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COLUMBIA, Mo. — Cody Schrader sat in an office inside the Missouri football facility last week in search of advice.

The walk-on running back turned MU single-season rushing record holder turned All-American is getting a shot at the next level, and he wants to make the most of it. Signed as an undrafted free agent by the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, Schrader will face something of an uphill battle in trying to land on a pro team’s roster or practice squad during training camp.

So he turned to somebody who knows a thing or two about running up hills: Brock Olivo.

The former Mizzou running back whose No. 27 jersey was retired not long after a storied, record-setting career on both offense and special teams works with the Tigers as a special teams analyst. Prized among Olivo’s infamous workouts were hill runs — first a hill by his childhood home in greater ºüÀêÊÓƵ, later a steep slope he happily discovered near the MU campus in Columbia.

Olivo and Schrader have a lot in common. They hail from the same part of the state and play the same position, setting records at the same school. Schrader, too, is well-known for his diligent workouts.

And both signed with NFL teams as undrafted free agents after their Missouri careers.

That led Schrader to stop by Olivo’s office last Wednesday afternoon.

“Coach, what did you do to get in shape for training camp?� Schrader asked his coach before the meeting.

“I said, ‘Cody, come see me,’� Olivo recalled.

Olivo played four seasons in the NFL with the Detroit Lions, landing with the team by impressing on special teams and securing a role as a flagship player for that unit and backup running back for the offense.

Schrader, who didn’t flash the upside NFL teams evidently wanted to see from a running back worthy of a draft pick, could be in line for a similar role. He seems ready for that.

“He’s on it,� Olivo said. “He’s talking about special teams, the possible positions that he could be playing in the NFL. (I’m) talking to him about the rhythm of a preseason game, what to expect as a rookie.�

It’s a strikingly odd adjustment. Schrader set Mizzou’s single-season rushing record with 1,627 yards. He was a finalist for the Doak Walker Award, which goes to the nation’s top running back each year. He won the Burlsworth Trophy, which is presented to the best player in the country to start his career as a walk-on. He finished his college career with 6,255 all-purpose yards between Missouri and Division II Truman State.

And now he has to focus on special teams?

“It’s not going to be anything new to Cody,� Olivo said.

Even while assembling a breakout final season with the Tigers, Schrader still saw plenty of action on special teams. He played 39 snaps with Mizzou’s punt coverage units this season, according to Pro Football Focus, the most of any MU player who wasn’t a lineman. Schrader covered eight punts during a Cotton Bowl victory over Ohio State.

“He’d be on a 10-play drive, rip it into the end zone for a touchdown and then come right back the next drive and line up on the punt team and run down 40 yards and cover a punt,� Olivo said. “He gets the importance of special teams, so he’s going to parlay that into an NFL career.�

Leveraging that experience and special teams reps will be important when the 49ers open training camp in July. For now, Schrader’s primary task is conditioning.

He’ll be going up against faster and stronger players than he faced during his college days. Reps will matter, particularly in the preseason games that come amid the slog of hot summer practices.

“He’s going to have to, now, be ready for preseason games,� Olivo said. “The preseason games, that’s going to be the most exhausted that these rookies have ever been because, at a certain point, they’re going to have to take all the load on offense or defense, together with special teams.

“I told Cody, ‘Hey man, you might rip a 40-yard touchdown run, and you’re going to have to line up on the ensuing kickoff. ... You better be in shape, and you better go make a play.’ �

It’s difficult, of course, for an undrafted rookie to make a roster without maximizing opportunities on the field. And that will require him to stay on the field in the first place, something he did well at Missouri.

Schrader carried the ball 276 times last season establishing himself as a workhorse back. He battled through a thigh injury that required him to spend dawn-to-dusk periods in MU’s training room for treatment. That plays to his favor as he prepares for training camp.

“I’ve seen guys in the past, as a player and a coach in the NFL, who weren’t able to take advantage of opportunities because they weren’t in shape. They couldn’t make it in preseason games,� Olivo said. “It’s the conditioning piece of it that’s going to sneak up on these guys.�

Given Schrader’s track record of taking limited opportunities and running with them — landing at Truman State as an under-recruited prospect out of Lutheran South and taking a walk-on spot with the Tigers — Olivo’s optimistic when it comes to the Mizzou standout’s chances in the NFL.

“If you let Cody Schrader into your building, all he needs is to get into it,� Olivo said. “It doesn’t matter whether he’s drafted or an undrafted free agent. You let him in your building, you’re going to have a really hard time getting him out.�

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COLUMBIA, Mo. — Add two tallies to the transfer portal column.

Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz continued his ongoing run of player acquisition success with a double commitment Thursday, bolstering his program with incoming transfers.

Linebacker Jeremiah Beasley, a freshman at Michigan, picked the Tigers out of the transfer portal. Georgia Tech defensive lineman Eddie Kelly followed suit by committing to Mizzou.Ìý

Kelly spent one season with the Yellow Jackets after playing his freshman year at South Florida. He ranked second among Georgia Tech's defensive linemen last season with 36 total tackles.Ìý

Though he was recruited as a defensive end, Kelly can also easily slot inside to a defensive tackle spot. That kind of versatility could prove valuable as MU looks to replace Darius Robinson, who was a first-round draft pick last week.

Beasley is a unique transfer portal acquisition. He picked Michigan, his home-state school, over Missouri and enrolled in the winter, dressing for bowl practices and traveling to both of the Wolverines' playoff games. But he entered the transfer portal before ever dressing for a game.

As a recruit, Beasley was tabbed a four-star prospect by most services. He posted 120 tackles during his final season of high school football in Belleville, Michigan. Beasley also played running back.ÌýÌý

Bring your Tigers football, basketball and recruiting questions, and talk to Eli Hoff in a live chat at 11 a.m. Thursday.

Transcript

Eli ±á´Ç´Ú´Ú:ÌýMorning, all! Thanks for coming by. I want to start this chat off with a couple of talking points before we get to your questions...

First, a shoutout to a loyal chatter, theMick, for writing me this week with a really interesting analysis of which college football programs produced the most NFL Draft picks and how that correlated with their finish in the football coaches poll last season. As you can quite easily see, there's definitely a relationship between NFL talent and team performance — which makes sense, right? What we were pondering was whether it's also a fair metric for evaluating coach performance. Does a team like Ole Miss placing well without exporting a ton of players to the NFL signify good coaching? Does USC not having a good season but exporting NFL talent show sub-par coaching? I think you could make the argument that this shows where some coaches excel as recruiters/developers vs tacticians. Anyway, here's a graphic theMick told me I can relay — the commentary is his. And if he has more thoughts, I'll patch them through here as we go.

Also, I want to make sure all of y'all see today's story on Mizzou athletics finances. After writing about the budget a few months ago, I got a lot of questions about spending and the financial support from campus to athletics — we've discussed that in the chat here at least a couple of times as well. Y'all raised some excellent questions that I had as well. I made sure to ask UM System President Mun Choi about this during a media scrum we had last week so that I could be crystal-clear on what his stance is. I also spent some time digging for other SEC schools' budgets to see how MIzzou compares. I think there are answers to a lot of the questions that have come up in that story. You might not agree with them, but Choi is on the record about this now. I think that's an important part of my job in this situations, so hopefully y'all find this piece insightful and important.

Now for the fun stuff — your questions!

Hotspot Bigshot:ÌýWill Missouri mbb get a viable post player or they going with what they have?

±á´Ç´Ú´Ú:ÌýI wrote about this the other day, since it's kind of the last frontier of the transfer portal as far as hoops is concerned. I get the sense that the staff is trying to make this happen and get a legit post player in. The top couple of options from early in the window (Tarris Reed, who went to UConn, and Jevon Porter, who went to Loyola Marymount) didn't pan out. And then Jordan Butler entered the portal. So a position that was already a priority isÌýreallyÌýa priority. But I could also see a scenario where they don't bring in a post player. I was talking with one of the assistant coaches last night (fun stuff from that chat will head your way soon) and he said Mizzou wants to get back to more 5-out offense. That doesn't necessarily need a true center. You could have a frontcourt of Trent Pierce and Mark Mitchell and make that work just fine. Then it's a matter of finding rebounding and rim defense on the other end of the floor.

The quality of post players in the portal is dropping too, since it's late in the cycle and a lot of players have committed. Maybe the staff doesn't want to bring in a player who they're not 100% sold on.

All that to say: There's still a search going on for a post, but I don't think it's catastrophic if they don't get one. Rolling with who's on the roster now and the two freshmen down low could wind up fitting Gates' style just fine.

¸é³Ü²õ²õ:ÌýGood morning, Eli. You recently wrote about Mizzou's MBB post position. My question, even if they don't add a post player in the portal, do you think this team, as it is currently constructed, will get back to the NCAA tournament in 2025?

Hoff:ÌýGood morning! As I kind of hinted at there, I think this team can still work without a post player from the portal. Offensively, there's an argument to be made that having 5 perimeter focused players could produce better results than a 4-out, 1-in kind of arrangement. It's not like Mark Mitchell/Trent Pierce/Jacob Crews/Aidan Shaw can't play at the rim or down low. The bigger thing will be on defense. Can somebody box out opponents' centers? Can they hold up while switching? To the latter point, a true center might not work too well with a system that wants to switch every position.

But to your question: I think this team can get back to the tournament if Mark Mitchell breaks out as an All-SEC player, Tamar Bates continues his growth and the defense improves. That's a recipe that worked in Gates' first season. It could work again. It's mostly a matter of these transfers hitting and the team staying healthy — the two things that didn't really happen last season. It's tough to tell how the transfers will translate to the SEC and this system, though. There's optimism and uncertainty at this point in the offseason.

bigron:ÌýEli, can Mizzou still acquire addn'l players from the portal even though the portal is closed?

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COLUMBIA, Mo. — With Laird Veatch’s tenure as Missouri’s athletics director starting Wednesday, university administration has set clear fiscal goals for him: boost revenue while limiting expenses.

Forecasting a continued rise in the money associated with power-conference college sports, MU administration also seems prepared to become more invested — both literally and in terms of oversight — in how Mizzou athletics handles its money.

Tangibly, that means direct institutional support from the university to the athletics department will remain in play and the UM System Board of Curators’ intercollegiate athletics committee will keep its focus on Mizzou sports’ finances.

Mun Choi, the president of the UM System, fell short of prescribing a specific benchmark for athletics department finances when speaking with reporters last week. Asked by the Post-Dispatch whether there are internal goals of finishing in the black, he said, “It’s hard to tell right now.�

“While we want to make sure that we operate as close to the black as possible,� Choi said, “we know that the future of college athletics — if you look at institutional support at all the other universities — it’s going to require more institutional support.�

Mizzou reported to the NCAA that it received $22.8 million of direct institutional support — a category of revenue that includes money given or loaned to athletics by the university — during the 2023 fiscal year, which ran from July 2022 through June 2023. That period was Desiree Reed-Francois’ last full fiscal year as the Missouri athletics director, and it doesn’t include influential, budget-impacting events like the Tigers’ 11-win football season and Cotton Bowl victory.

It does, however, show that MU athletics was more reliant on help from the university than its Southeastern Conference peers. Only Auburn took in more direct institutional support in fiscal year 2023, receiving $25 million, according to its annual financial report submitted to the NCAA.

Both Auburn’s spending and revenue are substantially higher than Mizzou’s, though, so MU’s direct institutional support registers as a higher proportion of its revenue — 16%.

Missouri was one of eight public SEC schools to receive direct institutional support. Besides it and Auburn’s eight-figure receipts, most schools received smaller amounts. Texas A&M took $12 million, South Carolina took $9.5 million, Alabama took $6.2 million, Mississippi took $5.4 million, Florida took $2.8 million and Arkansas took $1.5 million. Some schools, like Georgia and Louisiana State, reversed the dynamic by channeling revenue back toward the campus side.

MU reported a slim budget surplus of one dollar in fiscal 2023, once again spending and generating record amounts. That seemed to be a motivating factor for the Board of Curators’ decision to establish the Mizzou Intercollegiate Athletics Special Committee, which has the power to oversee the athletics department’s financial workings.

“With the statistics that we saw, we felt in filling our fiduciary duty that it was a must to step in and find out more about what was going on in the athletic department,� Bob Blitz, the oversight committee chair, said. “We’re not trying to pick coaches; we’re not trying to do those kind of things. We’re trying to make sure that the athletic department is running in a financially responsible way and doing the best they can, that they have the best methods to raise money.�

Though Mizzou stands out among some of its peers for the amount of money traveling from the university to athletics, Choi seemed fine with that dynamic.

“As you saw in the last few years, there were institutional investments that were made,� Choi said. “I see that as necessary because they are part of our university. We have about 600 student-athletes that rely on the institution for support, and they bring incredible value to the university. Because of the success of the Cotton Bowl, we expect we’re going to have 1,000 more freshmen this year that are coming to this university — partly, and maybe in large part, because of the football success.

“We need to demonstrate our commitment to athletics as an important part of our university the way we look at, let’s say, the health care system — another important part of our university.�

Choi’s comparison to MU Health Care is notable: The Board of Curators also oversees that entity, which falls under the UM System umbrella, with a health affairs committee that has been focused on finances, too.

Some of Veatch’s earliest priorities will be tied to money, including raising the funds for the $250 million renovation of Memorial Stadium, which will rely heavily on donations. Choi also has expectations for what he’ll do to the athletics department budget.

“We know that college athletics is going to require more resources, especially with all of the changes that we foresee in the future,� Choi said. “So for us to be able to be in the best position, (we need) to grow the revenues but also manage the expenses, like a business.�

One route that could go is a broad one: reallocating money to better fit the administration’s vision for Mizzou athletics.

“We are always looking at reallocations within the University of Missouri,� Choi said. “We always say that there are priorities — we need to find the resources to invest in those priorities. Just like in MizzouForward (a $1.5 billion investment in faculty and research), that project was not only new revenues but reallocations. Like any business, I’m sure that Laird’s going to take a deep look to ask, ‘Where can we reallocate so that we can achieve a championship goal?’�

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COLUMBIA, Mo. — Add another in-state recruit to Eli Drinkwitz's recruiting hot streak.

verbally committed to Mizzou on Tuesday afternoon, becoming the third 2025 prospect from Missouri to decide to stay home.

Hopkins is listed at 6-foot-6, 210 pounds. He's listed as a four-star prospect by On3 and ESPN. Those services, along with 247Sports, tab him as one of the five best recruits in the state.Ìý

He played on both sides of the ball for the Bearcats last season. As a wide receiver, he recorded 691 yards and 11 touchdowns last year. On defense, his managed nine sacks in 11 games, including three in one game.

MU now has seven prospects in its growing 2025 class, putting the program ahead of its usual pace when it comes to high school recruiting. Recruits can sign letters of intent to make their commitments official on Dec. 4.

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COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri men’s basketball might be hoping that time hasn’t passed it by.

That doesn’t mean that it’s past its prime or due for a midlife crisis. It’s about the Tigers’ transfer portal overhaul and the reality that time, it seems, is running out.

The basketball transfer portal window closes Wednesday. Everyone — including graduate transfers, the NCAA recently decided — who wants to be in must be in by that day. Portal entrants have as long as they like to pick a new program, but past May 1, the portal pool is the portal pool.

Mizzou still seems like a team that might want to take a dip into the deep end of said pool — more specifically, the part that’s roughly 7 feet deep.

Coach Dennis Gates still doesn’t have a true center in this year’s portal class, a hole that might well prove notable in an otherwise highly regarded series of offseason moves.

The Tigers have lost more centers to the portal than they’ve acquired, a 1-0 scoreline set by freshman Jordan Butler deciding to transfer after just one season in Columbia.

For now, MU has two centers on the roster, and both are incoming freshmen: Peyton Marshall and Trent Burns.

As last season showed, Gates isn’t one to avoid playing — or even starting — a freshman at center. Butler started the final 13 games of the regular season and would’ve likely started the Tigers’ Southeastern Conference tournament game against Georgia had he not hurt his ankle in practice.

But Butler started, in part, because Missouri wasn’t getting production out of its more veteran bigs, like Connor Vanover. Marshall and Burns could earn a starting spot, but appearing in the opening five right out of the gate might be less an indicator of readiness and more a sign of roster construction.

Finding a center in the transfer portal seemed like a clear-cut priority for Mizzou heading into this offseason, even with Butler still in the program’s plans.

It was a position of need. The Tigers finished last in the SEC in rebounding, allowing opponents to grab 6.1 more boards per game. The next-steepest differential in the conference was Ole Miss, at -3.5.

A center might not solve that by himself, but it could help unlock an option Missouri didn’t have very often last season. With the addition of Rob Summers — a 7-footer who played center in college — the frontcourt seemed like a spot for Gates to place his foundation.

“We still need to throw that ball to a veteran (with his) back to the basket and continue to build on that,� Gates said a couple of weeks ago.

That hasn’t panned out. Mizzou got its point guard, combo guard, tall wing and power forward in Tony Perkins, Marques Warrick, Jacob Crews and Mark Mitchell, respectively.

Mitchell, who could slot into a Kobe Brown-esque role, should help with the rebounding. As a two-year starter for Duke, Mitchell averaged 11.6 points per game and 6 rebounds. That kind of production on the boards would have led Missouri last season, which had injured guard Caleb Grill average 5.8 rebounds per game and forward Noah Carter next with 4.8.

Still, Mitchell is 6-9, 232 pounds with a 40-inch vertical. He’s plenty happy to sit in the dunker spot, be the roll man out of screens and finish at the rim — but he’s not the back-to-the-basket post player MU seemed to be seeking.

The Tigers’ two best chances at getting that type of player seem to be gone. Michigan transfer Tarris Reed Jr., who hails from ºüÀêÊÓƵ, picked UConn over his home-state school. And Pepperdine transfer Jevon Porter, the brother of Michael Porter Jr. and Jontay Porter, is heading to Loyola Marymount.

If Missouri still wants a center out of the transfer portal, it may have to cave to market forces and settle for a post player who’s not as highly rated or comes with more risk. Another option would be rolling with the duo of freshmen down low and looking to get post contributions from elsewhere.

That could give the Tigers more flexibility to switch defensive matchups — something already in play with the addition of Mitchell.

“There’s not a more versatile defender in the country than Mark and what he’s done in his ability to guard 1 through 5 and all over the court,� Duke coach Jon Scheyer said in posted to the team’s YouTube channel.

A frontcourt of Mitchell and another bouncy forward, like Aidan Shaw, or Trent Pierce and his 6-10 frame could still give Mizzou the length needed to be competitive around the rim while emphasizing mobility and speed in transition.

The possibility of needing to adjust in that way is the essence of the transfer portal. It comes as no surprise.

“You never get every single piece that you want,� Gates said. “You never get that.�

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