
Getting good, young players is good. Losing good, young players is not good.
Remember when Mizzou would get a blue-chip high school recruit and we didn’t have to worry about needing to re-recruit them at the end of their freshman season? Those were the days!
Obviously that lede is more than a tad facetious. The uptick Missouri has experienced in high school recruiting under Eli Drinkwitz has been a development none of us would trade. However, the emergence of the transfer portal as a game-changing force in college football has added a bit of nuance to consider. Missouri is perennially bringing in Top 20 classes, yet has had a bit of bad luck converting some of the high-end recruits into major contributors. It seems like for every Luther Burden III, there’s at least three other players who enter the program with worlds of promise… only to hit the dusty trail one or two years later.
That feeling has been especially evident in this portal window, when Missouri has seen 5 of its Top 10 recruits in the 2024 class (according to On3) exit the program after only one season. And while the portal also serves as the great equalizer — and Drinkwitz has proven adept at mining it for impact players — we still wanted to ask: Does this trend concern you?
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Yeah, that figures. How could it not? Bringing in highly-rated players is awesome, but at some point you have to develop them. No doubt this is something Drinkwitz and his staff are keeping an eye on as they welcome the class of 2025 in January. You don’t need to give young guys snaps just because, but maybe prioritizing their immediate growth is something that would benefit everyone.
We also wanted to ask, just for the heck of it: How do you feel about the transfer portal? Do you think it works?
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About half of you are accepting of it, with the caveat that it needs to be changed to work better for everyone. Can’t say we disagree there!
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