Neither Bret Bielema nor Sam Pittman has ever coached at Purdue.
Still, the Arkansas football head coaches of past and present have played big, albeit indirect, roles in the trajectory of Boilermakers football.
In 2021-22, Bielema was Ryan Walters’ boss before the Illini defensive coordinator took over the Purdue head coaching gig while still in his mid-30s. Walters’ first job as the top guy didn’t go well, as Purdue left overall 5-19 record skid marks on these last two seasons before Walters was fired on Dec. 1.
That opened the door for Barry Odom, who served out the 2020-22 seasons as defensive coordinator at Arkansas under Pittman. Pittman deserves credit for helping to resuscitate the career of Odom, who’d just been fired from his alma mater Missouri, where he’d been hired as head coach while in his late 30s. (And of course it just so happens that one of his main assistants was Walters.)
Now, Odom is replacing Walters at Purdue, which is the third job in a row he has faced the kind of renovation project that would make the folks at Extreme Makeover jealous:
Barry Odom at Arkansas
Bielema’s last season at Arkansas in 2017 was only a harbinger of the cataclysmic dark age to come in the reign of the Most Unwelcome One, which netted a total of four wins over the course of two long, achingly cold seasons.
While Odom served as defensive coordinator under Pittman, Arkansas won nearly half of its SEC games (had the 2020 Auburn contest been called correctly) and reeled off a nine-win season in 2021.
Barry Odom at UNLV
The Rebels had just two winning seasons since the turn of the century and had won only 20 games over the six seasons before Odom’s arrival as head coach in 2023.
All they did under Odom and standout coordinators Brennan Marion (offense) and Michael Scherer (defense) was go 19-8 these last two seasons and put No. 20 UNLV in a place where it could have made the College Football Playoff if it beaten Boise State on Friday night.
Purdue: Nothing to Envy
For the Boilermakers, it’s been a long, hard fall from the relatively successful era of Jeff Brohm, the former assistant under Bobby Petrino at Louisville and later Western Kentucky. Brohm had helped Purdue secure 9 and 8-win seasons in 2021 and 2022, which elevated Purdue football fans’ hopes in a similar way that Pittman’s 2021 season did for Hog fans.
But the experiment of hiring Walters as a first-time head man went sideways, reaching rock bottom in the 0-66 obliteration at the hands of the Hoosiers.
Barry Odom’s arrival is now being received by Purdue fans in largely the same way it would have been by Arkansas fans. It doesn’t move the needle in the same way bigger names would, but it does the job.
Odom, of course, had through much of the last year been bandied about in Arkansas football circles as a potential replacement for Sam Pittman if the latter were to get fired or retire.
That won’t happen at this specific juncture with Odom having finalized a deal to Purdue and Pittman’s 6-6 record and bowl bid, but it’s still worth noting that long-time Arkansas broadcaster Mike Irwin recently explained why Odom as a Pittman successor made a lot of sense on a near to mid-term timeline.
Arkansas Broadcaster Mike Irwin on Odom
Indeed, on the “Ask Mike” show last Monday, Irwin said it would make sense for UA athletic director Hunter Yurachek to watch Odom “maybe for another year or two.” To avoid a situation like the football program had with Chad Morris, or the basketball program had with John Pelphrey and Stan Heath, it would first be important to see a longer track record of sustained success.
“Maybe Yurachek’s looking at Barry Odom and saying: “I want to see a little more out of you.’ I don’t know if that’s the case but it seems logical.”
If Odom can help rebuild Purdue in short order, he’s going to be coveted by an awful lot more high-major programs in the coming hiring cycles. Getting his ace coordinators to follow him to West Lafayette, Indiana would certainly help to that end. To that end, there may be a promising sign in the fact that Marcos Davila, the Purdue quarterback who announced he would enter the transfer portal, followed Brennan Marion on “X.” It’s possible he could be enticed to give 2025 a shot as a Boilermaker under the new leadership.
Odom will also need to figure out a way to compete with Big Ten heavy hitters in the NIL game. Competing with the likes of San Jose State, New Mexico and Colorado State is a lot easier than trying to win bidding wars with Oregon, Michigan and Ohio State.
In the Mountain West Conference, nearly breaking your back on the back of a bucking bull can move the needle on fundraising, but don’t expect such marketing ploys to make a big difference in the Big Ten.
Purdue, for instance, lost its star defender Nic Scourton to Texas A&M last offseason. Arkansas has paid the price for being on the wrong side of the NIL game in two ways. Guys like Scourton wrecked the Hogs this past season while Arkansas is seeing some of their its recent stars (eg Luke Hasz, Jaylen Braxton) head into the transfer portal for projected greener pastures in the SEC.
Had Odom stayed at UNLV for, say, another successful season, many Razorback fans would have been mildly excited about the prospect of him as the next Arkansas football coach. Some would have wanted something more akin to what they have seen with John Calipari in Arkansas basketball – perhaps Lane Kiffin, Deion Sanders or even a lower-tier media “star” like Dan Mullen.
But such a big name, of course, isn’t to spark a dramatic turnaround. Last offseason Indiana hired Curt Cignetti, who had about as much sex appeal as a tan Toyota Corolla, and all the Hoosiers got in return is an 11-1 year and a date with Notre Dame in the College Football Playoffs (Indiana has also laid out a kind of blueprint that Hogs football could follow).
The chances of Odom pulling a Cignetti-like turnaround at Purdue are very small because a revived Indiana makes the conference all the more difficult to get a foothold in, similar to how an improved Ole Miss has made Arkansas’ path back to SEC relevancy more difficult.
So Purdue fans aren’t expecting a miracle. Barry Odom “just strikes me as a guy who can beat the [PJ] Flecks, Bielemas, [Matt] Rhules, etc of the conference, but won’t sniff wins vs the elite tier,” one wrote on the team’s Rivals message board, referencing Minnesota, Illinois and Nebraska.
Another fan chimed in with this: “As long as we are competitive with the big boys and can have 7-5, 8-4 type seasons, I would be happy….we are what we are.”
Looks like Purdue and Arkansas share a lot more than former and soon-to-be coaches.
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Some Walters/Odom relationship insight from Arkansas vs Missouri week in 2020:
Here’s the latest on Arkansas’ Liberty Bowl matchup with Texas Tech:
More on Barry Odom and Arkansas football here:
