Michael Odom, Northwestern Wildcats Football, No. 34

So, look, I'm not going to be able to do a post for every player on Northwestern's roster, so when Northwestern is double-numbered, I'm picking one.

Today, I had to choose between Warren Long -- a three-star freshman running back, and Michael Odom, a walk-on redshirt freshman linebacker. Long will get his day, but the running back depth chart is kinda stacked right now, so he's probably gonna redshirt. Odom, on the other hand, might play some downs in a blowout or maybe special teams? Ionno. Tough call. But, um, Odom!

Origin myth

Odom comes from Naperville, where, incidentally, he was the basketball teammate of one Dave Sobolewski at Benet Academy. He also, rather obviously, played football, the fullback for Benet Academy. He also occasionally returned kicks and played linebacker. However, he went unrecruited and came to Northwestern, his mom's alma mater. Here's an eight-minute long highlight reel of him playing football, which wouldn't be eight minutes if it didn't take such an aggressively long time to highlight which player Odom is and feature random cuts to the previous play at various intervals.

Piece of advice: if you are a fullback, your highlight reel should not feature a clip where your running back is tackled and fumbles. It especially should not be the third play of the highlight reel. Because I noticed the running back fumbling way before I noticed Odom blocking his assignment so hard that his helmet comes off.

At Northwestern

♬Tengo la camisa roja/da da da da da da/biblioteca biiiiblioteca.♬ (Note: I am so bad at being half-Cuban it's not even funny.

Anagram of choice

Discovering the Wildcats' inner selves through spelling

Michael Odom, anagrammed, is

COMMODE HAIL

You can read this as either a) worshipping a poop bucket or b) solid objects falling from the sky that initially came from a poop bucket. Both are gross. (Also considered: "A commie hold," which is a finishing move by a foreign wrestler in the mid-80's, "Moolah medic," which are those doctors you see on ads on the subway, "Each mom idol," which is a weird mother's day celebration or something, "Camel hid moo," which is a cow doing some pretending, and "I model macho," which is true.

Relevant musical selection

"Money Trees," Kendrick Lamar ft. Jay Rock

Yes, the thought process here is Odom ---> Lamar Odom ---> Kendrick Lamar.

I'm not sure if I've talked about it yet, but I've listened to a looooooot of rap music, and easily my favorite rap album of the past three years is "good kid, m.a.a.d city." This post has probably taken longer than any post I've written in a while, because trying to figure out which song to select off of the album took about an hour because I basically just took it as an excuse to listen to the album. It's one of these rare works of music that connects on sound -- this ethereal, smoked out sound, with Kendrick's weird, half-Compton half-alien sound -- lyrics -- perhaps more than anybody out right now, Kendrick can spit, and he does so with impressive lyricism and imagery, all while keeping up with some interesting cadences -- and message -- the story of a kid trying to stay straight in gang-riddled Compton, while trying to hook up with girls, smoke weed with his friends, and watching some of them get shot. At this exact moment, I decided "Money Trees," was my favorite song, but there's about four other options.

How he can help

Not much immediately. First of all, dude is 195 pounds, and that simply isn't big enough to play linebacker in the Big Ten. And linebacker is kinda booked right now for Northwestern, with two starters locked in and two starting-caliber players fighting for the other spot. But there's potential for walk-on linebackers -- note Timmy Vernon as the backup at MLB. But it takes time, and as a redshirt freshman, Odom has plenty of that.

Depth chart projection

Yo I mean we just explained this.