Barry Odom doesn't just speak the Purdue football core values. He lives them.
WEST LAFAYETTE ― Inspiration for Barry Odom derived from a spring football practice in Norman, Oklahoma.
Odom's eyes were fixated on Tony Casillas and Brian Bosworth, coach Barry Switzer and the rest of the Oklahoma Sooners' 1985 national championship team during a spring practice.
By the time Odom left Norman that day, he was sure of two things: He was going to be a linebacker, just as Bosworth had suggested to him, and football was what Odom wanted to do the rest of his life. As for adopting Bosworth's mullet, Odom says of photographs that exist, "you'll never see them."
Now the 48-year-old former University of Missouri standout linebacker is entering his first season as Purdue football head coach.
The Boilermakers went 1-11 before firing Ryan Walters and hiring Odom to return the program to relevance.
Odom's plan to do that is a list of 16 core values he's dubbed "the Purdue way."
It starts with three words: hard, smart and tough.
"When you're talking about a full set of guys that all need to get on the exact same page of what we need to accomplish and what we need to do, that 16 steps and the hard, smart and tough, those are going to be intrinsic values into what builds our culture," senior running back Devin Mockobee said.
Hope. Vision. Belief. Structure. Discipline.
"Bullet points. Rules and guidelines to just be a great person off the field and that ultimately leads into being a great football player," defensive end CJ Madden said at last week's Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas.
Every football coach worth his grain of salt does some version of this.
Spewing a pile of motivational terms won't be enough for Purdue to reverse its recent lack of success.
Odom wouldn't deliver a message he didn't wholeheartedly believe in.
"That is the exact idea of who Barry Odom is as a man, as a coach, as a father, and that's exactly what we build our program based off of because he believes in those values," said Brandon Lee, a former linebacker at Missouri when Odom was the Tigers' head coach and is now Purdue football's general manager working alongside him. "I had the opportunity to play at the same institution as coach Odom, so I've met former coaches, former administrators that coached him and played alongside him, or was an administrator during his playing days.
"They say those same things he preaches is who he's been since the late '90s and before. It's his genetic makeup. It's not just something where he pulled out a blank sheet of paper and started brainstorming ideas."
Before it was the Purdue way, Odom's core values were the Missouri way and most recently how he turned a program with almost no football history at UNLV into Mountain West Conference champions.
"What he thinks is the standard, he's going to keep it the standard," said senior cornerback Tony Grimes, who played for Odom at UNLV last season and transferred to Purdue. "When he first came (to Purdue), he laid down that law. He laid the foundation. He laid down hard, smart and tough. Six-second competitors. Team. He laid it all down right then and there. Every player grasped it and took it on."
Odom went 4-8 in 2016, his first season as Missouri's head coach. He's never finished with a losing record since.
In the past two seasons with Odom as head coach, UNLV went 20-8, its most wins over a two-season span in program history. It had taken six seasons prior to Odom's arrival for the Rebels to compile 20 victories.
And now he takes on a new program recently in ruins using the same principles believing it will catapult another turnaround.
"There will become at some point, we'll break down a wall and there'll be really strong validation," Odom said. "It's getting a group of guys and pouring into them every single day. And I know it's boring and monotonous talk, but it's every day making Purdue football better today than it was yesterday.
"And then you wake up tomorrow, you do the same thing. And you do it over and over and over. Then it becomes the core DNA of who you are as a team and an organization, and it takes off."
Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sking@jconline.com and follow him on X and Instagram @samueltking.