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ARLINGTON, Texas — On the eve of one of college football’s biggest games, Eli Drinkwitz and Ryan Day spent a lot of time talking about the bigger picture.

At the Missouri and Ohio State coaches’ joint press conference before Friday’s Cotton Bowl, the leaders of the No. 9 Tigers and No. 7 Buckeyes found themselves facing questions that had very little to do with the game that will play out at AT&T Stadium and on national television.

Instead, they broached a variety of topics, sounding off on the likes of a nightmarish intersection of windows and events for coaches, the 12-team College Football Playoff and the future of the sport.

Drinkwitz and Day agreed not to deploy a form of technology in the Cotton Bowl that would be new to college football: in-helmet communication, which is what the NFL uses to relay plays from the sideline to the field. College teams still rely on subbing in players with play calls or signaling directions from the sideline, which creates vulnerability to the sign-stealing scandal that swirled around the Michigan program this season.

“We spoke about this, had a discussion about it, and I think we both agree,” Day said. “But down the road, it makes a lot of sense. To try to manage a game without having done it all season, we felt like, it is probably something that we want to have spring practice and a preseason to work through.”

“December has got enough challenges for us to try to figure out how to communicate on the sideline,” Drinkwitz said. “And to get the communication in was something that didn’t make a lot of sense for us.”

The month of December has become a popular target for head coaches, in particular, since it combines the opening of the transfer portal, early signing day, the coaching carousel, conference championship games, bowls and postseason games — and holidays that coaches would probably like to spend with their families.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to make, first off, December work,” Day said. “December is not working.”

“I don’t think that there’s any one thing that has to be changed,” Drinkwitz said. “I think there has to be a collective group that gets together and decides that really, we have to rearrange a lot of it. We’ve talked about the 12-team playoff. There’s no way possible for us to have a 12-team playoff next year and be recruiting in an open period and have transfer portal additions and subtractions going on and preparing for a game. It’s just not possible. There’s going to have to be a reset of college football, looking back, ‘OK, this is what we’ve become now.’

“We have got to start all over and build it back out again. And it’s going to start with having to figure out the calendar. I don’t have a simple answer for you. It’s not as simple as we’ll just move signing day — that’s got consequences.”

And as far as the incoming 12-team playoff — which both Mizzou and Ohio State would have been a part of, had the change kicked in this year — Drinkwitz was quick to volley a one-liner back toward a reporter who suggested that the inclusion of more teams in the postseason would take away the pressure to win in the regular season.

“I don’t know what world you’re living in, man,” Drinkwitz said. “College football, every game is everything, and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. Everybody expects to win. The players expect to win, the fanbases expect to win, and the coaches expect to win. I don’t think you’ll sense anything really different. I think the margins, especially after what happened to a couple of teams not making the playoffs this year, yeah, there’s going to be some teams that can get in with maybe 10 or 11 wins. But there’s still going to be the ‘Which game did you lose?’ and ‘How did you perform?’ and all that different stuff that are going to be variables.”

Day agreed.

“I think the four teams that get a bye will be significant,” he said, “so I think that will be important because of the length of number of games that are going to be coming.”

Near the ceremonial coaches handshake and photo with the Cotton Bowl trophy that ended the pregame press conference, Missouri’s fourth-year coach spoke at length about the direction college football is headed after the summer realignment rush and collapse of the Pac-12 Conference.

“I don’t know where the game is going,” Drinkwitz said. “I know it’s the greatest game in the United States of America. College football is unbelievable, and it’s an opportunity for young men to get to do something that they wouldn’t get to do outside of the game of football. God has given them an incredible gift and talent to play the game at such an elite level, and I just don’t want to see it disappear.

“I do think that there’s been such a grab for the finances — the financial part of the TV stuff — that we’ve lost a little bit of why we’re doing it and what’s best for the student-athlete. I really felt like this in August… at some point, football’s got to make decisions that impact just football, OK?

“We’re never going to be able to sit in a room as an NCAA and make decisions that are positive for football and other sports — Olympic sports or track and field and all that. We don’t live in the same realm. So at some point, we’re going to have to make decisions that are just about football in order for us to have the success and sustainability that we want.”