Rivals Q&A: Missouri coach Barry Odom
Barry Odom is in his first full season as Missouri’s head football coach. He was promoted from defensive coordinator replace Gary Pinkel upon Pinkel’s retirement in December of 2015. Odom recently had an in-depth conversation with Rivals.com that touched on his career, his recruiting outlook and his take on both an early signing day and the possibility of renewing a series with rival Kansas down the road.
Below is an excerpt from the full interview. The interview in its entirety can be found as part of Rivals.com’s Commitment Issues Podcast.
Rivals: I’ve been interested in your background at Missouri. Obviously, you were pretty much bred there. You’ve been around Missouri athletics for a long, long time. The way you got the head-coaching job was a little unique, though. When Gary announced his retirement in the middle of last season, did you even know you were going to be a candidate that quickly or did it all take you off guard?
Barry Odom: When we found out Coach was retiring, we still had games left in the season. We still had three games left. My focus at that time was to try to do everything I could to continue to get our defense to play well. We wanted to also do everything we could to get those seniors to a bowl game, but we came up short in that. The day before our last game – we played Arkansas in Game 12 last year – our director of athletics called and said, “I want you to interview for the job and I want you to interview on Sunday.”
I’ve been ready for the last couple of years because I knew I was getting close to being able to interview for a head-coaching job, so I knew what the plan for a program would be. With this job, I knew that when I walked into the interview room that I was going to know more about this place than anybody they could bring in there. I didn’t think another thing about it until the game was over. We played Arkansas on a Friday, so I spent time Saturday getting ready for those guys on Sunday.
It happened pretty quickly from there. I interviewed at a couple different institutions as well during that time because you never really know how the timing is going to work out. Then, they had a second round of interviews [at Missouri]. I went through those and found out a couple days later.
Rivals: You mentioned you interviewed for some other jobs while you interviewed for Missouri. Memphis is a place you coached previously and you were kind of linked to that job for a time. Did you interview there and how far along did you get with them?
Odom: We got in discussions with the director of athletics there, Tom Bowen. I know him very well. I have tremendous respect for him. That entire community was so great to me. A guy named Brad Martin was the president while I was there and was very active in getting Memphis back to where it is today. Obviously, I have respect for [former Memphis head coach] Justin Fuente for the job that he did there. I feel fortunate that I was a small part of that turnaround. That place made me a better person and made me a better coach. They made a great hire in Mike Norvell.
Anyway, some discussions were had with them. With the timing of everything and multiple job openings, you can’t ever plan on when and how it’s going to work out. If you have an opportunity to look at a job, you have to find out what’s the best fit. You have to take the emotional side out of it. I tried to do that with Missouri and Memphis. I took that aside from it and tried to see what was the best fit at that current time.
Rivals: Living in the now with you being the head coach at Missouri, you guys are a little different from other SEC programs in the way that they are all located by the talent pool in the Southeast. Obviously there are players in Missouri and Kansas and Oklahoma, but when you guys are at your best, where does you recruiting base need to be? Are there new areas you guys are trying to get into?
Odom: Well, we gotta take care of the state of Missouri. If you look … for us, in the next two years in St. Louis and Kansas City, it’s going to be two of the best years that those cities have ever had. Then when you look at some of the great players we’ve had in the past that, they are from those areas. We have to do a tremendous job of making Mizzou the place where the kids in Missouri want to go. When that becomes an option for them, we want them to want to lead Mizzou to a national championship. It’s the only Division I school in the state and we have great support from 35,000 students and a tremendous fan base. The experiences that they can come and have here … we can achieve anything that you want to achieve by being a student-athlete four or five years.
Rivals: They’re going to discuss adding an early signing period for football soon. It’s something everyone has talked about forever. Where do you come down on the issue?
Odom: Well, I think we need to make sure that it doesn’t affect the high school recruit and the high school coach too adversely. I was a high school coach not that long ago, and I don’t want it to get to a point where … I mean, you want those kids to have a junior and senior year. I know it’s always going to be sped up because that’s the way it is.
We have a model that has worked pretty well for a number of years. I think there’s some opportunity to address that with an early signing period that adjusts it a little bit but I have great faith and confidence that the NCAA and the committees that are looking at all factors will take that into consideration and do what’s best for kids because that’s the No. 1 focus.
Rivals.com: If you were designing something like that alone, what’s the ideal situation for you?
Odom: I like the current model. If there’s some sort of change … There’s [already] an early signing period for the junior colleges, so that would make sense to me. If you are going to change it, you could match up a one-day period there that it could happen. Again, though, this is a model that’s worked pretty good for quite some time, so we’ll see how it plays out.
Rivals: People love to ask when Missouri will play Kansas again. Obviously, your new AD there says he’s in favor of it. Is this something we are ever going to get on the schedule? Is it a real possibility? Have you heard buzz on this?
Odom: There are a lot of folks that would love to see that happen and I would be one of them. I think, being a student-athlete here, when you talk about experiences that you are able to provide for your student-athletes and memories for them that they are able to have, that’s one. If you go back and talk to all the guys that have graduated from Mizzou about what their memories are from when they left, they talk about playing in championship games and bowl games but every one of them also brings up playing KU. That is something that is important to our fan base and important to the student-athletes. Hopefully we can continue to move to get it back.
Rivals: Have you heard anything internally about movement in that direction or is it still a pipe dream?
Odom: The discussions I’ve had on the scheduling … well, we’ve done a great job of trying to piece together non-conference games with who’s available. I don’t know the ins and outs of how that would get pulled off. They know, administratively here, that I would love to play the game and they have taken it from there.
Rivals: Of course that’s more of an athletic director decision. And speaking of athletic directors, you’ve been through a couple of them already. I don’t want to use the word panic, but how much concern does it create when the guy that hires you is gone?
Odom: Well, I didn’t get to work with the guy that hired me very long. I mean, he was there about eight months. Then, he had an opportunity and felt like it was best that he took it. I’ve been able to develop a really good relationship with [current AD] Jim Sterk. Our visions and our philosophies match up very, very closely. It’s been exciting for me to see and listen and learn from him in the short time he’s been here. I believe that, without a doubt, he’s going to lead Mizzou into the next number of years with great leadership. I’m excited and fortunate to be a part of it.