Purdue coach Barry Odom ready to face brother, Brian, and longtime friend Ryan Walters at Washington

By Canadian Press on November 14, 2025.

When Purdue coach Barry Odom walks onto the field Saturday in Seattle, he’ll see some familiar faces.

Sure, he may chat with Washington defensive coordinator Ryan Walters, a longtime friend who spent four seasons on Odom’s defensive staff at Missouri and the previous two years holding the title Odom now owns. He’ll almost certainly mingle with Huskies inside linebackers coach Brian Odom, his younger brother and also a former staff member at Missouri.

And Odom knows how difficult those three-plus hours on Saturday will be for himself and his two opponents.

“A number of things are based around relationships and as you change colors, that doesn’t change the relationship,” Odom said, reflecting on his first game against Missouri after the Tigers fired him following the 2019 season. “It was hard on both sides, you know, to walk across and see the guys you recruited just a few, short months ago, guys you were coaching and developing. Ryan’s a friend, and I hate coaching against my brother. But we signed up for it, so he wants to beat me, and I want to beat him.”

While their relationships run far deeper than football, the journey here, to his matchup, has been long, winding and emotional.

The Boilermakers gave the then 36-year-old Walters a chance to build on the program’s 2022 Big Ten West Division crown and first conference championship game appearance. Instead, things went south fast.

Walters went 5-19 in two seasons, losing his final 11 games — a stretch that included the two worst losses in school history, 66-7 to Notre Dame and 66-0 at Indiana. He was fired the day after the loss to Indiana.

That opened the door for Odom, who had revived UNLV’s program, and he took advantage quickly. Purdue opened the season by beating two Football Championship Subdivision schools, Indiana State and Southern Illinois, to end the Football Bowl Subdivision’s second-longest active losing streak. But Purdue (2-8, 0-7) hasn’t won since and has now lost 19 straight against FBS teams and a school record 15 in a row in league play.

For Washington (6-3, 3-3), coming off a 13-10 loss at Wisconsin that knocked the Huskies out of the AP Top 25, this return home with a chance to prove Purdue made a mistake with Walters and help Brian Odom get the upper hand in his sibling rivalry has given the players additional motivation.

“It definitely means a lot for us,” linebacker Xe’ree Alexander said. “Like the whole defense is fired up. The whole team is fired up just to go out this week and ball out.”

Walters, for his part, isn’t saying much about facing a Purdue roster that looks nothing like the one he recruited after more than 80 new players followed Barry Odom to West Lafayette, Indiana. But instead of feeling bitter, Walters remains grateful the Boilermakers gave him his first head coaching job.

“I am appreciative of my time there and the experience I had and the people I got to work with every day, and the young men I got to coach,” Walters said. “So, I’ll always be forever thankful for that opportunity. But I’m having a lot of fun here and really enjoy working at UW and being part of Seattle’s community.”

Brian Odom’s cross-country trek included stops at Arizona, Houston, Washington State, Oklahoma and Southern California in addition to the two seasons the Odom brothers coached together at Missouri. He’s never been a head coach, though, and while Barry Odom said they have spoken and that he’s proud of his brother, one lingering question remains.

Who will their parents be rooting for Saturday?

“You’ll have to ask them,” Barry Odom said with a laugh. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been the favorite. I don’t know, it’s strange. But the right answer would be both of us, of course.”

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AP Sports Writer Andrew Destin in Seattle contributed to this report.

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Michael Marot, The Associated Press