Eli Drinkwitiz Learned Something New 48 Hours Before Signing Day: Random Teams Will Offer 'Crazy Numbers' To Steal Recruit

The final two days before National Signing Day are filled with nervous coaches looking to see if their sales pitch worked. A culmination of years recruiting could come down to one final visit, or a 'crazy' offer from an opposing team's collective according to Missouri's Eli Drinkwitz.

This is nothing new when it comes to collegiate recruiting, we've seen these types of scenarios play-out before. A young man is torn as to which school to pick, so he gives mixed signals to all schools recruiting him.

While money has been a factor in recruiting for decades, NIL is still surprising some of these coaches in college sports. One of those 'new' things that Eli Drinkwitz was discussing on Wednesday centered around schools offering recruits 'crazy numbers,' even if they haven't been recruiting them.

“Every single recruit asks about NIL," Eli Drinkwitz noted. "I think something I encountered in the last 48 hours that was completely new to me was that a lot of schools are now just calling within the last 48 hours of a kid’s signing and throwing out crazy numbers to and get them to sign with em. They’re utilizing NIL packages as the main motivation, which is exactly what we did not want to happen. We do not want NIL to be an inducement."

Eli Drinkwitz Wants Some Type Of NIL Uniformity

I get it. Coaches are getting frustrated with another team swooping in and offering twice as much as they're collective can. One of the main talking points in college sports over the last three years has centered around the NCAA coming up with some type of rulebook.

This is now a problem that has been before congress members numerous times over the last two years.

For Eli Drinkwitz, he's not against these players making money, but it should come from their performance on the field

"Again, until we get some sort of uniformed, I’m 100% for our student athletes earning money for the product they put on the field," Drinkwitz noted. "Again the 12-team playoff is a $1 billion dollar media opportunity, these players all deserve it. They’ve deserve and earned some piece of it. But tp find some type of uniformity to it is crucial."

Coaches Are Playing The Victim, While Playing The Game

It's a funny world we live in, with coaches having to play the game (NIL) that they so desperately want to talk about finding uniform rules. We have already passed the point of coaches trying to tell us everything that's wrong with the NCAA, now we have them falling in-line with the rest of college football.

As much as they want to find answers to the problem, they still have to play the game. While we sit around for years and wait on something to be done at the federal level, the recruiting games will continue.

Having to stave off an opposing school because they're offering more money is a tall task, since we've entered into this new era. Players are being fed numbers that don't make sense, whether it's out of high school or in the transfer portal, and there's nothing the head coach can do about it.

Until these conferences and the NCAA can agree on how to fix the problem, coaches like Eli Drinkwitz will continue to be amazed at the lengths some schools are willing to go.

Welcome to the aftermath.