Just when I was wondering how I would get my mind off Virginia Tech’s loss of the Commonwealth Cup, I remembered that the Hokies have a defensive coordinator search that will be ending shortly.  And then on Sunday afternoon word came out that Missouri had fired head coach Barry Odom, and that really made my ears perk up.  He’s the candidate who I figured was always at the top of Justin Fuente’s list, but he’s also the candidate who I thought was least likely to be available.  Now he is available, and if Odom is willing, I think Tech has a chance to do something really good here.

Justin Fuente and Barry Odom are both 43 years old, and they are both from Oklahoma.  As a senior in high school, Odom won the State Championship with Ada High School in Ada, Oklahoma.  As a senior in high school, Fuente was the state’s Player of the Year for Union High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  I don’t know for a fact that they knew each other way back then, but they certainly would have heard of each other. The two schools are 129 miles apart.

Barry Odom as DC at Memphis (2012-2014) and Missouri (2015)

When Justin Fuente took the Memphis job in 2012, he inherited a mess, and one of the things he did was hire Barry Odom to be his defensive coordinator.  They both knew they had a lot of work ahead of them.  Here’s what Odom said about the Memphis job…

“It was a bad program when we got there,” Odom told reporters. “I think the first team meeting, we had about 37 guys on scholarship. … There’s not really anything about that process that was easy.”

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