Barry Odom's confident. He can out-steak St. Elmo. He will turn Purdue football around

Barry Odom’s confident. He can out-steak St. Elmo. He will turn Purdue football around

Posted by author February 11, 2025 Football

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Odom’s high school coach says his football star who ran for 39 touchdowns his senior season on a torn ACL has always been as humble as they come.
Odom describes his coaching style: “I’m fair, honest, competitive, hard-nosed, loving and aggressive.”
A little-known fact about Odom? He was a high school state champion in track.

Purdue football coach Barry Odom had a pretty good steak a few years back in the Wholesale District of downtown Indianapolis at the city’s oldest steakhouse founded in 1902, a restaurant that has won countless national awards and is the go-to spot for any celebrity in town.

St. Elmo Steak House was Peyton Manning’s ritual after Colts games to savor a big, juicy cut of beef. It’s the place that Lady Gaga chose to eat when she was in Indy. It’s the restaurant Jon Bon Jovi and Cher dined at after a concert, playing cards as they raved about the food. It’s where just about every pro athlete and movie star went when the Super Bowl was in town in 2012.

The steak is so legendary — the shrimp cocktail, too — that St. Elmo is among the 25 highest-grossing independent restaurants in the United States with sales of more than $21 million annually. It’s been given the Oscar of restaurant awards, named an American classic by the James Beard Foundation.

“I had a steak at St. Elmo,” Odom told IndyStar. “I can outdo that steak. I’m really good on the grill.”

Don’t confuse Odom’s culinary confidence with cockiness. He is the furthest thing from arrogant. He is the first to say how lucky he is that his three children got his wife Tia’s looks and personality. He downplays most accomplishments he’s asked about. Odom’s high school coach says his football star who ran for 39 touchdowns his senior season on a torn ACL has always been as humble as they come.

Odom comes across as a modest man, no doubt. But he is confident. He is confident when it comes to the things he knows he’s good at.

Like mastering a crawfish boil, grilling a mean steak or whipping up a gourmet meal in the kitchen. His side hustle is cooking. He’s a sucker for food travel shows, like Anthony Bourdain’s, and for Food Network chefs like Bobby Flay. Among Tia’s favorite gifts to give her husband are cookbooks.

Odom is confident, too, about football. He doesn’t hesitate when asked to describe his coaching style, saying assertively, “I’m fair, honest, competitive, hard-nosed, loving and aggressive.” Odom has no doubt he can transform Purdue, which went 5-19 the past two seasons under Ryan Walters, into a playoff team. Maybe, dare he say it, into a national champion.

“Motivationally, I feel a huge responsibility not to let my players down from a preparation standpoint, from an organizational structure standpoint,” he said. “I feel the responsibility now for Purdue University as a football program to get back into the area that we’re competing and winning championships.”

Odom’s sentiment is why Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski brought him in. He believes strongly in his newest hire. At the press conference announcing Odom as the school’s 38th coach in December, Bobinski boasted about Odom’s turnaround at UNLV, leading the program to its best performance in 40 years.

“What was accomplished at UNLV these last couple years was nothing short of remarkable. That was a place that had zero tradition of success, zero winning culture, just none of it, literally none of it,” said Bobinski. “To go in there and immediately win nine games the first year, 10 games the second year, is one of the really incredible college football stories of these recent times.”

Brian Odom, linebackers coach for the University of North Texas, describes his older brother simply as “a go-getter.”

“If outworking people still exists, Barry Odom will be the guy that outworks you. If it comes down to scheming, he’ll probably be the one out scheming you. He’s going to be the guy that’s going to make it work without having to buy every player. He’s going to do a lot with the hand he’s dealt,” Brian Odom said.

“That was part of our upbringing and that was always kind of the deal, you know, you play the hand you’re dealt. You don’t bitch and moan about it. You do the best you can with it.”

Throughout his 48 years, Odom’s been set on doing his best, an ultracompetitive guy with gridiron strategy coursing through his veins. His upbringing has shaped him in many ways, including a fierce love for his family and for football.

Raised in a small town, Friday night lights

Odom is pretty sure he fell in love with football on Nov. 26, 1976. That is the day he was born. He can’t really ever remember a time when there wasn’t football in his life.

“I grew up in a really small town and the community aspect of that all, you know, the Friday night lights, the things that went into it,” he said. “Whatever sports season it was, the community just really rallied and bought into it and was so supportive.”

That town was Maysville, Oklahoma, located 50 miles south of Oklahoma City, population 1,400. It’s a town that prides itself on being the home of Wiley Post, the Father of Modern Aviation, the first pilot to fly solo around the world.

For the Odom family, Bob, Cheryl and their three sons, Brad, Barry and Brian, flying came in the form of footballs being hurled in the backyard.The Odoms lived on the edge of town on a nice piece of property, five acres or so, with woods, pastures and plenty of room for their own makeshift football field.

Behind the house, there was an area that stretched 100 yards wide. Bob Odom, a former Maysville High School teacher and football coach, who got into the oil and gas business around the time Odom was born, smoothed it out with a tractor. He mowed it neatly just like the front yard, and the boys put down goal lines, sidelines and yard markers.

“We would literally have everybody … all the kids would come up to our house and we would have tackle football games up there all the time,” said Brian Odom. The boys were recreating the magic of Friday night lights right in their own backyard.

At one point, Bob Odom put in a cement slab with a basketball goal. “Those were epic games out there in terms of no blood, no foul, just very competitive,” Brian said. All three Odom boys were ruthless and cutthroat when it came to winning. They were also ornery.

One year the brothers got the coveted toy of the 1980s, the Flingo. It was a slingshot meant to launch balls back and forth to one another. The Odom boys used it instead as a three-man slingshot, hiding behind trees and bushes at night.

One brother would hold the Flingo from the right and another from the left. The third brother would get a water balloon and place it in the pouch.

“And he just pulls it back and lets it rip,” said Brian Odom. “We would shoot water balloons at cars. We got pretty good at timing it up. It dropped right on the hood.”

Brian promises it wasn’t supposed to be malicious. It was all in fun They weren’t shooting at point blank range but yards away. Still there was a time or two the police were called. When the sirens came blaring, the Odom boys would scatter.

Another time, Odom and Brad had their BB guns in tow but couldn’t figure out a good target to shoot at. One of them got “the dumb” idea, Brian Odom said, to get a rag and hold it out. “Obviously, that didn’t turn out well,” he said laughing.

But as usually happens, ornery boys grow up, and they start plotting dreams beyond the antics of childhood.

Those dreams for Odom began when he got to see football greatness up close, living 33 miles from the Sooners stadium. During a 16-year span in the 1970s and 1980s, coach Barry Switzer led Oklahoma to 12 Big Eight Conference titles, 13 bowl games (going 8-5) and three national championships.

Odom had a high school coach that would get passes to the Sooners games, to spring practices, to behind-the-scenes access on the field and in the locker room.

“I would tag along for that. I just fell in love with that part of it,” said Odom. “That gave me perspective that there was a whole other world out there created by being able to compete at the time and gave me something to work toward.”

A state champion in track? Yes, he was

People who know Odom best say he’s got grit, the kind of toughness that can’t be taught.

“He thrives off of challenges. He always has. That’s been forever,” his older brother Brad Odom told the Columbia Daily Tribune in 2015. “If you wanted to see if he could do something, you’d bet against him.”

Give Odom a challenge and he rises to the occasion. Take his freshman football season at Maysville High when he tore the ACL in his right knee. Doctors didn’t want to operate because Odom still had a lot of growing to do. Bob Odom plotted a rehab regimen for his son.

“He was, I’ll say this, ACL deficient,” Bob Odom said years later. “It broke in two. If you don’t have one, those things don’t regenerate. They don’t grow back.”

For the rest of his high school career, Odom competed with that deficient ACL, which makes what he accomplished as an athlete even more incredible.

First, there was his speed. Most people don’t know Odom was a high school track star who won two state championships in the 400-meter dash. He was quick and that translated to the football field.

Odom started as a freshman at Maysville High as a running back and linebacker. As a sophomore in 1992, Odom rushed for 208 yards and scored all three touchdowns in a game that ended with a 22-0 victory. He tore up the field his junior year.

When Odom’s family moved 50 miles east to Ada, Oklahoma, for his senior season, that’s when Ada High football coach Larry McBroom got his first look at the high school star he’d heard about.

“We got to watch him work out and it was obviously a great boost to us to have him,” McBroom said. “He was an incredible player, had a work ethic that is beyond reproach. He just worked his tail off and made everyone around him better.”

In an early season game with Ada in September 1994, newspapers wrote about the team’s newest star transfer who “ripped (opponent) Ardmore for 107 yards and four TDs” in a 39-13 victory.

Odom finished his high school career as the state leader with 39 touchdowns as he led his Ada team to the state title. All the while, McBroom said he was in awe of how a teenage football star who the community adored and praised and boasted about could stay so grounded.

“He was very, very respectful, very humble. Even though he was very successful, he maintained his humility,” McBroom said. “It was just a coach’s dream as far as having someone of that character and that work ethic. That’s why I say he just made everyone around him better, coaches included.”

Odom had managed to excel in a high school career on a torn ACL. But he couldn’t do it much longer. After his senior track season, Odom had surgery. He had committed to Oklahoma State for football in the fall, but a coaching change meant the team no longer had a scholarship for him.

Missouri coach Larry Smith stepped in and signed Odom in the spring of 1995. Odom spent the rest of the year rehabilitating his knee before coming to Missouri for the spring semester of 1996.

In his career at Missouri, he was a four-year letterwinner at linebacker and helped the team make two bowl trips. He was team captain his senior season and ended his time at Missouri ranked in the program’s all-time top 10 with 362 tackles.

But football wasn’t all that was on his mind as a college student. While at Missouri, Odom spotted a woman on campus. She was the woman who would become his wife.

A football foodie family man

Odom’s dorm roommate at Missouri was also a football teammate, Jeff Marriott, who happened to have a class with a girl named Tia. During his sophomore year, Odom was walking with Marriott on campus when he stopped to talk about the class with Tia.

“We walked about another five yards, and I said, ‘Hey man, can I get an intro? Who is that? Can I get an introduction?'” Odom said.

After the introduction, Odom started badgering Marriott to have Tia come to their dorm to study. The plan worked. Odom and Tia will celebrate their 25th anniversary this year.

They have three children. JT is a linebacker at UNLV, Garyt is a freshman quarterback who came to Purdue with his dad, and Anna Lockwood is a 9-year-old dancer who Bobinski said is the one who keeps the Odom family in line.

One of Tia’s favorite things about Odom is his commitment to being a husband and father.

“He’s super awesome, really fun and just likes to hang out,” she said. “He has purposefully not had a lot of hobbies because when he has time off, he wants to be with us.”

Which circles back to Odom, the steak master. He started grilling as a way to perfect his craft but also to find a hobby that could be a family affair.

“There’s not much like sitting outside with your family in the evening,” Odom said, “perfect temperature, background music, and maybe a cold drink.”

Grilling for Odom soon turned into crawfish boils. Odom has all the equipment, a giant pot and a burner outside. The fish is ordered fresh, sometimes via Fed Ex, sometimes arriving on his front porch in a Styrofoam cooler. He and Tia cook them and spread them out. It’s something they enjoy doing together.

Both are good cooks. Odom loves Tia’s peach cobbler, red beans and rice, gumbo and quiche. “He’s really generous about my cooking,” she said. “He says he loves everything I make.”

That’s high praise because Odom is an outright foodie. He loves to try different restaurants and wine. Most of the trips the Odoms take center around which restaurants they want to try.

“That really trickled into him cooking more and going beyond just grilling outside and making crawfish outside,” said Tia. “He’d have something in a restaurant and ask me, ‘How would you make this?'”

All of that led to Odom watching cooking shows and reading cookbooks. He loves nothing more than a good meal.

But on game days, Odom doesn’t eat. Food is the furthest thing from his mind. He is focused on football.

‘The players respect and love him’

Odom is going to be the coach at Purdue who will “roll up his sleeves” and get to work, Bobinski said.

“When it’s time to work, he’s going to say it’s time to work,” said Brian Odom. “He’s got a good way about him of putting his arm around guys and making them feel like they’re important and especially in times that they need it. But he’ll be quick to let everybody know it’s time for business.”

“They’re going to, all season, they’re going to be doing the same thing at 1:05 p.m. on a Thursday of every Thursday during the season,” said Tia. “He’s just super disciplined on that. They run it, I mean, it’s like clockwork. It’s detail-oriented, for sure.”

McBroom was at church Dec. 8, the Sunday morning before Odom was named Purdue’s new coach. When he got home, McBroom had a text from another coach who said Odom was the lead candidate for the job. McBroom called his brother who stays in contact with Bob Odom.

“And he said that it was true that it was maybe going to happen,” McBroom said. “And then, of course, it did happen.”

McBroom smiled and started thinking back to his Ada high senior football star in 1995.

“Purdue is very, very blessed to have someone of his character and then he’s a great coach, no question about that,” McBroom said. “But a man of incredible impeccable character that will lead that program and lead those young men and help them become the quality people that I know that everybody wants.”

Odom is discplined and consistent, said Tia, which means he treats every player, from the star running back to the third string quarterback, the same.

“And I think that the players respect and love him for that,” she said. “They know what they’re going to get with him.”

Brian Odom knows, too, what Purdue players will get with his brother.

“He’ll bring in some quality young men and the guys that stay there and the guys that he brings in, he will be their favorite coach that they ever had.”

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.