2024 Missouri Tigers Guide to What's New in College Football

Eli Drinkwitz turned the program around, only to have college football change everything from playoff expansion to being in the same conference with Oklahoma and Texas again.

Jul 16, 2024; Dallas, TX, USA; Missouri head coach Eliah Drinkwitz speaking at Omni Dallas Hotel. / Brett Patzke-USA TODAY Sports

How's this for an for an unsettled feeling: Yes, the Missouri Tigers will face six opponents this season with new head coaches, something that almost always works to the advantage of the established teams. But one of them will be in the season opener. What's Murray State going to bring to the table?

Eli Drinkwitz and the Tigers probably have a decent idea, as it's not like Jody Wright suddenly arrived on a spaceship or something. His numerous coaching stops as an assistant included Southeastern Conference foes Alabama, Mississippi State and South Carolina, plus he worked for a pair of NFL teams (Browns and Giants). So there's bound to be some surprises, especially since the Racers have more than 60 new players on the roster, but probably not a lot of uncertainly.

Meanwhile, with Missouri's first half of the schedule not nearly as challenging as the stretch run, the Tigers will have an excellent change to build up some momentum. After Murray State it'll face, in order, Buffalo, Boston College, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M and Massachusetts. Mizzou then plays Auburn, Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Mississippi State and Arkansas. Who knows what some of those teams might look like in October and November? Key teams not on the schedule include Georgia, Texas, Ole Miss and LSU.

"I think the first part of the season is about eliminating bad football," Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said during Sunday's press confernce. "It's about seeing the issues on tape and figuring out how to win football games and then slowly get those issues off tape, and then figuring out the identity of your team and playing to those strengths; and until you play in games, you're not always going to know.

"I think we're battle ready. We've tackled live more than we ever have in any camp. We've got more practice reps this camp than we've had in the previous three seasons. We put in more situational football time we have in any previous three seasons. But it's about 11 guys putting it together against an opponent who's got a say in the outcome too. And so that's going to be a challenge, and I don't really have any preconceived notions on what it's going to look like until we do it."

Perhaps we should all go into the 2024-25 season with the same attitude, because the only certainly is that it'll be unlike any we've ever seen before. There's no Nick Saban, no SEC East and West, and Missouri could have an excellent chance to make the new 12-team College Football Playoff. Welcome to the longest season in college football history, starting earlier and ending later, with plenty to fill in between. Here's a primer to get you through the changes minus all the player movement through the transfer portal:

Missouri Tigers

• The biggest change with the Tigers may simply be the expectation level. Mizzou was No. 11 in the preseason AP Top 25, its highest ranking to start a season since 2008.
• Corey Batoon is the new defensive coordinator after three years at South Alabama, and previously at Hawaii.
• Missouri lost six players in the NFL draft, with Darius Robinson selected in the first round. It also lost fan favorite and team leader Cody Schrader.
• The Tigers didn't lose a lot in the transfer portal, but there was a shakeup behind starting quarterback Brady Cook, with Gabarri Johnson heading to Oregon State, and Jake Garcia going to East Carolina. Insert Drew Pyne from Arizona State as the primary backup.
• Heading the depth chart is Luther Burden, who might be as good as any wide receiver in the nation. He's a first-team selection on the Sports Illustrated 2024 College Football Preseason All-American List
• With the unbalanced schedule, Nick Saban said that Missouri Has "Easiest Path" to SEC Championship Game and he might be right. That's not anything against the Tigers, more a reflection of how tough the conference is after adding Oklahoma and Texas.

Re-alignment

• SEC: Added Texas and Oklahoma.
• Big Ten: The 18-team league added Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington.
• Big 12: The 16-team league now includes Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
• ACC: The league goes coast-to-coast after adding Cal and Stanford, along with SMU.
• Pac-12: All that’s left are Oregon State and Washington State.
• Army has joined the American Athletic Conference. However, the Army-Navy game will remain a non-conference game.

No more divisions

The one exception is the Sun Belt, which still has an East and West Division. Meanwhile, the SEC recently announced the following tiebreakers:
1. Head-to-head competition among the tied teams.
2.    Record versus all common conference opponents among the tied teams.
3.    Record against highest-placed common conference opponent in the conference standings, and proceeding through the conference standings among the tied teams.
4.    Cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents among the tied teams.
5.    Capped relative total scoring margin versus all conference opponents among the tied teams.
6.    Random draw of the tied teams.

Television

• The SEC game of the week is no longer on CBS, those games will now be seen on ESPN and ABC.
• The Big Ten will have three national windows with a game on Fox at 11 a.m. CT), CBS at 2:30 p.m., and NBC for a prime time game.
• Fox is breaking the unwritten rule of leaving high school football along on Friday nights and will broadcast a national game.
• The remaining teams in the Pac-12 have a broadcast deal with The CW, and the Mountain West will have games on truTV.

Saban beiung on College GameDay is great for fans in gneral in that everyhone else gets to hear many of the stories he's been telling in Tuscaloosa since 2007. Another major plus for fans is that kickoff times for most games will be announced well in advance, unlike previous seasons.

Rule changes

• The two-minute warning has been added to college football, during the second and fourth quarters, just like in the NFL.
• Teams have the option to use coach-to-player communications through the helmet to one player on the field. That player will be identified by having a green dot on the back midline of the player's helmet. The communication will be cut off when the play clock reaches 15 seconds or at the snap, whichever comes first.
• Coaches will be allowed to conduct broadcast TV interviews at the end of the first and third quarters of games.
• Video tablets will be allowed on the sideline. Video may include coach's sideline, coach's end zone, and a program feed per play from the current game only and may also display "game circumstances," including down / distance, time, quarter, play-number and score. A team may have up to 18 standard tablets active,
• Horse-collar tackles that occur within the tackle box will be penalized as a 15-yard personal foul penalty. Previously, a horse-collar tackle within the tackle box is not a foul.

Also, the limit on the number of coaches who can do hands-on, on-field coaching during practice and games has been lifted. Previously, only the 10 assistant coaches were allowed (analysts, etc, were banned).

College Football Playoff

• The playoff is expanding from four to 12 teams.
• First round games will be Dec. 20-21 on college campuses. The quarterfinals will be at the Fiesta, Peach, Rose and Sugar Bowls on Dec. 31-Jan. 1. The semifinals will be at the Orange and Cotton Bowls on Jan. 9-10. The National Championship Game is set for Jan. 20 in Atlanta.  
• The first CFP rankings will be revealed on Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN. The subsequent rankings will be announced on every Tuesday through the Dec. 3, with the selection show set for Sunday, Dec. 8, the day after the final conference championship games are played.

The selection committee members are: 
Chris Ault (former head coach and athletics director, University of Nevada)
Chet Gladchuk (athletics director, U.S. Naval Academy)
Jim Grobe (former head coach, Ohio University, Wake Forest and Baylor)
Warde Manuel (chair) (athletics director, University of Michigan)
Randall McDaniel (College and Pro Football Hall of Fame member and former All-American offensive lineman, Arizona State University)
Gary Pinkel (former head coach, University of Toledo and University of Missouri)
Mack Rhoades (athletics director, Baylor University)
Mike Riley (former college head coach, Oregon State and Nebraska, as well as head coach in the NFL, CFL, WLAF, AAF and USFL; played collegiately at Alabama 1971-74)
David Sayler (athletics director, Miami University, OH)
Will Shields (College and Pro Football Hall of Fame member and former All-American offensive lineman, University of Nebraska)
Kelly Whiteside (professor in Sports Media and Journalism, Montclair State University; longtime sportswriter, USA Today, Sports Illustrated and Newsday)
Carla Williams (athletics director, University of Virginia)
Hunter Yurachek (athletics director, University of Arkansas).

See Also: Multiple Starters Revealed in Missouri's Week 1 Depth Chart