University of Arkansas football coaches hit the road on Friday for an intense weekend of recruiting and one of Coach Sam Pittman’s coordinators appears to have peeled off a spell for a job interview.
Dean Blevins of KWTV-TV of Oklahoma City reported on Friday that Odom had interviewed via Zoom for the vacant head coaching position at Tulsa.
An Oklahoma native, Odom has extensive ties to the state and began his football coaching career in Ada, Okla., in 2000 after graduating from Missouri.
Odom has been defensive coordinator and a confidante for Pittman since December 2019. Prior to that, Odom had a 25-25 record in four seasons as head coach at Missouri.
Tulsa fired Coach Phillip Montgomery on Sunday after eight years and a 43-53 record.
The Athletic mentioned Odom as one of several potential candidates for the opening for the Golden Hurricane, whose enrollment of less than 4,000 students is the lowest in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Another potential candidate, G.J. Kinne, was hired Friday by Texas State. Kinne, a high school player in Gilmer, Texas, for current Texas-San Antonio Coach Jeff Traylor, was on staff at Arkansas in 2018 with Traylor under Chad Morris.
Other candidates, according to The Athletic, include Texas wide receivers coach Brennan Marion, a former Golden Hurricane receiver; Justin Fuente, a Tulsa native who has a 69-54 record in 10 seasons as a head coach at Memphis and Virginia Tech; former Texas Tech Coach Matt Wells; Purdue receivers coach Garrick McGee, a former Arkansas offensive coordinator under Bobby Petrino, who is also a native of Tulsa, and several others.
Another candidate could be Ohio State offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson, a former Indiana head coach. Wilson spent nine years on Coach Bob Stoops’ staff at Oklahoma and coordinated prolific offenses for the Sooners from 2006-10. He won the Broyles Award as the top assistant coach in the country in 2008 when the Sooners scored 60-plus points in five consecutive games.
Odom is making a salary of $1.85 million this season, the highest ever paid for an Arkansas coordinator.
According to The Athletic, Montgomery’s salary at Tulsa, a private school, was about $1.8 million last season.