Minium: There Were High Expectations for ODU Football at Sun Belt Media Days

By Harry Minium

NEW ORLEANS, La. – The interviews are always back-to-back-to-back, the pace grueling and the questions nearly all the same every year at Sun Belt Conference football media days. 

But a few things felt different this year for Old Dominion Head Football Coach Ricky Rahne.

First, Rahne is now the longest-tenured Sun Belt coach. When he came to ODU in 2019, he was 39 years old and heralded as one of the nation’s youngest head coaches.

 
In his first season, ODU had the nation’s youngest FBS coaching staff.

“Now, I’m 45 and I’m not young anymore,” he said with a smile.

“It’s been an interesting transition for me, from being considered a young head coach to the longest-tenured.”

One more thing was different this year: expectations among the media for ODU are higher than ever.

Although ODU was picked to finish fifth in the official league poll, that was an outlier. Most preseason publications have ODU picked to finish no lower than third in the East Division, and thus have the Monarchs going to a bowl game.

And Athlon Magazine said the Monarchs are darkhorses to win the Sun Belt title.

“I’m expecting big things from ODU this season,” David Schultz, host of Locked on the Sun Belt website, said as he began interviewing Rahne.

Rocky Boiman, the NFL vet with a Super Bowl ring, and now an ESPN+ sports broadcaster, said "I expect ODU to vie for the East Division title" just before he began an interview in the Sun Belt studios at the New Orleans Superdome. 

Rahne said, as he does most years, that preseason predictions mean nothing in the era of the transfer portal. 

“Preseason polls, in my opinion, are the silliest thing we do in all of college sports,” he said. “I especially think they’re silly now because of the portal, because no one knows these players or these teams.”

But when asked to evaluate his team, he rattled off many of the reasons why people are expecting much from the Monarchs.

ODU returns two quarterbacks named Sun Belt Conference Player of the Week a year ago. “We’re stronger at quarterback than we’ve ever been,” he said.

Not since David Washington led the Monarchs to 10 victories and the 2016 Bahamas Bowl title have the Monarchs been this strong at quarterback, with both starter Colton Joseph and backup Quinn Henicle returning.  

“Essentially, we return four starters at linebacker and only three can start. And that's a problem I wish we had at every position," Rahne said. 

Jason Henderson, the All-American linebacker who sat out most of last season with an injury, returns. Rahne said the Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania native recently “had the best workout I’ve ever seen him have. He’s in great shape.”

ODU’s offensive line returns four starters, the wide receivers are the tallest and most talented the Monarchs have had in years, the depth is better than it’s been in a long time and the team returns its head coach and all three coordinators for the third year in a row.

And there were two big reasons for optimism on the stage with Rahne – offensive lineman Zach Barlev, a 6-foot-4, 318-pound senior from Bolingbrook, Illinois, and defensive end Kris Trinidad, a 6-5, 272-poind redshirt senior from Richmond.

Barlev and Trinidad, like Henderson, Joseph and so many others, could have tried their luck in the transfer portal, but decided loyalty and continuity were more important than a few extra bucks.

Barlev has been in the portal once – he transferred to ODU from Illinois, but did so for good reason, because he wasn’t playing for the Illini. He left on good terms and still communicates with his former teammates and coaches.

“I was behind guys who were better than me and were going to be around a while,” he said.

He started last season, his first at ODU, and was named a third-team All-Sun Belt choice last season. Clearly, he could have made more money had he re-entered the portal.

“I know guys do that,” he said. “When you’re playing at a school and happy at a school, what’s the point in leaving? Why not build on what I have here instead of starting fresh?

“If I go somewhere else and things don’t work out, I could lose any shot I have at the NFL.

“And why would I leave a team that I love playing with?”

Trinidad came to ODU from Lloyd Bird High School in suburban Richmond and as a senior, did not have a scholarship offer a week before signing day. Then came a call from Army, followed by a call from Rahne.

Trinidad took ODU's offer sight unseen – he was a senior during the pandemic and could not make a recruiting visit.

When he arrived on campus, he was 185 pounds, 20 lighter than he was listed on the Bird roster and nearly 90 pounds lighter than he is now after four years in ODU's strength and conditioning program.

“When I met the coaches, I tried to puff myself up to look bigger than I was,” he said.

But ODU stuck with him, redshirting him as a freshman, and then gradually developing him into one of the best defensive ends in the Sun Belt.

He started parts of his next two seasons, then was a third-team All-Sun Belt choice last season when he had 45 tackles and 10 ½ tackles for loss. He graduated in May with a degree in cyber security.

“Coach Rahne promised me when I came here that he would stick with me and develop me," he said. "He kept his word and there’s no way I would want to leave.”

“There are a lot of fifth-year seniors in college football,” Rahne said. “But not a lot who’ve stayed at one school.

"That says a lot about Kris.”

Rahne said ODU President Brian O. Hemphill, Ph.D., and Dr. Wood Selig, ODU’s director of athletics, granted ODU football a significant increase in NIL funding “that allowed us to be much more competitive in the portal,” Rahne said.

“But I also think that we just have great relationships with our players, that they know we’re going to develop them. Our players enjoy being around our coaches and enjoy being around each other.

“You’re going to lose some players. That’s just the way college football is. But you’ve got to celebrate the ones who stay, the ones who decide to represent us and our conference in a way that makes everybody proud.

“I’ve got two guys right here who have decided to do that. We’ve had countless other guys on our team that had other opportunities to leave and chose to stay.”

Even with higher expectations, one thing hasn’t changed. Rahne still extols his “1-0 mentality,” which encourages players to focus on each day, each workout and each rep in practice rather than looking ahead.

“The key word is ‘pre’ in preseason predictions,” Barlev said. “That means absolutely nothing to us. Looking ahead does us no good.

“All that matters to us is what we do in the postseason.”

Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram