Barry Odom is focusing on what he can control.
Entering his first year as head coach of Purdue football, Odom can’t change the Boilermakers’ 1-11 performance last season. He can’t sway the analyst projections predicting Purdue to finish dead-last in the Big Ten Conference, and he can’t make the Boilermakers’ fall schedule any easier.
Five teams Purdue is set to face this season are ranked in the AP’s Top 25 College Preseason Poll, released Monday.
Of course, these rankings should be expected to fluctuate throughout the season, but Odom can anticipate fierce games against all five of these programs.
The Boilermakers will travel to No. 6 Notre Dame in Week 4 before they host No. 12 Illinois the following Saturday. Odom needs to keep his roster healthy and prepared for a tough end of season — after Purdue travels to No. 14 Michigan in Ann Arbor (Week 9), the Boilermakers will face No. 3 Ohio State (Week 10) and No. 20 Indiana (Week 12) at home.
It’s a daunting schedule, but Odom is preparing his athletes for the challenges to come by emphasizing Purdue football’s core values, or the “Purdue Way.”
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“We're evolving every single day as a team and I believe that we're making great progress. We established 16 core values of our team and our program, and we call it The Purdue Way. Those values, it is a natural fit for Purdue football,” Odom explained July 24 at Big Ten Football Media Days in Las Vegas. “But there's strong alignment, there's tremendous vision and work ethic every single day to create habits for a team, our staff has blended really, really well together, and I believe that that will prove a huge advantage for this team, hope, vision and belief, and soon enough, we'll have validation on the things that we've started building this program.”