Eli Drinkwitz: "Any team in the SEC that finishes with 10 wins on their season should be in the Playoff"

Missouri squeaked by Oklahoma on Saturday, turning a 23-16 deficit with two minutes remaining into a 30-23 regulation win thanks to a deft 8-play, 75-yard touchdown drive in 57 seconds and a stunning scoop-and-score of a Jackson Arnold fumble at his own 17-yard line.

After the win, Mizzou head coach Eli Drinkwitz quickly moved on to the bigger picture.

Keep in mind, Missouri came into the game ranked 24th in the College Football Playoff committee's initial rankings. The Tigers weren't the first team out, or the second, or the third. The committee's 12th team out had just scored a last-second home win over a .500 team, and their head coach was talking Playoff afterward. 

In an appearance on SiriusXM on Monday, Drink doubled down on his take that Missouri is in the thick of the CFP hunt. 

"Any team in the SEC that finishes with 10 wins on their season should be in the Playoff. I don't think there's really any doubt in my mind about that," he said. "I don't know how many are going to get there, because there's a lot of games left to be played. It feels like every game we play in the SEC is a Playoff game. There was comment by a couple of coaches in our group chat about the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma... and some of these other conferences added Group of 5 schools. So when you talk about strength of conference, top to bottom, when you add OU and Texas to our league and Vandy as a bowl team, I don't think there's another conference that can even touch us."

Okay, so a few things. Let's break this apart piece by piece.

"There was comment by a couple of coaches in our group chat..." Well, if an SEC coach said it, it must be true.

"...the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma... and some of these other conferences added Group of 5 schools."

"Group of 5 schools" BYU and SMU are a combined 17-1, the only loss being to one another. Oklahoma is 1-5 in SEC play, and needed a borderline miracle to get the one, against 1-5 Auburn. This is the worst OU team of this century; just ask OU fans. And they led Missouri, in Columbia, with two minutes to play. What are we talking about here?

Anyway, let's take Drink at his word. Let's say a 10 wins is the minimum barrier to entry for an SEC team to reach the College Football Playoff. How many teams can currently clear that bar?

-- Alabama (10-2, 6-2 SEC): Ranked win over Georgia and three teams currently ranked between Nos. 21-24; road losses to Vanderbilt, Tennessee

-- Georgia (10-2, 6-2 SEC): Ranked wins over Texas, Tennessee; road losses to Alabama, Ole Miss

-- Missouri (10-2, 6-2 SEC): One win over a currently ranked team (South Carolina, and would they even remain ranked at that point?); blowout losses to A&M and Alabama

-- Ole Miss (10-2, 6-2 SEC): Ranked win over Georgia, South Carolina(?); losses to Kentucky, LSU

-- Tennessee (10-2, 6-2 SEC): Ranked win over Alabama; road losses to Arkansas, Georgia

-- Texas (10-2, 6-2 SEC): Zero wins over currently ranked teams; losses to Georgia and Texas A&M

-- Texas A&M (10-2, 7-1 SEC): Ranked wins over Missouri, LSU, Texas; losses to Notre Dame, South Carolina

That's seven teams. One of those seven gets in automatically by winning the SEC Championship -- Texas A&M vs. Alabama would be the matchup, according to this site -- which means the SEC would gobble up six of the seven at-large selections, according to the SEC.

This, of course, not only means the ACC and Big 12 are 1-bid leagues, it also means that a potentially 11-1 Notre Dame with a road win over an SEC finalist and a 12-1 Oregon who was No. 1 in the country before hypothetically losing to No. 2 Ohio State at a neutral site are then fighting for one spot. 

In short, that's not going to happen. But credit to Drink for laying the ground work to complain when his team and other SEC squads are inevitably left out.

Remember, the 12-team format with five auto-bids for conference champions is only in place for this season and next. Anything is on the table for 2026 and beyond -- both in terms of number of bids (14 seems most likely) and how those bids are awarded are still up in the air, so laying the groundwork for supposed unfair treatment is important public-relations work for a conference who earnestly believes relevant college football begins in Columbia, S.C., and ends in Austin, Texas. 

Getting as many teams in the 2024 CFP is the immediate goal for the SEC, but the ultimate goal is getting as many teams possible in every College Football Playoff.