You’d have to imagine Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz was a long-shot to be a main character at this week’s SEC spring meetings given the star power on hand, but he sure put himself in pole position on Tuesday with a rather bizarre name, image and likeness rant.

All of it could’ve been avoided with minimal prep for a question about gambling that every coach should expect over the coming months.

To get the full brain-breaking experience here I’m just going to walk through this the way it came onto my radar, which was naturally through a series of tweets.

This was the first one to make the rounds.

Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz says college players, thru NIL, are making more money than his brother-in-law, who is a pediatrician. “He saves lives.”

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) May 30, 2023

A bad take, to be sure, but not an unfamiliar one. Millionaire college coaches complaining about players earning money for their services is something that pops up at least once a month. In this case, there was definitely some context missing, as tends to happen when reporters are transcribing in real time.

Drinkwitz saw his quip trending and immediately tried to handle the situation by sharing his full quote and the question that prompted it, which had nothing to do with NIL. It was instead focused on gambling among college players.

If you’re wondering what those topics have to do with each other, it’s not entirely clear Drinkwitz knows, either:

“Y’all really are trying to get me in trouble here. Uhm…Deion Sanders had a really good quote the other day talking about young men are joining a business, but we want to treat them like kids. We’re giving guys 18, 19, 22-year-olds life-changing money. People are making more money in NIL than my brother-in-law, who is a pediatrician, who saves lives and we kind of do it cavalier and we think there’s not going to be any side effect, there’s not going to be any issues. There’s information out there, there’s bad actors always trying to make a dollar… I think it’s going to become one of the key issues that we face in our locker rooms. I think it’s more prevalent because there’s more money involved. These young men are getting a lot of money that is a lot right now, other than trying to hand out advice and provide some parameters to it…you know, with this NIL situation we’ve created our own problems in college sports.”

I’ve read this full exchange at least a dozen times now and come away with a different interpretation after every single one. Then I’m reminded Drinkwitz boosted this comment to defend himself and I’m back at square one.

Perhaps the best thing to do here is go line-by-line here and see where we end up.

“Y’all really are trying to get me in trouble here. Uhm…Deion Sanders had a really good quote the other day talking about young men are joining a business, but we want to treat them like kids.”

When a coach begins a response with “y’all really are trying to get me in trouble here,”more often than not it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you then immediately invoke Colorado coach Deion Sanders, it’s essentially a guarantee.

“We’re giving guys 18, 19, 22- year-olds life-changing money.”

No one is giving anything. Players earned this money. You are paying market value for their services, but go on.

“People are making more money in NIL than my brother-in-law, who is a pediatrician, who saves lives and we kind of do it cavalier and we think there’s not going to be any side effect, there’s not going to be any issues.”

If only these players attended some sort of higher learning institution that could teach them how to secure their wealth.

The only response when a coach offers this sentiment is to ask what, if anything, these leaders are doing to help educate players on the side effects they are so worried about. And, not for nothing, but a pediatrician has a much higher lifetime earning potential than a football player who only has a few years to maximize his value.

“There’s information out there, there’s bad actors always trying to make a dollar… I think it’s going to become one of the key issues that we face in our locker rooms. I think it’s more prevalent because there’s more money involved.”

I swear I totally forgot all of this started with a gambling question.

Ok, sure, there are bad actors out there trying to make a buck with inside information — but the biggest example so far involved college coaches, not players. I’m not sure what NIL has to do with that. In fact, it’s the reminder that we’re talking about gambling that has me scratching my head here because, and I cannot emphasize this enough, sports wagering is currently illegal in Missouri.

The Tigers will play just two games this season in states where gambling is legal. But even then it is still strictly against NCAA rules. Anyone who does try to bet on sports using apps like FanDuel and DraftKings will be caught rather quickly. Drinkwitz could’ve avoided this faux pas by simply stating those three simple facts.

“These young men are getting a lot of money that is a lot right now, other than trying to hand out advice and provide some parameters to it…you know, with this NIL situation we’ve created our own problems in college sports.”

It always amazes me when this contempt-filled concern comes from the same coaches who routinely tout the values, culture and integrity in their locker room — as if they are mutually exclusive.

The most generous reading of Drinkwitz’s comments as whole is that of a coach who badly wanted to shoehorn Deion Sanders’ quip somewhere into his press conference and became so focused on it that he lost the plot entirely.

Then again, creating a media cycle out of the most mundane question he’ll get all offseason is an art unto itself. Missouri’s coach just managed to paint a masterpiece.