Odom’s exit

Defensive coordinator Barry Odom took the head coaching job at UNLV just a few days after Pittman said he expected his coordinators to be available for Liberty Bowl practices.

Pittman made the remark with Odom sitting with him in a car, preparing to go in for a home visit on a recruiting trip in Texas.

Pittman explained his thoughts on Odom’s departure on Friday.

“I was really happy for him, and I’m happy for UNLV,” Pittman said. “They got a really good coach, a really good man.

“Catch me off guard? UNLV did. I knew about Tulsa and all that kind of stuff. Not a whole lot about UNLV. But no, I was kind of prepared for that because I knew that he had opportunities. Certainly if he wanted them, I wanted him to get them. So no, not really.”

Pittman explained it was difficult to talk about his coordinators on the brink of a home visit with Odom.

“You’re getting ready to go into a home visit, you know you’re going to lose him, so how are you going to talk to the kids?” he asked. “What I did was, I took the parents aside and just said, ‘Hey, tomorrow, coach is going to be the new head coach at UNLV, and they want to keep it quiet.’

“You worry about other programs. You’ve got to worry about your own first.”

Pittman added that tight ends coach Dowell Loggains’ departure to become offensive coordinator at South Carolina was not necessarily a surprise, as Coach Shane Beamer had reached out to him to express his interest.

“I had talked to Shane,” he said. “He had called me, and I talked to him. That wasn’t really a surprise.”