Purdue Football Finds Their Rebel, Hires Barry Odom

Barry Odom is officially the next head coach of Purdue Football. It’s been a week since Ryan Walters was fired and there is more coming out from various sources that this was likely done a while ago, at least in principle. It’s a mix of knowing how Bobinski operates and some conjecture, but the way the game is played in the modern college football age, you have to always have possible searches running in parallel. This doesn’t happen over the course of a few days. Bobinski acknowledged as much when he met with the media last Monday, saying that as an AD you always need to be planning for alternatives. Maybe you don’t need them, but if and when you do need them, it’s obviously far better to be prepared and have the wheels in motion.

There used to be a way of thinking that it was “disrespectful” to a current coach to talk about a job he still has. While that’s true on the surface and no coach will openly talk about possible or rumored jobs, plenty of communication goes on behind the scenes. Every coach has representatives, whether they’re an agent, family member, accountant, advisor, etc. ADs can talk to those reps and backchannel through to a coach to gauge whether if this role were to open, might your guy have interest? It might feel squirrely to you, but it’s just the way the game is played. There’s way too much money at stake and too little time to waste. Signing day was a mere four days after the regular season ended and the transfer portal opens Monday, the first business day after the conference title games. (As an aside, this is patently dumb. The season isn’t near over yet. No other organized leagues do this. Imagine if NBA players could become free agents right after the regular season ended but before the playoffs began. It makes no sense.)

In the years since the Brohm hiring, it’s become clear that Bobinski had Brohm lined up from the very beginning and likely had an agreement in principle many weeks before that season even ended. Then it looks like it came together super quickly. But in reality, it can’t be that quick. Further, the thinking by many is that Bobinski had Joe Moorehead lined up to be the fallback if Brohm didn’t come through. I don’t know if that’s true, but it doesn’t strike me as hard to believe. 

Walters caught many of us by surprise. There still is less clarity on how that went down. But most versions I’ve heard is that Walters really did blow Bobinski away when he interviewed. If I’m reading the tea leaves, that one feels more like maybe Bobinski’s top choice fell through and so he quickly pivoted to a guy he really liked and could nail down. 

Which brings us to this hire. Given this track record, we’ve come to believe Barry Odom was lined up at least tentatively at least a few weeks before the season ended. In fact, BS got some very legitimate-seeming tips that this was a done deal long before it was public, but we’re really more about analysis and aren’t reporters, so we left the attempts at newsbreaking to other outfits. 

Now, onto what this hire means…

Barry Odom wasn’t a top choice from any of us. Nobody denied that he did a great job – truly – at UNLV, but I think many people have been thinking about him washing out at Mizzou (his alma mater) and perhaps for some of us, remembering how Jeff Brohm beat him like a rented mule on his own field in 2017. 

But when you dig into things, you realize a few things. One, Odom was a student of Gary Pinkel, a really good coach who Odom played for as Mizzou. When Pinkel retired suddenly due to health concerns, Odom got the head gig with no prior HC experience at the age of 38. Huh, sounds familiar, doesn’t it? 

The difference was Odom wasn’t completely unprepared and managed to get to a few bowls and really had only one bad season, his first when he went 4-8 (since vacated due to violations at Missouri). But after that he went 7-6, 8-5 and 6-6 and since Missouri fancies themselves a legit SEC team, they decided it was time to move on. It actually reminds me a bit of Danny Hope. A boisterous, high-energy guy who leads with emotion and whose players love him, but who might lack a bit in the X’s and O’s. At least at the time. 

Unlike Hope, Odom has had some good coordinators along the way and if Hope had more money for better coordinators, who knows what might have come of his tenure. 

Odom went back to work as a DC, working under the Pitt man at Arkansas before getting another chance to be a head coach at UNLV. And you probably know the rest – a 9-win season last year and a 10-2 regular season in 2024 and an appearance in the Mountain West title game. He has all the markings of a guy who is figuring out what being a head man is all about and he’s put in his time to earn his way back to a bigger job. UNLV was a program with a long history of being essentially irrelevant in football and he quickly reversed that. I don’t think any of us are expecting a similar immediate turnaround in West Lafayette, but I can tell you that I am confident that he won’t look utterly befuddled at the game being played in front of him and will know how to assemble a staff. The bar has been lowered at Purdue thanks to Ryan Walters and given the fan support we saw this year for this mess of a season, I would think merely looking competent and dare I say disciplined in 2025 will go a long way to getting fans to stay in Ross-Ade. 

What will he be paid?

Nothing has yet really broken on what he’ll be paid, but I’ll estimate it at around $6M/season for five years. He was making $1.8M at UNLV and Walters was making $4M at Purdue as an unproven HC. Bobinski made it clear money would not be an issue and Purdue is making good on that. So I’ll put Odom at $6M and assume an assistant budget not too far off of the $11M that IU committed to Cignetti. 

The Walters-Odom connection…

I’ve seen it noted a few places that Odom gave Walters his first real DC shot at Mizzou and now Odom is taking over for Walters. I don’t know if the implication by some is that this is weird or Odom shouldn’t be doing this but I can tell you that as you always hear, the coaching profession is a fraternity. These guys back each other up and you always see this when a recently fired coach lands a nice fallback coordinator/analyst gig. I don’t know this for sure, obviously, but I’ll bet you that Odom and Walters are still in touch and that Walters would want his former boss to advance in his own career. It affects Walters not one bit so why wouldn’t he be happy for his friend? 

What to expect…

So what should we expect? Odom is known as a defensive coach and he has been a DC. That said, this is not similar to the Walters hire because Odom has been a head coach, as outlined above, and he won’t be calling defenses (or offenses) as the HC. He has not been afraid of making bold OC hires and allowing creative offenses to be put into place, so you don’t need to worry that he’s so defensive-minded that he’ll somehow hinder Purdue becoming a successful offensive program again. I know we all like offense and know that’s how Purdue has been successful. But remember that Brohm’s teams, while successful, frequently had a tough time slowing anyone down. Look no further than the 2018 game against Odom’s Missouri squad when David Blough threw for over 500 yards and Purdue lost 40-37. 

Odom has already navigated NIL nonsense, with his QB bolting from this year’s Rebels team after a 3-0 start. Rather than coming apart as that kid no doubt expected they would, Odom guided UNLV to 7-2 the rest of the regular season. Damn good. 

The ceiling and the floor…

I think the upside potential here is he’s a steady hand who builds this program back up and puts them back into contention for 8-9 win seasons. Not all the time, but what Purdue fan expects that all of the time?

The floor in my mind is that you at least have a competent head man who knows what to do when things go awry, has plans to back up plans and has a network of coaches out there. Hell, if he can still call up Coach Pinkel for advice, that’s a nice resource. 

The bottom line…

While not the flashiest hire, when you analyze who was out there and hear the things people didn’t like about some of the candidates with regard to a fit at Purdue (e.g., Helton was weird in his interview last time, Chadwell apparently has some personality challenges, etc.), you may begin to warm to the idea of a steady hand who has recently taken a moribound football program and raised it to heights it surely didn’t even expect when hiring him. 

We don’t fault you if you’re not fully convinced yet, either. And after the last hire, you’re within your rights to be a little edgy. But there are enough positives to go into this one with optimism and the belief that this absolutely could work out very well.