Pittsburg, KS--Missouri's returning football players hit campus last week and have already begun their offseason conditioning program. We caught up with head coach Barry Odom while the Tiger coaches were helping out at Pittsburg State's camp on Friday afternoon. See what the coach had to say as he gets ready for his third season.
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So the players got back to town last week. What's the blueprint for the summer?
"They came back really on Memorial Day, started on Tuesday, all returners, all vet guys back on campus. Every one of them will take either three or six hours this summer toward degree advancement, which is always beneficial when you do that over the course of three years, you get in a position where you can graduate and start grad school, which has helped us out a lot. The way that we structure it with the number of hours that you've got--we've got eight total hours--so we'll spend six-and-a-half in the weight room and then we take the other hour-and-a-half and do classroom work or you can do some walk-throughs without equipment or without a ball. The heavy install, we'll start back over how we did on day one of spring practice and get install on both sides of the ball. The freshmen come in this weekend, the newcomers, get those guys plugged in. We keep them separate right now the early part of the summer working out just to get acclimated with everything and get going. We get three weeks into it and then we put them in with all the old guys. Exciting time. Ready to get those guys on campus, get to work with them. The NCAA makes a number of rules, some that you wonder why and others make lots of sense, but the one that allows us to be around them during the summer time, that's helped us more than anything I'd say."
Have you changed much from what you've done the last couple of summers? Did you learn and tweak some things?
"Yeah, a little bit more classroom time, so to speak, with our guys on the install. Cutch (Rohrk Cutchlow) does a great job in the weight room and the speed and skill development. But for us to be able to teach and be around them, we're spending more time this year than we have the last two years on that."
With the new guys, I know you won't know until you see them and get them in camp, but are you counting on a good number of them helping out this year?
"We look at areas coming out of spring where you'd like to draft a couple to get guys because of your depth where you think you need help. I've challenged them all to come in and let's get ready to go play, but I think it would be wise for us to get the freshman receivers ready to go, along with (Alex) Ofodile coming in from a grad transfer. That spot to me, and I think we've got a good group to work with of returners, but also naive of me to think that we could get through it with three of the four or five guys that we've got currently on our roster the way that we want to play. We've got to get those guys developed and ready to go and play week one. I think just physically if you look at Messiah Swinson, I don't want to put too much on his shoulders, but he's 6-7, 255, 260, he's got a chance just physically to help us early on. Then on the defensive side, both our ends that we've got coming in (Jatorian Hansford and Trajan Jeffcoat), if we could get in the position where they could help us some on third downs, that would be wise because they are long, tall guys with good speed just from an ability to go get after the quarterback on third downs, that could help us. Then (Daniel) Parker had such a great year in basketball and then in track too. He's a competitive kid. Really excited to get all three of those guys in the mix and see what comes out of it. Our linebacker depth, Terez (Hall) and Cale (Garrett) have played about as many snaps as anybody on our roster, but the depth behind that, Aubrey (Miller) had a good spring and Rod Winters came on and did some things as well, but we really got to get that solidified here in the early part of fall camp."
Are Khalil Oliver and Alex Ofodile here or are they coming in with the newcomers?
"They're both finishing up. Oliver's in a class that goes through part of June so he'll be late June before he gets here and then Ofodile will be here before that."
Do you feel comfortable with your quarterback situation behind Drew Lock?
"You look at what Micah (Wilson) did over the spring, what Taylor Powell did, Jack Lowary really helped himself and then Lindsey (Scott). If we were playing tomorrow and Drew wasn't able to play, there's not a clear-cut number two today. That would be one of our biggest challenges on getting us in position where if that does happen that we could still orchestrate and compete and do the things that we need to offensively. To sit here and say it's going to be this guy, I don't have the clear-cut number two in my mind. There's a lot of things that are going to happen over the summer and then obviously in fall camp to get to that spot."
I saw that they just approved grad transfers in conference to be immediately eligible. Did anything else come out of SEC meetings that jumped out to you?
"That was, I would say, the biggest topic. Not a lot of rule changes, but Steve Shaw, the coordinator of officials, went through the way that you can block downfield, or can't now after five yards with no cut blocks. The targeting issue is always big. We spent a lot of time on those. But within the league, the intra-conference transfer was the biggest topic. That's a tough spot to be in. Some teams really want it, some don't. It's a fine line there. You want a kid to have a great experience where they are and hope it works out for all of them, but if there's a chance they can go somewhere else and finish up their career..."
How is that different than when you got Chris Black from Alabama?
"You've still got to go through the waiver process, so once a waiver was introduced, the rule was in place no intra-conference transfer, but if you got a waiver you could do it. So now I would say it's maybe a little easier to do. We'll see how that plays out with all of those involved. I know a lot of people were trying to pick sides before we went into meetings on how are we going to vote?"
