Odom's real test begins now

Barry Odom had a Sisyphean task ahead of him.

Officially announced as Missouri’s head coach on Dec. 3, Odom -- a first-time head coach -- had 62 days to hold on and add to the existing 2016 recruiting class. Two full months to overcome obstacles already stacked against him from a dismal 2015 season and campus racial division that thrust the football team into the national spotlight, for better or whose depending on whom you ask.

In the end, Missouri’s 2016 class ranked 53rd nationally. But the boulders at play, the boulders that Odom and his almost completely new staff had to push against for those 62 days make just holding on admirable, if not impressive.

Did Missouri gain momentum, grabbing #NSD16 headlines? No. But Odom and his staff didn’t let those boulders push them downhill, either.

The Missouri players’ boycott in early November didn’t end in a missed game, but the fall-out from campus protests is still on-going. Odom and his staff were tasked with addressing this issue during meetings with recruits and parents.

Odom’s opinion was that honesty was the best policy.

“If you look at society, society’s got issues across the country,” Odom said. “Columbia, Missouri, is not any different than anywhere else. We’re going to approach anything that comes across our table with honesty. I’m about dealing in truth and really painted the picture of what this place is. And I care deeply about the University of Missouri and the state of Missouri.

“The quote-unquote issues that were on our campus, that was something that’s no different than our society in whole, and it’s our job as coaches and as mentors and as leaders to provide a platform for our student athletes, to teach them, OK, about life and to make sure we are helping them in every area.

“Anytime that you bring up race, OK, and I’m not afraid to say it. Everybody gets a little touchy about it, and that’s the way life is. I would hope that as a football team, and I know that as a football team, that we’re going to be able to make this place a better place with the way we handle ourselves.”

Odom has already acknowledged multi-faceted issues; in his release about the suspension of star defensive tackle Terry Beckner, Jr., following a marijuana citation and arrest, Odom’s statement mentioned that marijuana usage is “a very challenging societal issue that is dealt with on a daily basis.”

Cornell Ford, who moved from coaching cornerbacks to running backs in the shake-up from the coaching change, echoed Odom’s explanation about how the new staff dealt with questions about the campus climate.

“Listen, I told the parents exactly what I thought,” Ford, who recruits St. Louis, said. “I never BS them or sugarcoated it. We had some issues. Issues that needed to be addressed. No more issues than what they probably have in their workplace over there. I don’t think that the problems that we had here were major, major problems, but just like other workplaces, they needed to be addressed.

“Our kids stood up for something, and we stood behind our players.”

Ford said “most parents” respected that the staff supported the players. He didn’t lose any of his recruits to decommitment because of the campus issues; the only recruit who specifically decommitted because of the campus climate was Atlanta (Ga.) linebacker Tobias Little, who ended up signing with Louisville.

Odom’s first outside hire was offensive coordinator Josh Heupel, announced on Dec. 17. In the two weeks from Odom’s promotion to that hire, Missouri’s new coach was working with a skeleton crew for recruiting.

Cornell Ford, quarterbacks-turned-receivers coach Andy Hill and safeties coach Ryan Walters were the only position-coach holdovers, in addition to Missouri’s support staff in the recruiting and analysis departments.

“The fortunate thing, we were able to keep Cornell Ford and Andy Hill on staff, and those guys have been tremendous teachers of student athletes,” Odom said. “They’ve been great coaches, they’ve been great mentors and obviously, Cornell in St. Louis for 15 years, Andy Hill in Kansas City for even longer than that.

“Those guys held a lot of the remaining class together, even though they weren’t St. Louis or Kansas City kids, they were able to hold the Mizzou brand together, along with Ryan Walters, who did a tremendous job throughout the state of Texas recruiting.”

For a 15-year veteran at Missouri, Ford was suddenly thrust more outside of St. Louis. And what he was selling to recruits was a promise, something recruits couldn’t see but he had to assure them would come to fruition.

“It was different,” Ford said, smiling, “in the sense of you’re trying to recruit guys who don’t have a coach, so really what you have to go on is we knew two people were here. They knew Barry Odom was here and they knew Coach Ford was here, and if you could just trust us, we’ll bring in the right people that will come over and our performance wouldn’t slip because of the coaches that would come in. And our kids did that. It’s all about relationships. That’s not going to happen if they’re not going to trust you.

“We lost one. We picked up two. Overall, not too bad.”

Ford was again referencing his area recruits. Jacksonville (Ill.) offensive tackle Royce Newman flipped to Ole Miss, but Ford and Missouri gained the commitments of East St. Louis (Ill.) lineman Trevour Simms (an Illinois commit) and, most notably, Wildwood (Mo.) tight end Brendan Scales.

Scales was a long-time Alabama commitment before flipping to Missouri on Tuesday.

“I commend the families for trusting us and believing in what we’re doing here,” Ford said. “We’ve got great days ahead here for Mizzou, and our kids were solid with us the whole way.”

Walters, fresh off his first season as Missouri’s safeties coach, was the outlier in that group of long-time Faurot Field fixtures.

“I actually do feel like a veteran,” Walters said. “This is my first time being two years at a program in my career. I’ve been one and done. I’ve just been fortunate to be around good people and that’s accelerated my career because of it. The opportunity to stay here is tremendous, obviously to work with Barry, to get the staff that he has put together. I’ve either coached with or been around a lot of these guys. I actually played under Greg Brown. It’s a great staff.

“I’ve been blessed to be around great people, and now we have great people here around campus. I’m really excited for the future of Missouri and really excited for this staff to be able to get out and go recruit and bring a good product on the field.”

Odom’s staff wasn’t finalized until Jan. 14, with the hire of tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley coming right before the end of a recruiting dead period. At that point, Odom started seeing some momentum, as new avenues to familiar and unfamiliar recruits started opening back up.

“And then it was interesting for me to listen, as we hired guys, to get in on who they had been recruiting, possibly who they knew were out there,” Odom said. “Coach Heupel did a great job looking offensively, he studied every player on the roster from an offensive standpoint and tried to piece it together on his vision for the offense moving forward and targeting guys that we needed skill-set wise, and then DeMontie Cross did the same thing defensively.”

The push was on for National Signing Day -- but an unexpected final full week left Missouri scrambling. Heupel helped bring Tulsa (Okla.) quarterback Micah Wilson into the fold. A quarterback was needed in this class because of uncertainty at the position following the season, but the dismissal of Maty Mauk a week after Wilson’s commitment made the three-star recruit even more valuable.

On that same day -- Jan. 27 -- recently hired defensive line coach Chris Wilson left unexpectedly for the same position with the Philadelphia Eagles. Odom didn’t find out until he saw it on Twitter.

“I was joking around earlier, I already have a coaching tree,” Odom said. “That’s pretty good. A couple weeks into a head coaching job. You sure don’t think that’s going to happen, especially when you’re interviewing and hiring a guy. But it did, and I’ll go back again to Mack Rhoades, who provided me with everything we needed to do to put together the greatest staff that we could, and I got off the phone with him. I was in Savannah, Ga., when I found out, and I got off the phone with him and he said, ‘Let’s go get who you think was the best one out there,’ and we absolutely did.”

That new hire was Jackie Shipp, a 25-year coaching veteran and another member of Odom’s staff with Oklahoma pedigree. Shipp came from Arizona State most recently, where he held the same position; in fact, he brought Columbia (Mo.) Rock Bridge defensive end Tre Williams out for a late visit -- something that had his eventual colleagues sweating before Shipp was hired and Williams signed with Missouri.

“Jackie Shipp was probably the biggest signee we had out of all the guys,” defensive coordinator DeMontie Cross said. “His history, his pedigree, his experience, his qualities as a man, as a person, as a mentor, there's a lot more value that goes into that that you guys don't understand. Just getting him on staff was a great addition to the program.

“As far as coach leaving, things happen, it's part of the profession. I think coach Odom hit it best, you've got to have a list of guys to go to. The timing of it was not good, but reality of it was it forced us to rally together as a staff.”

But Wilson’s departure slammed doors shut on a few recruits, most notably former Southern Cal commit, defensive tackle Keyshon Camp. Camp, from Lakeland, Fla., cancelled a visit to Missouri and eventually signed with Pittsburgh.

It was a mixed bag for Missouri before and during signing day. The flip of Scales was a huge boost of momentum on Tuesday evening; Simms decision to stick with Missouri on Wednesday morning gives the Tigers a player who, at least physically, could add depth to a murky offensive line situation in 2016.

The addition of receiver Chris Black, a graduate transfer from Alabama, gives Missouri a ready-made SEC player who is familiar with the grind of playing against the best competition in the nation.

But Odom and his staff missed out on two top targets at running back. Arkeem Byrd -- from Savannah, ostensibly the recruit Odom was visiting when he found out about Wilson’s departure -- picked Wake Forest. And out-of-nowhere star Joshua Jacobs, from Tulsa, Okla., picked up an Alabama hat during his announcement.

A push, and a pull. Missouri’s class, more or less, ends around the same place it began when Odom took over, a victim of no Rivals250 signees and smaller numbers.

Two of the commitments, Black and two-time signee Tyler Howell, are not factored in Rivals’ rankings system.

One thing that was evident, at least to these ears, on Wednesday, was the lack of a phrase that’s echoed throughout Missouri’s facilities over the past 15 years:

We do what we do.

(Save for one use by Odom as a joke in a moderated session in front of fans.)

"Truthfully, this particular window of recruiting was probably more going straight what we did before,” Andy Hill said. “I think once we're done now, and once we get together and put our heads together as a staff and experience of where guys have been, what we've done, where guys have been, it will be interesting to see what our philosophy will be.

“Obviously recruiting the state of Missouri will be big no matter what we do, but truthfully, I think there's guys that probably have experiences elsewhere, in different places, NFL and how they evaluate, that I'll be curious to see how it turns out.”

No, this isn’t necessarily change so much as it is adaptation. Odom’s first gameday test won’t come until Sep. 3 in Morgantown, W. Va. For momentum, though, the next few months will be key in determining the validity of what Odom wants to sell and wants to accomplish in Columbia for the future.

That work started Wednesday. Missouri offered 2017 in-state offensive lineman Marquis Hayes, along with a few other out-of-state prospects, before the 2016 class was completely finalized.

“I'm a firm believer in working hard, working the right way, and if you ever take a sigh and relax, then you get passed by,” Odom said. "We've got a lot to do, we've got a lot better to get and we've got to do it with the right urgency."

Now we see how far Barry can move the boulder.