evaluator described Nwaneri as one of if not the most physically talented high school players in the nation and noted an athletic ceiling that continues to expand. Mizzou will have to, of course, continue to fight off the programs that will continue to recruit Nwaneri despite his verbal commitment; the Tigers try to flip recruits themselves, so no crying about that. But you have to get the pledge before anything else, and Drinkwitz and his staff securing one of this size is notable in more ways than one.
Drinkwitz’s body of work will be evaluated by Mizzou athletics director Desiree Reed-Francois after this season. Four seasons is not a small sample size. This team has no good excuse — unless injuries derail everything — to not reach a bowl game that puts some tingle in fans’ toes. But the Drinkwitz discussion, as with any coach, also must be about trajectory. Recruiting momentum or lack thereof is a big part of that. Keeping an in-state five-star from leaving the state is good for trajectory. Even better if you can make it two, in what would be a first for the program if both Nwaneri and Wingo were to commit and stay true.
Let’s not ignore the elephant in the modern college football dressing room.
Whether you love or detest the name, image and likeness era, there’s no debate that programs that can’t win recruiting battles on this new frontier are going to fall behind. Drinkwitz deserves credit for making Mizzou more aggressive on the NIL front, and he will be able to do even more when the Tigers can fully flex the powers of one of the nation’s most aggressive NIL laws once it comes online later this month.
That’s why Monday’s win was bigger than the very big Nwaneri. Some programs are wondering how their coach is going to survive in the NIL era. During a quiet offseason before a critical season, Mizzou’s coach just suggested he may thrive in it.
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