Missouri coach Eliah Drinkwitz said he's a "process-oriented" guy, which explains why he was sifting through the Tigers' third-down, goal-line and short-yardage situations Sunday morning.
By Sunday afternoon, the Tigers didn't have a game or opponent to prepare for because of COVID-19. MU announced it was pulling out of the Music City Bowl against No. 15 Iowa, scheduled for Wednesday, because of an uptick in positive coronavirus cases within the Tigers' program. The bowl was then canceled altogether.
The Mizzou football program is now on pause until Jan. 2 to contain the outbreak, with further testing scheduled Monday and Tuesday. That abruptly ends Mizzou's season at 5-5, Drinkwitz's first with the program.
"Our staff and players wanted to forge on," Drinkwitz said. "We were committed to trying to do everything possible. This has nothing to do with total number or scholarship numbers, anything like that. This is a local county health and doctors' decision and that we posed a public health risk if we continued to practice and move forward."
There was a rise in positive test results, Drinkwitz said, after MU's season finale at Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss, on Dec. 19. Once the Tigers returned to Columbia, program officials tested the players again the day after the game, which resulted in "several" positive test result.
The team then allowed most players to return home for the holidays. Drinkwitz said, however, that anybody who'd tested positive stayed in Columbia, in accordance with local health guidelines.
Drinkwitz said he tried to consider his players' mental well-being when allowing them to return home. He said the year had taken a toll on the team's coaches and players since workouts began in July. The Tigers also went home during their midseason off-week, leading Drinkwitz to say he didn't believe there would be heightened risk in letting them go home this month, too.
Some have criticized the decision, and Drinkwitz said that should be directed at him.
Drinkwitz said it's unlikely returning home for Christmas led to MU's current outbreak because of the virus' incubation period. Normally, it takes at least a few days after exposure for test results to produce positives.
"I don't think we could've done anything differently or weighed the option of players' mental health any differently," he said. "We chose what to do; I chose what to do. ... If allowing them to go home for Christmas ultimately cost us the ability to play in a bowl game, I'll live with that choice."
The Tigers began to show positives once they'd reconvened for bowl prep Friday. Drinkwitz said the team didn't practice Friday because the program wanted to limit exposure and risk by testing them first. Mizzou went through another round of testing Saturday as part of that process.
That's when school officials knew there could be a virus-related problem, Drinkwitz said. After meetings and practice Saturday, the coach said, more positive results arose. Drinkwitz said the Tigers hadn't shown double-digit case totals all season until that point, which ultimately prompted the decision to pull out of the bowl.
"For us to try to travel this team to Nashville would put the public health at risk," Drinkwitz said. "That's really where the decision-making lied. I appreciate the fact that there's a chain of command and there's a separation."
Drinkwitz said that, had the same number of positive cases popped up this past summer, the team would've paused its activities then, too. The Tigers had done relatively well this season in terms of COVID-19 numbers, Drinkwitz said.
Once the scope of the outbreak and contact tracing are assessed, Drinkwitz said, players will be allowed to go home. He said most of the players and staff members who've recently tested positive are experiencing various degrees of mild symptoms. At least four are asymptomatic, Drinkwitz said.
"If there was an easy way out of this predicament for the virus, I think the country would've already handled that," Drinkwitz said. "For us to be belittled or beleaguered on social media, or players to be challenged because they went home for Christmas, is unfair."
It's the first time this season Mizzou has had a game postponed because of COVID-19. But the outlook for playing the bowl game was questionable last week, when Iowa paused its own football activities for five days because of an increase in cases. But the Hawkeyes had returned to practice by Saturday.
MU is the third SEC team to drop out of a bowl because of COVID-19 issues. Tennessee and South Carolina were the first. The Vols were replaced by Army in the Liberty Bowl; the Gamecocks dropped out of the Gasparilla Bowl.
Drinkwitz said he'll use the next few days to decompress and reflect on the season. But he's already back to building his program, calling recruits and re-assessing his roster.
"There were some other teams that were given ... we earned a bowl trip," Drinkwitz said. "For us to earn it and not be able to fulfill that was disappointing. But I tried to refocus our team on what we have accomplished this year."
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