One of the most anticipated questions of SEC media days, because it's one of the biggest questions hanging over the college football offseason and has yet to generate a definitive answer, was whether or not Bobby Petrino will call plays at Texas A&M.
To that, A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher answered, "Hopefully." Hopefully?
At one point I was half expecting for Fisher to question whether he'd even hired Petrino at all.
"No, there's a lot of things, and you're still involved with what goes on. I'm not going to get into what we're doing, how we're doing it," he said. "Again, I'm not trying to avoid anything. I just don't want to create – you create advantages and narratives out there for what goes on... He'll call a lot of – hopefully he'll call the game. We'll have suggestions on things we do, whether it's offense or defense. Every coach is always involved."
Compare that to a similar situation at Missouri. Eli Drinkwitz watched his offense struggle throughout the 2022 season and decided he wasn't the best choice to be his team's offensive coordinator and play-caller.
"We have a sign in our team room that says, embrace your role, put the team first. At the end of the season it was clear to me that we were ineffective on the offensive side of the ball, and it starts with being retrospective on what do you do as the leader of the team, as the leader of the offensive side of the ball, what are the issues," Drinkwitz said Monday.
"I wasn't giving us the best advantage that we could have offensively to be successful, and so it was my estimation that I needed to embrace my role more as the head coach and do the things that needed to be done there and turn over the play calling to somebody else."
In SEC games, Missouri finished 12th in the conference at 5.4 yards per play and 20.4 points per game.
And so Drinkwitz hired Kirby Moore, a GA at Washington as recently as 2016. Moore spent the past six seasons at Fresno State, rising to offensive coordinator in 2022 -- a season that saw the Bulldogs lead the Mountain West in scoring and yardage en route to a conference title.
Drinkwitz made it clear he'll still be heavily involved in the offense, but made it equally clear Moore will call it on game day.
"I tell him all the time, if we can just average one more touchdown a game, we're going to be in really happy at the end of the season.
"We're in that constant quest to find one more touchdown, but I have no qualms about handing it over to somebody and feel like that Kirby will do an outstanding job for us," Drinkwitz said.