Barry Odom: ‘Deep responsibility to get Purdue football back to winning for the people of Purdue’

Let the Barry Odom era begin.

Yes, he officially was hired from UNLV way back on December 8. But now, the real football is about to begin for the first-year coach, who will christen his era on Saturday vs. Ball State at noon ET on BTN.

There’s no looking back.

“I’ve not spent one second talking about last year to this team,” said Odom. “All respect to the history and the tradition of Purdue, I’ve talked about the tradition of this place, but I didn’t talk about specifics of last year. I wasn’t here, so I can’t even begin to think what it was, good or bad. I have no idea. So, it doesn’t do me any good talking about last year.”

It’s a sordid past, one that included a horrifying 1-11 record last season that saw the program finish on an 11-game losing streak. Purdue didn’t just lose in 2024. It often lost in spectacularly stupefying fashion.

“Now, we’re flipping the chapter into game one,” said Odom. “And it’ll be a life of its own and a story of its own. And then we’ll close that one and move on to week two.

“I’ve said it a couple times. I don’t think there’s anybody in the building, especially the seniors, that have four and a half months left, or whatever it is, they don’t want to hear what we’re going to do next year. I owe that to them.”

This is roster built for the here and now, as 54 transfers have been imported. No school welcomed more.

And the Boilermaker transfers enter 2025 with 979 combined games played, averaging out to just under 24 games for the players who came with experience.

In all, there are 82 players on campus who are here for the first time.

Let’s call it a deep roster cleanse.

Odom has done this before, importing over 50 transfers in each of his two seasons at UNLV. And the results were very good: 19-8 record, two Mountain West title games, two bowl bids.

Now, Odom’s Purdue rebuild will be test driven for the first time.

“I feel a deep, deep responsibility to get Purdue football back to winning for the people of Purdue,” said Odom. “This is an honor to be in the chair here. We represent something so much bigger than ourselves, and the urgency to get that done.”

Time to turn the page from one era to another.

“I don’t want to judge us, this team, on anything that happened in the past,” said Odom. “We’ve got a blank sheet of paper, and every single day we get to write our story.”

NOTES:

• All eyes are on Purdue TE George Burhenn, who is one the top players on the roster. But will he be good to go after suffering a leg injury during the first play of an April 5 scrimmage? He had surgery five days later. Burhenn has been going through drills during camp but has been handled with care in the build up to the season.

“We’ll see where he’s at through the week,” said OC Josh Henson. “But George is very important to our team. We know the impact he can have. He’s going to be a really good player. We got to make sure he’s healthy and ready to go when we put him on the field.”

• It sounds like Purdue will be without its leading returning receiver in De’Nylon Morrissette.

“If we were sitting here today, he would be for game one, he would be listed ‘out,’ said Odom. “That’s going to change for next week. I don’t know what that timetable will look like, but just in fairness of the game and the rules right now, he would be listed as ‘out.’

“I think he’s going to be a fast healer. And I don’t know what the timeframe will be. I never want to list a guy out unless I know absolutely certain that he’s going to be because people heal differently. They respond differently to treatments. But right now for game one, he would be out, and then we’ll take next week as next week gets here.”

• Teams often are fearful of tackling too much in camp for fear of sustaining injuries. But Purdue has been getting after it

“I do feel like we’ve tackled more in this camp than I have in previous years,” said Odom. “Just because I do worry about fitting the perimeter, the secondary run support, running out of the stack defensively, just the fits more than the actual tackling, because we get the fits right, we’ll be a good tackling team.”