Three Missouri teams are banned from the postseason, the football coach was fired, the coaching search is going … not well, the athletic budget deficit will run in the millions, the women’s basketball team is off to one of the worst starts in program history and the men’s basketball team just lost as a 26-point favorite to a school named for half of a medium-sized South Carolina city.
It’s important to keep in mind, though, that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. If you’re a Missouri fan, it’s probably time to get that colonoscopy you’ve been putting off. It won’t be any more unpleasant than watching Cuonzo Martin’s Tigers play Charleston Southern.
Athletic director Jim Sterk — the guy responsible for some of this mess and the guy in charge of cleaning up the whole thing, God help us — needs to provide a glimmer of hope during this dismal year. All he has to do is find a football coach who will please all factions of a surly fan base. That is not going to happen, of course, because Missouri doesn’t shop at the Established Power 5 Head Coach Store. So whether it’s a hot coordinator (hasn’t done it), a successful Group of 5 conference coach (hasn’t done it at this level) or a Power 5 retread (got fired for a reason), there will be something to dislike.
I will withhold complaints on all but one candidate: Jim McElwain. He was, by choice, Colin Cowherd’s college roommate at Eastern Washington University. That is a disqualifying lapse of judgment. So unless the other finalists were college roommates of Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith, I recommend anyone but McElwain.
On second thought, I will complain about another candidate: Skip Holtz. He’s the son of someone who made Mark May seem rational by comparison, and we all know that the older we get, the more we resemble our parents.
Actually, I would lodge complaints about the other candidates, too, but apparently members of the Board of Curators have already covered that ground.
The Decision
In an experiment, there is a control group and a variable group. Barry Odom was the control group. He went 25-25 and, if not for a lame refusal by the NCAA Appeals Committee to think for itself, would have led the Tigers to three minor bowl games in four seasons. That is almost the definition of a middle-of-the-road tenure at a middle-of-the-road Power 5 football program.
Sterk had to decide whether that was good enough. At times like this, you get a true look at an athletic director’s opinion of his own baby. Every AD talks about striving for championships, but what level is acceptable? Sterk decided Missouri should be above average. He opted for the variable group.
The experiment has begun. So far it has resembled a Mento dropped into a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke.
A coaching search in a major sport at Missouri, for as long as I have been paying attention, has always followed an inevitable firing or a coach choosing to leave. The fired coaches had proven conclusively that the good times were over, or, in some cases, that the good times had never started. Not to say there wasn’t some controversy over the method of dismissal — I refer you to the decline and fall of the Quin Snyder era — but few argued with the decision.
This was different. Odom deserved credit for taking over a program that few others wanted to lead in 2015 and returning it to respectability in two years. Even though the Tigers left two regular-season wins on the table in 2018, I thought it was a positive year and it earned him an extension.
So, it was a solid start to his tenure, but what he had not shown was much potential for greatness. He only beat one ranked opponent. He didn’t land the state’s elite recruits. He didn’t find a logical successor to Drew Lock at quarterback.
This was supposed to be the year Odom raised the ceiling. He was handed a filet mignon schedule … but he made a salisbury steak of it. This really, really needed to be the year he won nine or 10 games, and he won six. The Tigers often looked like a team that wasn’t being coached at all, just a bunch personal-fouling wild men. The offensive staff couldn’t adjust when Plan A went wrong. There were valid concerns about player development because of widespread regression of offensive linemen and receivers.
I could make a case that Odom’s previous work had earned him another chance for a do-or-die 2020, but, realistically, this roster isn’t built for saving a job. Who are the freshmen and sophomores to build around? Nick Bolton and … not much else. No real game-changers aside from Bolton.
When Gary Pinkel was retained after 2004, with a four-year record of 22-25, he had one more year of Brad Smith with Chase Daniel on the way. He also had an athletic director in his corner, a luxury Odom didn’t enjoy after Mack Rhoades hired and ghosted him in a matter of seven months.
I feel bad personally for Odom, who I covered as a college player and have always liked. But this is what he and every college coach signs up for — stress, criticism and expectations, even at a place near the bottom of the SEC in spending. I agreed with Sterk’s decision to fire him, more out of concern for the future than punishment for the past.
With that said, my assumption when Sterk fired a coach with a .500 record was that he knew through back channels he could land someone with a better than 50/50 shot of being better than a .500 coach. That assumption might have given Sterk too much credit. A big part of an athletic director’s job is managing the large egos of the people below and above you on the organizational chart and knowing how they will react to your actions.
The only positive I can give you with this week is that sometimes even a chaotic search yields a good coach. That happened in 2006 when Mike Alden hired Mike Anderson while narrowly avoiding being fired himself. Of course, other times a chaotic search leaves you with Frank Haith dragging an NCAA investigation to your doorstep.
Defense of the Indefensible
In this week’s Defense of the Indefensible, I suggest, in the interest of time, we start every Missouri men’s basketball game at the 10-minute mark of the first half. Award the opponent a 15-3 lead, sit Jeremiah Tilmon on the bench with two fouls and spare us the monotony of watching six missed 3-pointers and five turnovers.
Some Closing Thoughts on the Battle Line Rivalry
With the notable exception of former Mizzou linebacker Eric Beisel, nobody has embraced the “rivalry” between Missouri and Arkansas — or should I say Ar-Kansas?. Odom beat the Razorbacks four straight times, and it wasn’t even mentioned as a potential reason for him to save his job.
It might help a little if we ditched that preposterous punter-sized trophy for something commensurate with the achievement it represents. I’m thinking a nice walnut bowl would suffice.
