I could get behind this hire. We could have done much worse.
Coach Barry Odom
- Thread starter RebNReno
- Start date
Another dull coach finds a place to bury his career.
Has spent his entire life in Missouri and Arkansas. Hope he has some west coast guys lined up for his staff. On the surface I hate this hire. On the surface I loved the Bobby Hauck hire, so I’ll wait to see how this plays out.
It seems like he was well liked at Arkansas. This isn’t an Arroyo hire who many at Oregon wanted fired as OC. He recently got a contract extension and was making $1.85 million a year. Most ever for an Arkansas assistant. They wanted to keep him. We must be paying him a lot. He has some good HC experience in the SEC. It’s not an exciting name but I think it can work out.
The only way you bring this guy in is if he brings his brother Lamar with him, hopefully that’s the case.
Lamar can be in charge of showing recruits a good time on visits.
Ah Yes, Memphis, Tennessee the jewel of Missouri and Arkansas!
I think he will need at least 1 or 2 western connection assistants on the staff, I'd like to be able to dip our toes into California and Arizona. But as an SEC guy, he's probably going to have Texas/Georgia/Florida connections and some other guys closer to his home range.
We really need someone that's also going to recruit the valley much more actively than CMA.
If this is the guy, having a good staff will be really important.
You think someone with SEC HC/DC coaching experience is a lateral move from Arroyo? We have made 4 Bowl games since I started watching UNLV football in the early 80s. He actually took an SEC team to 3 bowl games in 4 years. He doesn’t meet expectations, but I will never understand why UNLV fans have such high expectations. We have been essentially the worst college program in the NCAA since I’ve been alive, and that’s 43 years.
Weird. I didn't like the Hauck hire, and don't think this one is too bad. He's got HC experience in the SEC. It's not that easy to win a high percentage of your games in the SEC when you're going against LSU, Georgia, Alabama, etc. Plus, DC experience in the SEC. Yeah, he's not a big name guy, but IMO, it's a solid hire.
Before he was hired Memphis had the 105/120 scoring defense and 117/120 total defense.
His first season they were 81/124 scoring defense and 52/124 total defense
His second season they were 61/125 scoring defense and 46/125 total defense
His third season they were 11/128 scoring and 27/128 total defense.
That's solid growth and a top 30 defense at a program like Memphis is better than 'wasn't all that great'
I'm not saying lets celebrate our national championship or anything, but the guy has more top 20 defense across his career than CMA had top 20 offenses AND he did some of those in the SEC AND he has 4 years HC experience in the SEC and he had 3/4 seasons at .500 and above while doing it.
It's a CMA upgrade on paper by whatever metric you want to assign.
But local pundits and Twitter randoms said it was going to be huge!
Okay, y'all convinced me, Odom is a fantastic hire, can't wait to take over the MWC.
Yeah, I was hoping for a bigger name, but once it became clear that those weren't going to happen, this one doesn't seem too bad to me.
Hey, Mizzou fan here. Barry Odom was offered the Tulsa job over the weekend and turned it down due to them not having enough money for the rest of the coaching staff.
I did not have him on my radar for the UNLV job because I was assuming it would be someone with more West Coast ties, but Barry has done pretty well at every stop along the way.
He really improved the defense at Memphis, his one year as a DC at Mizzou they were top 10 nationally in several categories, and most recently at Arkansas he did a good job turning around the mess they inherited from Chad Morris.
Your probably most interested in his time as head coach though. He took over a really rough off the field situation at Mizzou and while they went 4-8 in year one, he subsequently went 7-5, 8-4, and then was fired after a disappointing 6-6 season.
He is really loved by his players. Even after 3 years, with a lot of our departing seniors, they mention Barry and his staff in their goodbye messages on Twitter, etc. He is not the most dynamic public speaker, but he's the type of guy that you will just naturally root for. If he can get a good OC then I think he has a good chance for success.
I did not have him on my radar for the UNLV job because I was assuming it would be someone with more West Coast ties, but Barry has done pretty well at every stop along the way.
He really improved the defense at Memphis, his one year as a DC at Mizzou they were top 10 nationally in several categories, and most recently at Arkansas he did a good job turning around the mess they inherited from Chad Morris.
Your probably most interested in his time as head coach though. He took over a really rough off the field situation at Mizzou and while they went 4-8 in year one, he subsequently went 7-5, 8-4, and then was fired after a disappointing 6-6 season.
He is really loved by his players. Even after 3 years, with a lot of our departing seniors, they mention Barry and his staff in their goodbye messages on Twitter, etc. He is not the most dynamic public speaker, but he's the type of guy that you will just naturally root for. If he can get a good OC then I think he has a good chance for success.
Certainly concerned about the staff. Arkansas position coaches make more than our coordinators so I don’t expect him to bring many people with him. He’ll need a good west coast recruiting staff.
His last year at Mizzou was similar to Arroyo's. Started 5-1, finished 6-6, fired despite winning his last game against a terrible team.
Any chance we can still call Sumlin or Stoops up and plead with them to take the job? That’s what I think of this “exciting” hire.
You can’t be serious….
I am and don’t call me Hugh.
Wow. Kudos to Harper for keeping things close to the vest. Interesting hire. SEC success, but no obvious ties to the region. Assistant hires will. E key. Like him better than Stoops or Sumlin.
Don’t absolutely love it, but am good with it
Don’t absolutely love it, but am good with it
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Agreed. Hope he can assemble a staff quickly and get started on recruiting. With some of our top guys already entering the portal or declaring, he needs to hit the ground running.
Need to see the rest of the staff he brings but I believe it will be an improvement from what we just had. Twitter certainly got the expectations a little too high for some fans so this will be “disappointing” but I don’t see it that way.
At least he's from the SEC and hopefully get down and dirty with nil, recruiting, portal
Sooner. IMO the goal wasn’t to improve marginally, the goal was to make a huge splash statement which could have aligned with a Pac-12 invite. Now we’re debating if it’s an improvement at all....and I was no Arroyo fan at all.
I guess we have different views on where we are as a program. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to being a P5 caliber program. If we could even become the University of Houston type athletic department just out west I’d be doing backflips. All I know is Arroyo was a buffoon.
Certainly not by our own volition, but perhaps by way of desperation. The P12 or whatever power conference is going to need to fill some holes with some less than desirable, sure to be bottom feeders (or bottom half) to hit the requisite number of teams. UNLV may not “deserve” it by way of athletic accomplishments, but some inherent things - big city, a new footprint, friendly city for travel/conventions/league media/offices … an “exciting” sports city … all that helps. Then you toss in things we “earned” … facilities, school improved in many areas and enrollment keeps climbing, doctorate programs … UNLV is doing that work …
Will they get the eventual invite? Things look better now than 10 years ago … and that’s with struggling mightily in the two major sports. So yeah, I think there’s a chance, a decent chance within the next couple of years. We’ve hit the point where I think some good success would make it so much easier. It’s the last thing left to do, imo.
Numerous key injuries to defensive backfield and qb play contributed to poor year. They lost a lot of close games in a league we couldn't get a win in. Welcome Coach Odom. Highest paid defensive coach in SEC, they must have a better idea about his ability than we do. Given the drop in West Coast High School talent we absolutely needed a coach with deep ties to the Southwest. Also ESPN and CBS will give him a load of respect.
Not one person has said exciting.
You want two guys who went under .500 in lesser conference.
Gotcha
I agree with all you highlighted I just don’t personally believe us making a “splash hire” would result in us getting an immediate or near term invite from the PAC whatever. As you said, some good success could push us over the edge and I do agree with that. Let’s show we can have sustained success and the rest will fall into place. Sucks the realignment is right around the corner and not 3-5 years down the road where we’d have more of a chance to show continued progress across the board. Gun to my head and I’d rather have success at this current level than worry about moving up a level and truly running the risk of becoming completely irrelevant.
Stoops is a lot older and Odom is only 46 or so. Odom is an excellent hire on all the boxes. As others have said, he can compete in any league given his experience at Missouri.
Sumlin was 51-26 in the SEC West, that's 10x more impressive than going 25-25 in the SEC East. Sumlin failed miserably at Arizona, but he's an offensive minded coach anyway, a defensive coach was the way to go.
Stoops - Rather have Odom.
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