COLUMBIA, Mo. - Whatever the outcome, Barry Odom had a plan. With the future of satellite camps hanging in the balance, Missouri had to be prepared to act on the NCAA's decision.
"From a planning standpoint, you'd better have things lined up if it passes or if it doesn't," Odom said. "So we've worked hard over the last couple months working on where we're going to go for our recruiting base."
Turns out, he'll be staying right at home.
The NCAA ruled Friday that members of the Football Bowl Subdivision have to hold their camps and clinics "at their school's facilities or at facilities regularly used for practice or competition," effective immediately.
The Southeastern Conference already had a rule against holding satellite camps, but with schools like Michigan imposing on the South's fertile recruiting grounds, a change became imminent. The only question was in which direction, all or nothing.
"I'm excited to get as many prospects as I can on our campus," Odom said Friday after the ruling came down, "and we'll put on a great camp, and it's been awesome. The camps that we have had here, we've always found players, and I would expect this summer to be the best camp series we've ever put on."
The first-year coach was hesitant to stray from the company line, adhering to whatever the SEC allowed.
"I prefer to go about what our vote is, and if they told us to stay on campus, then we're going to make it the best that there is," Odom said. "And if they would've allowed us to go elsewhere, then we would've done an awesome job pairing up with people and getting around to as many places as we could."
Prior to the ruling, Odom said Missouri would focus on St. Louis and Kansas City as well as Texas and the Gulf Coast region during the two 15-day windows in which the camps would've been held.
"We would've tried to get in as many states that we recruit that we could've," he said Friday. "There were so many schools reaching out to want to pair up together. We had some things that we felt like we were going to do pretty strongly and then within the last 48 hours, it got a little bit crazy on people wanting to pair up all over the place. So there were some decisions to make yet to see just how many we were going to really do. I think we had 10 or so set and then we were going to make decisions from there."
USA Today reported Mississippi had planned a camp in Atlanta with Missouri.
"There were so many schools involved in the mega-camp that there were, I would say, up to 15 schools that had communicated on trying to plan out what was going to happen," Odom said when asked about the report.
Odom said his experience coaching at Rock Bridge High School allows him to weigh the decision from both sides of the equation.
"You've got to look at the quality of life for recruits and for prospects," he said. "If they're going to 18 camps during the summer, if I'm a high-school coach, I'm not real excited about that. So I can look at it through a different lens and make it right or wrong any way you look at it.
"We'll do a great job getting kids on our campus, and I'm excited about that, because they get to see that in our environment and they get to see what Missouri's about."
The NCAA also decided to deregulate electronic communication between football coaches and recruits.
"That will provide an opportunity to get in touch with them a little bit more," Odom said. "Again, I go back, because I was a high-school coach not too long ago, the quality of life for those kids, you want to make sure that they're still high-school kids. Let's ease up a little bit and make sure that they've got a great high-school experience and recruit them the way you need to.
"But it's about building relationships and trust and being able to reach them as many times as you can but also having respect for what they're trying to do at their high school as well."