Mizzou's new coach

[Al Agnew]

So what do you think...will Barry Odom end up being a good choice?

Seems a lot of the fan base wanted somebody else.  A "name" coach.  An up and coming coach out of a non-Power 5 conference.  Even throwing lots and lots of money at an established P5 coach.  Instead they "promoted" a guy who doesn't have any head coaching experience.

I think there are legitimate concerns about picking Odom at this point in his career; most knowledgeable football people think he was real head coach material, but many think he should have paid his dues at a lower tier school first.  

But there is a lot to be said for having a coach that really wants to be there a long time, a "true son".

I think a lot depends upon who he gets for his coordinators.  Looks like Coach Kul won't be staying, though nothing is set in stone yet.  They'll miss him if he goes.

And a lot depends upon whether they have a viable offensive line next year.  You have to think that Lock and the young receivers will get at least a little better over the offseason, but they will be losing offensive linemen to graduation, and they weren't any good before then.  If the offense doesn't look better next year than they did this year, Odom's first season could be a long and depressing one.

[joeD]

Recruiting recruiting recruiting. Can he do it? We'll see. A number of conference schools seem to be ascending in their football programs. Mizzou is not one of them. A risky move that could put us back into chump status. Then again, who knows? There are all kinds of examples of successful "promote from within" stories. Stanford comes to mind. Too early to make any sensible judgement. Give it time. I'm fine with the decision.

[stlfisher]

I like the hire, and I think Odom is a great fit. Sure there is risk, but I think he is going to be great.  The recruits seem to love him, and has been hitting the recruiting trail really hard.  Not accepting a bowl invite is going to help in that regard.  Really interested to see who the coordinators will be.

I think we will be fine next year. Even modest offensive improvement and this years team would have been decent.

[Jerry Rapp]

I think if the team decides they don't like him, they will just strike until he is fired.  That fiasco this year about did me in.   I read several other fishing forums with sports topic forums, and the Missouri situation is very frowned upon as a rotten place.  It wouldn't surprise me if no one outside the program wanted the job.  Time will tell how it all plays out, but you can't let the inmates run the prison.

[tho1mas]

Jerry Rapp - You are right !

I only watch them to see them screw up.

[Al Agnew]

Geez, guys, Mizzou just happened to be the place where it happened first.  It's happened at other schools since then, and now it can happen about anywhere.  There's just too much money involved, and the players now know they have the clout to make things happen.  This is no longer a Mizzou thing, it's a problem endemic to college football.  There is NOTHING to stop players at other schools from striking for any reason they care about.  The schools cannot afford to forfeit games, so it would take a lot of guts and a suicide wish to suspend a whole team (or a substantial part of a team) and have to forfeit and lose a million or more dollars per game.

Something will have to change in college football to fix this.  Coaches know that.  

[Flysmallie]

17 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

Something will have to change in college football to fix this.  Coaches know that.  

Well if they were paid, like they should be, it would be something that you could take away if they did not choose to play. I'm not saying you need to make these kids rich. But giving them some spending money would make a world of difference to them. I know, I know, they are getting their school paid for them. Well not all of them are so that response doesn't work. My daughter also is getting a scholarship. But she doesn't have a job at the school that she's not getting paid to do. She does write for the school newspaper and she gets paid for that. But she also has the time for a real job to earn money that you need outside of a scholarship. Have money to go spend time with your friends. Athletes don't have time for that and we continue to make billions and billions of dollars off them. But if you did pay them you could stop this nonsense. You don't play we don't pay.

[Deadstream]

If they don't play I will go fishing. Better for my heart!

[Al Agnew]

Maybe paying the players would accomplish what you think, Flysmallie, but I really don't want to open up that can of worms.  I look at it this way...except for walk-ons, not many of whom ever see much playing time and bring in many people to watch them, the players ARE getting scholarships.  Just like any other college student, they are taking advantage of college (theoretically at least), to prepare themselves for their adult lives.  Football players are preparing themselves for a career in professional football if they are good enough, and if they are smart they are preparing themselves for some other job if they aren't good enough to go pro.  Given the cost of a college education, that's equal to a pretty big chunk of change.  And the players ARE still students, even if they are just students learning how to play wide receiver in the NFL.

I know the colleges are making big money off these player athletes.  I also know that the players don't have time much of the year to work outside of college for spending money.  I would be okay with them getting a small stipend for spending money.  When I look back on my college years back in the Jurassic Era, I was on scholarship but actually worked for my spending money, first on a work study program that garnered me a whole $20 a week for sweeping out the gym most afternoons (I often slacked off because the janitor that was supposed to be supervising me would take the afternoon off and go get drunk, some of the basketball guys and my buddies would show up, and we'd play basketball during the couple hours I was supposed to be sweeping the gym, and then I'd give it a very quick sweep when we were done.)  My last year I worked at the local Walmart making sales signs and made about $50 a week.  I don't know what that would equal in today's money, but it kept me in gas and ramen noodles.

But what I don't want to see is players getting paid based upon their performance, or their potential.  Recruiting can be sleazy enough as it is; can you imagine college coaches in open bidding wars for the services of an 18 year old?  Adding a few bucks a week to the scholarship would be fine, but that's as far as I'm willing to go.

With all its warts, I still love college football and basketball.  These are still kids playing their hearts out, often for nothing but their coaches, teammates, and school.  I don't want the colleges to become minor leagues in fact, even though in principle they are pretty close to that now.  The Mizzou players didn't strike over salary.  Deluded or not, they took a stand on something they believed in, not knowing what it would cost them to do so.  Along the way, they demonstrated how money rules college football and found out that college athletes have more clout than anybody realized.  I prefer to believe that wasn't what they had in mind, and that they were sincere in what they were doing.  I also prefer to believe that Pinkel supported them not because of the million dollars that was at risk, but because they were part of his football family.  Should such actions have consequences?  Sure.  But do we really want to show that we look upon college athletes as slaves to the games, of no value unless they are playing on Saturday?

I don't know the answer.  Football, especially, is a game where you can't just go ask the student body for volunteers for the coming Saturday if the players decide to boycott the game.  If they refuse to play the game doesn't get played.  Basketball is a little different.  Back in the same Jurassic Era, during my two years of junior college before going on to the janitor's job, one year the basketball coach had recruited a group of knuckleheads.  They played their first two games, and won them easily--the knuckleheads were good.  But they wouldn't listen to the coach on much of anything, and he got fed up with it and kicked his starting five and a couple others off the team, suddenly finding himself without enough warm bodies to put five on the floor.  He got some decent high school players that were attending the college to come out and play for him, and as I remember, the first game they played was after exactly one practice the night before, and they predictably got blown out.  But by the end of the year they were a pretty darned good team, ending up winning more games than they lost, and they were one of the most fun teams to watch I ever saw.

But it's a little easier to get five or six guys to play basketball and be at least a little competitive than it is to get 25-30 football replacements and have them learn at least a few rudimentary plays and get into football shape in three or four days.  So the school has TV contracts, conference contracts, agreements with the other schools they will be playing.  They HAVE to show up to play every Saturday, and they can't just plug in replacements if their players decide they don't want to play.  Perhaps it was fortunate that there were a LOT of people at Mizzou that wanted those administrators out of there, making it a little easier to kick them out once the football players got into the fray.  I know you don't want the student athletes running the show (I disagree with the analogy of inmates running the asylum or prison, even though in some ways it's comparable).  I just don't know how you put the genie back in the bottle at this point.

[Flysmallie]

10 minutes ago, Al Agnew said:

Maybe paying the players would accomplish what you think, Flysmallie, but I really don't want to open up that can of worms.  I look at it this way...except for walk-ons, not many of whom ever see much playing time and bring in many people to watch them, the players ARE getting scholarships.  Just like any other college student, they are taking advantage of college (theoretically at least), to prepare themselves for their adult lives.  Football players are preparing themselves for a career in professional football if they are good enough, and if they are smart they are preparing themselves for some other job if they aren't good enough to go pro.  Given the cost of a college education, that's equal to a pretty big chunk of change.  And the players ARE still students, even if they are just students learning how to play wide receiver in the NFL.

But what you fail to take into consideration is that there are a LOT of colleges out there with a LOT of players that are walk-ons or have a small scholarship. Quit think Mizzou football and basketball are the only programs. It's 100% not right. Very few go on to have successful careers after college. And a lot of these student athletes don't even have a shot at a career in their game because it doesn't exist beyond college. There is no can of worms. Give them $10 bucks an hour for practice and game time. Like I said I'm not saying that  they should become rich but a lot of them are not getting what they deserve.

And it's not just the schools making money off of these players. I'm not worried about the money that schools make off of them. Let's take a look at what a company like ESPN makes off of college sports.