Purdue football coach Barry Odom makes first public appearance
Purdue football coach Barry Odom addresses questions from media in first public appearance in West Lafayette
WEST LAFAYETTE — Just two hours downstate, head coach Curt Cignetti is preparing for a College Football Playoff game that few, if any, thought possible one year ago.
Last week, Purdue football hoped its own turnaround began with the hiring of Barry Odom.
It’s worth noting that what happened at Indiana is not the norm.
But a first-year turnaround under a new head coach is not as uncommon as one might think.
A more realistic stepping stone is the Boilermakers becoming bowl eligible.
For that to happen in 2025, Purdue would need a five-win improvement from its 1-11 season.
Can Barry Odom improve Purdue football by five wins?
Indiana’s 2024 season is among the most drastic one-year jumps, but a jump of five or more wins from the previous season under a new head coach among current Power 4 conference programs has happened on average nearly once a year for three decades.
Since 1995, an improvement of five or more wins after a coaching change has happened 29 times among Power 4 teams, including once at Purdue under Joe Tiller in 1997 when the Boilermakers improved from 3-8 to 9-3 in one season.
Urban Meyer did it at two different schools, Utah (at the time in the Mountain West Conference) and Ohio State. It’s happened five times in the Big Ten, including Meyer at Ohio State in 2012 and Tiller’s first Purdue squad. Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, David Braun last season at Northwestern and Cignetti this year also joined that list. Current Big Ten teams Washington (twice) and USC also have seen it happen while members of the Pac-10/Pac-12.
Five of those five-plus win turnarounds under a new head coach have come since 2021, when Name, Image and Likeness went into effect and nine such seasons came after the NCAA created the transfer portal in 2018.
Where can Purdue football get six wins?
Based on the most recent season and with so many roster unknowns, it’s not safe to assume the Boilermakers beat anyone next season.
The schedule is again challenging, just maybe not quite as rigorous as 2024, where Purdue faced five of the 12 College Football Playoff teams.
Games against Ball State on Aug. 30 and Southern Illinois on Sept. 6 appear winnable and would get the Boilermakers off to a good start before USC visits Ross-Ade Stadium followed by Purdue’s first road game at Notre Dame.
If Purdue gets to six wins, it’ll likely have to take advantage of the schedule stretch that follows that first four games. The next third of the schedule includes Illinois and Rutgers at home along with road games at Minnesota and Northwestern.
The Boilermakers’ schedule gets progressively tougher from there: at Michigan, vs. Ohio State, at Washington, vs. Indiana.
Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sking@jconline.com and follow him on X and Instagram @samueltking.
