NORFOLK — If football has an offseason, Old Dominion is still waiting for it to start.
A month after the Monarchs’ 24-10 win over South Florida in the StaffDNA Cure Bowl on Dec. 17, much has changed in the program.
In addition to a number of players coming and going through the transfer portal, ODU lost offensive coordinator Kevin Decker to Memphis. Wide receivers coach Kody Cook has been promoted to Decker’s old position, and other departed offensive staffers have been replaced.
Sixth-year head coach Ricky Rahne, meanwhile, signed a four-year contract extension set to keep him at the school through 2029. The deal, which makes Rahne ODU’s first coach to earn at least $1 million per year, happened near the end of the program’s most successful FBS season.
After a 10-3 finish, the 2026 Monarchs will start almost from scratch on the offensive line, where they enjoyed nearly unparalleled continuity. Upperclassmen like Zach Barlev and Stephon Dubose-Bourne exhausted their eligibility. Maarten Woudsma, a junior from Oscar Smith High in Chesapeake, followed Decker to Memphis.
After staying in town for the holidays and heading to Charlotte for a coaches’ convention, Rahne talked with The Virginian-Pilot about personnel changes, the challenges of coaching in the age of the portal and the importance of being happy. (Hint: Living close to the office helps.)
The Virginian-Pilot: I wanted to start by asking you about Kevin Decker and the job he did here. Anything you’d like to say about that?
Rahne: “Obviously, Kevin, he did a great job. If you look at what we were able to do and the points we were able to put up pretty consistently, particularly throughout the second half of last year and throughout this year, he did a great job. With team success comes individual recognition, and Kevin was able to get some recognition and get a different opportunity. Happy for him. But I’m excited about the direction we’re going in the meetings that I’ve had with Coach Cook and where the offense can continue to evolve and get better and for our program to continue to get better.”
Does anything change with the offense under Coach Cook?
“Obviously, there’s going to be some slight changes, and everybody’s got their own feel and personality that they put on something. Coach Cook is calling the plays, and he’ll be in charge. There might be a couple of things that we change from a schematic standpoint. There might be a few things that we change — maybe how we call things and how we communicate some things. But the overall feel will probably be very similar to what it was. Obviously, we’re going to do whatever we can to maximize the talents of our players. And so as our players change, there’s always going to be slight changes here and there, just due to the talents of our players.”
You’ve had people like (receiver) Tre Brown, Maarten Woudsma, (linebacker) Jahleel Culbreath, (safety) Jerome Carter go. Were any of those surprises to you or did they tell you before the bowl game?
“Yeah. For the most part, I knew before the bowl game. And so it wasn’t that much of a surprise — or at least there was communication: ‘Hey, I’m trying to weigh my options,’ and those sort of things. I had a lot of communication with the guys. I felt very good about how that went down. I have a great relationship with the players, so I felt like I was getting a lot of honest feedback from them. And so it allowed us to not be surprised. Also, as I continue to do this, I get a little bit better at maybe anticipating — maybe not necessarily certain guys — but maybe certain areas where we may need to attack. And if you look, we were able to sign a bunch, even in the December period, from some junior colleges and things like that, which kind of mitigated a little bit the transfer portal loss that we had.”
Do you feel pretty good about what you have coming in versus what went out?
“I mean, obviously, when you lose guys, you develop attachments to them and personal relationships with those guys. And so it’s never fun to lose anybody as they leave. But I do feel good about the talent that we’re bringing in. I continue to feel good that we’re really developing depth, and I know I harped on that a bunch last year, and I thought that it helped us this year win games. And I feel like we’re getting that again. The reality of it is last year, everybody questioned us as what we were going to do at receiver because we only had two returning catches or what not. And we’re going to be in a very similar situation this year. But again, I feel good about the guys we’re bringing in and the talent that we’re bringing in. And so maybe you don’t have a guy that’s going to replace a guy for a guy for a guy, but the overall talent of the room, I think, is going to be very good. And that’s just one example. Obviously, the other one that people are probably going to harp on this year is offensive line. Our offensive line, with guys like Barlev and Steph, they did such a great job and played a bunch of games here. We’re going to have an all-new offensive line this year. That’s just the way it is. We’ve got a new offensive line coach, and again, I’m excited about the overall depth and the talent that we’ve brought in, both through the junior college ranks and through the transfer portal. But it’s going to be a situation where I’m going to see. And listen: This is where, as I’ve become an older coach, I realize that we’re not trying to win games in spring ball, right? And so we’ve got some time to develop these guys. We’ve got to develop the team. That’s where the one transfer portal window is nice, is you really kind of know who you have and that sort of thing. But we’ve got to make sure that we do whatever we can so that when we kick off our game in August/September, that’s when we have to be our best. We don’t have to be our best right now. We have to be our best then.”
In this climate with the portal, how do you make this a destination school and not a stopover?
“I think it’s funny. What’s hard in today’s day and age is, I think, no matter where you’re at, there’s an element of everybody’s looking at the next place. And I don’t care if you’re at University of Alabama, where everyone’s like, ‘OK, I’m going to go here, play for three years, go to the NFL.’ It doesn’t matter. A junior college, and it’s go for two years and then go play (elsewhere). I think that it’s just in the nature of the way we’ve set this thing up that people feel like they’re looking for the next spot. So I think the thing that I have to do and our coaching staff has to do and everybody is we’ve got to focus on making the yearly experience as great as humanly possible. And the kids feel like they’re having a great experience, that they’re cared for, that they are developing both on and off the field, that the coaches are developing both on and off the field. So everybody feels like they had an unbelievable experience for that year. I start to focus on what’s going to happen two, three, four, five years from now, I think I’m doing everybody a disservice. I’ve got to focus on what I can do to maximize this year, and hopefully, that experience has some guys feel like, ‘OK, I want to run that back. I want to have another great experience doing that.’ If you look, we’ve been able to retain some guys, too. Although we lost some guys — everybody always loves to point at things that we’ve lost — we’ve been able to retain some players, some key pieces who are very talented, both in the coaching staff and the players. So I think trying to make sure that this year from start to finish is a great experience for everybody.”
VP: When you look back on the season, how did it measure up compared to what you expected going into it?
RR: “I know that you guys probably think I’m lying when I say this, but I really did not have any expectations. What my expectations were is I thought we were going to be a deeper team, and I thought we were going to be a more talented team than maybe we’d been in the past. And then my expectations were that we would do whatever we could to put ourselves in a position to win. I really did not, like, go through and point out, ‘OK, I think we can win this game. We’ll probably lose this.’ I don’t do that anymore. I haven’t done that since maybe my second or third year in coaching. I don’t. I just want to build whatever I can possibly build, the best possible team for Old Dominion, and then coach them up as well as I can each and every day, and then go from there. I think that’s the only way to approach this thing. If you start looking at things, you’re setting yourself up for failure one way or another, because you either set your expectations too high or too low. And you’re going to be miserable. And that’s not how I want to live. I think for me, it’s just about, ‘Let’s just go build the best possible team that we can,’ and that’s through recruiting and then, now, after this portal closes, it’s going to be through development. And I think that’s a huge part of it. I mean, this is still part of the building process of the team, is through developing in the weight room, developing their football knowledge and then ultimately developing the cohesion that I think led to a lot of wins this year.”
ODU to pay football coach Ricky Rahne more than $1 million annually after contract extension
I’m guessing that after a 10-3 season, you had other opportunities. Why agree to four more years here?
“I think the thing that people don’t understand is happiness is important to me. And I know that a lot of people equate money to happiness, and I know a lot of people equate status to happiness and maybe those sort of things. But I’m happy here. I’m happy with the administration. I’m happy with the people that I get to be around. I’m happy with the interactions I have with 99.9% of our fans. I’m happy that my children enjoy being here. And I think that that’s just something that sometimes we overlook. One thing about happiness is I think people start to think that it’s guaranteed. Or maybe a better way to look at it is that they can always be happier somewhere else. And I don’t think that way. I’m happy here. I’m very excited about the overall direction that we’re going to continue to take the athletic department and the football program, in particular. And I did not see a need for me to go somewhere else in order for me and my family to be happy.”
And you can walk to work.
“I can walk to work, and I do like that a lot. Not particularly right now with this weather that we continue to have. This is the worst winter since I’ve been here. It’s funny. I tell recruits that, and I think they look at me like I’m lying to them. ‘No, I promise it is. This is not normal.’ ”
David Hall, david.hall@pilotonline.com.
