And now, the reset

 Say this for the athletic braintrust at Purdue University, on the morning after they made Barry Odom the school's 38th head football coach: They know all the words to that popular hindsight tune "We Shouldn'ta Oughta Done That, And We're Not Gonna Do It Again."

Which is to say, Barry Odom actually has a resume. Ryan Walters, the braintrust's last hire, did not.

Two years ago they rolled the dice on a dynamic young defensive coordinator who had never been a head coach, and, as frequently happens, his skills did not transfer. So the braintrust struck up the aforementioned tune, and went looking for a resume guy.

Odom's who they found -- and the resume he brings with him more than suggests he knows what he's doing as a head coach, on account of he's been one. Been one in the SEC, for goodness sakes. Been one at UNLV, where he turned a sorry falling-down program into a winner in just two seasons.

Sorry falling-down program ...

Hmm.

Sound like anyone we know?

Why, goodness gracious, yes it does. That's Purdue to a "T" right now, coming off that smoking crater of a 1-11 season. It was so bad it got Ryan Walters fired after just two seasons. It was so bad recruits were fleeing their commits because, well, why wouldn't they; so bad Walters had hardly any other recruits locked up before the early signing period last week.

Odom inherits a wreck, in other words. Then again, it's nothing he hasn't seen before.

At UNLV, he inherited a program that had been to one bowl game in the previous 22 seasons. It hadn't had a nine-win season in 39 years, and in the three seasons before Odom's arrival it had gone 0-6 in the Covid year, 2-10 and 5-7. The Runnin' Rebels hadn't had a winning season since 2013, when they needed a bowl win to finish 7-6.

In Odom's first season, the Rebels went 9-5 and finished first in the Mountain West. This fall, they're 10-3 and lost in the Mountain West title game to Boise State.

So in two seasons, Odom managed to do something that hadn't happened in Vegas since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. And he did it twice.

This does not mean he'll perform the same magic in West Lafayette, of course. The Big Ten is a whole different animal than the Mountain West, and the recruiting and transfer portal-ing is on a whole a different level. Darrell Hazell, remember, came to Purdue as a miracle worker, too, a man who in two seasons turned a perennial MAC loser (Kent State) into a nationally ranked 11-3 team that reached the conference championship game.

Hazell was in his fourth season at Purdue when he was fired six games into the 2016 campaign.  He never won more then three games in a season and departed with an overall record of 9-33.

However.

However, Odom's experience to date has been very different. For one thing, four of his six years of head-coaching experience happened at Missouri in the SEC, where he finished .500 (25-25) but won more games every year except the last, when the Tigers went 6-6. 

So, you know, there's that.

Whether it will be enough remains to be seen.