What if he only wins 8 games with someone else's players and can't win any of those bowl games because his teams always show up ill-prepared?
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Any interest in P.J. Fleck?
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Oh I am, am I?


I've rarely had anything truly positive to say about Odom. I think he's...fine. He's not a disaster, nor is he a genuine asset.

But the immediate reaction by this fanbase is ALWAYS to blame Odom, just as it was to blame Pinkel before him.

And I will oftentimes agree (the SC last year was among the worst coaching performances I've ever seen) - this time, it's just not right. He had a quarterback that had completely turtled and Roundtree couldn't see a hole to save his life. With one functioning offensive component (Beade) and a defense that was trying to do everything with little/no help, just exactly the hell could Odom have done?

Arguably the 2 most important players on his offense shit the bed. At that point he was just hoping for the D to perform miracles and a lucky strike on O. The D did their job with that turnover but the O simply couldn't answer at all. Ever. There's not much Odom could've done to change that outcome.
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Winning bowl games doesnt really matter and I'm not a Mizzou fan so I cant really answer your question. I guess I just dont see your school as the type to fire a coach for winning 8 or 9 games a year.
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Unfortunately, you're right. They WON'T fire Odom if he continues to win 8-9 games a year, once in a while more (10-11), once in a while less (6-7). It would take Mizzou bottoming out at this point for a few years and being at the back end of the SEC East for Sterk to get rid of him. Barry Odom is not a great football coach, but he's at Mizzou for the long haul minus a scandal or the aforementioned above.
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What, exactly, do you think Missouri’s upside as a program is?

Because in the SEC, unless something drastic changes, winning at the level you described is a pretty good expectation for this program.

Unless someone starts pumping huge amounts of money into the program - and that’s unlikely because of the Chiefs, Royals, and Cardinals competing for sports
dollars - or they land a historically elite coach (and manage to keep him more than 3-4 years).

Can a coach do better? Sure they can. Is any coach guaranteed to do better? Let’s be honest about that. It could get a whole lot worse.

The most encouraging thing to me is that, defensively, Odom is running his own guys out there, almost exclusively, and the defense is pretty damn good.

If you paired this defense with the level of QB play Mizzou has grown accustomed to, things would be in good shape.

Bryant is better than most alternatives and is a good get, but he’s not a great QB and he isn’t a pocket passer. He’s a solid starter, not a difference maker. Missouri needs to always have a difference maker at QB to have a shot at being more than just OK.

The Robinson kid who’s sitting out right now has the potential to be that. Bazelak has that type of potential, I think.
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Do you think Mizzou regrets moving to the SEC?

It's something I've pondered for a while, I'm curious as to what you think...

I ask because the road to becoming an "elite" program and sustaining it was much more attainable IMO staying in the Big XII. I mean they were damn near there at certain points before the move. You have 1 truly elite school in that conference and everyone else pretty much...

I get why they did it but I also get what you're saying and I just don't see them ever becoming an elite SEC program and sniffing the playoff any time soon.
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So he isn't a disaster nor is he a genuine asset....which makes him average. For once an MU coach should aspire to be more than average.

I agree that Bryant went into a shell...but Rountree couldn't see a hole because there wasn't that many all day. The Oline was getting pushed around all day.

The front 7 of the defense played hard....Bolton and Elliott will be playing on Sunday if they keep playing like that. But the secondary can't tackle and can't really cover well. And the defense got caught flat footed on both TD'S.

I blame Odom for both losses this year....neither of which should have happened. To me...it is on he and his coaches.
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I've not quite bought into that potential for Robinson but I really like Bazelak. Brady Cook seems to be their answer to missing out on Graham Mertz (don't want to let another local kid develop after they ignored him) but I'm not sure I see any kind of SEC asset potential there.

I think Bazelak is their best bet. And yeah, I just don't understand how we've come to feel 'entitled' to 9+ win seasons annually. Mizzou is a solid but unspectacular program. Would I like it to be more than that? Sure - but how is that going to happen? As you've noted, this isn't a program with the financial resources to run with the blue bloods; it's not gonna get a billion dollar practice facility anytime soon.

I don't think Odom is the ceiling this program can do...but I also don't think he's far removed from it. I mean shit, Pinkel is probably NEAR that ceiling and Odom's probably nothing but time and better QBs away from being the same kind of coach.
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I don't think so, mostly because the sea change going on at the time put them in a situation to ride the wave or be swallowed by it. If they had stayed in the B12, they're not going to be able to trade on the SEC name to stand apart from other programs. And with the B10 also being in a pretty good spot, it would've been awfully tough for them to maintain a steady talent base going forward.

Yes, the SEC is a tougher conference, but it also allows them to be more attractive to better players. It creates a higher ceiling, IMO, than being the roadkill that gets destroyed by the SEC or B10 in the event they manage to slog through the B12 in a year that OU is down (presuming that UT stays down, which isn't a good presumption).

He's above average. Treading water in the SEC takes more than a JAG coach. Odom would get a solid job if we fired him in fairly short order, IMO. He can undeniably coach defense and I think it's awfully hard for his detractors to argue otherwise. He's not a premier coach and maybe never will be, but he has a nice baseline we can work with and Pinkel wasn't seen as anything special until he got the right coordinator and right QB in here to make things hum for him. With Odom's baseline, you can absolutely work with that and build around it. Dooley may even be the right coordinator (may not be, admittedly). With Odom you know you have something that CAN work and be surrounded by hires that could easily level the program up.

And Roundtree looked demonstrably worse than Beade. It wasn't that the line wasn't able to do it's job - it was doing solid work for Beade - it's that Roundtree simply wasn't able to do anything with what he was provided. Defenses tend to key on Roundtree a little more and that probably had something to do with it, but that makes Bryant's ineffectiveness all the more irritating (Larry draws attention).

And one of those TDs was a missed tackle away from being nothing. Is that where we are now? Essentially in the "Bob Sutton's Complicated Scheme" era as it relates to Mizzou football? A guy misses a tackle and that's the coaches fault? Because if execution error despite being put in a position to succeed is just chalked up as "Not being ready to play and thus the HC's fault..." then there is literally NEVER a loss you wouldn't blame on that squad's HC.

I didn't see a team that came out flat. I didn't see a team that couldn't figure out which way was up. I saw a defense that was playing hard throughout and played largely effective football and an offense that was hamstrung by an ineffective QB. You cannot scheme around a quarterback that won't release the goddamn ball. Especially not when the defense is now crashing the box because they know you aren't a threat to beat them downfield.
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No. The stability of the conference has been critical for the AD.

They need to, if anything, dump a few of the nonrevenue sports, as those become even bigger money drains due to travel. They need to whack Men’s Golf and swimming and diving, and whack as many women’s sports as that let’s you whack.

I’d honestly try to be as terrible as possible at women’s basketball, because its a huge expense and the better you are, the more it costs you. Also... it’s a terrible sport.

I don’t think the road to being truly elite was any different in the Big 12. DeArmond did a nice breakdown the other day of college football programs. Pretty goddamn hard to ascend to the elite level of programs from outside the bubble and stay there. Especially without huge talent pools available nearby.

The common factors for the programs that HAVE raised their bar are 1) patience with a coach; 2) that coach building a strong system and way of doing things; 3) financial commitment
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The historically good Stanley Cup Champion Blues don't help Mizzou football's cause either. College sports just isn't a priority in this state and that's sad, because it's so much better than the pros in many ways.
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I remember being furious that Nebraska swooped in and snaked our shot at going to the Big 10. But considering how fucked they are now, clearly they just took a bullet a for us. If they can't recruit worth a crap up there, just imagine how screwed we would have been.
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And he looks extremely excited to be there LOL

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I think the thing with Odom is he had probably the easiest schedule he'll get for a long while and it's possible that they're going into the final stretch fighting for bowl eligibility. The next 3 weeks aren't going to be kind to this team, I'm thinking.

Just don't see 8 to 9 wins as the expectation with this program. The bottom is going to fall out eventually. :-)
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