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Move the Bucket gm!? How many years in a row has Oct-break been a home gm?

JHetfield99

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I'm going to guess Octoberbreak has been during a home football weekend at least the last 6 years. What's a constant result of this? An empty-ass student section, some years less than a thousand have attended, like vs Minn in either 2010 or 2011.

Thus it's apparent the AD could give a crap less about trying to work with the Big Ten and/or the university administrators to organize the calendar with a prime concern over student attendance (btw, tv schedules are set through at least 2019. It's beyond ridiculous Purdue fails us here repeatedly and doesn't try to fix it.)

So given that, WHY THE FCK are they suddenly worried about moving the Bucket so it's not over a break so the students can be there? The reason crowds have been down the last few years is because the team has stunk, don't over react and fix something that isn't broken!

If Purdue wins, fans will come back; even students will come back early....IF you give them a good, fun product to watch and a game in which they can expect to witness their top rival being hammered as they have for so many years in a series in which Purdue has won 2/3 of the games.

DON'T END a tradition of ending the season with what I believe will be top 7 in most-played rivalries in D1-A CFB in a decade or so (we will pass Tex-ATM, Mizz-KU, and a couple others that have gone on hiatus due to the conference realignment age) Sure there have been a couple blips like in the 2001 due to the September tragedy in NYC where we've ended with a different team a week later in December, but 99% have ended with our in-state conference rival and that shouldn't change. I don't know why Morgan Burke and Mitch Daniels suddenly have moving the Bucket Game on the brain, and even worse have suggested moving it to a neutral site in Indy where there'd be close to zero student attendance and is an area hat is 70% IU fans. Look to fix the problem elsewhere, like, within the damn football program.

(And on top of that, with a 14 team league, if all Big Ten teams are to be playing in the final week, it works out perfect that IU and Purdue play as cross-division rivals since it allows for 12 in-division match ups, increasing the odds 6 of the games being played are a playoff for a berth to Indy, just as Wisc and Minn was last weekend)

Sure I preferred it when the game was the weekend before Thanksgiving when the Big Ten for years ended their season traditionally, prior to the 12-game-always era. (Do you remember how hard Joe Tiller fought to keep it despite the destined change that was made so the Big Ten could be "part of the national conversation and relevant longer", rather than not playing for a couple of weeks as the rest CFB continued to compete into the 1st weekend in Dec? That old scheduling-model led to some very long layoffs such as the 50-some day break OSU had the year LSU beat them in the national title.)

But go back to our 56-35 win over IU in 2012, sadly one of the last truly entertaining home games and moreover, was the last Big Ten conference WIN I was able to see as a season ticketholder, even during a very meh up and down 6-6 year coming off a bad 4-8 2011 season, Ross-Ade drew 50,000. And per my memory there were a decent amount of students there, which is almost 10k more than showed up for any Ross-Ade home game in the once semi-promising 2014 that turned into a fart in a skillet.

Sidenote: how freaking sad is that? It will be at least 33 months between season ticketholders being able to witness conference wins? And that boys and girls is THEE problem: Purdue football, at the moment, truly stinks! Diehards and passive fans both know it, hence the stadium is an empty eyesore. And given the garbage November we just went through, it's tough to imagine much optimism developing that will get season tix over 20k next year, meaning it's going to be empty as hell again.

As was discussed in another thread regarding how lively and terrific Mackey was last night, full of energy for the NC State victory, first time it had legitimately been like that in at least 3 years....fans sooooo badly want to support a winner, and while Purdue has a smaller, more of a niche, pragmatic-spending fanbase relative to the majority of the Big Ten, it has many great fans. But after now a decade of first average, and then mediocre, and now pure utter shit, all but the absolute nuttiest of diehards (this idiot has his hand raised), have quit buying tix and no longer attend. They have found other cheaper, more frugal fulfilling ways to spend their fall Saturdays. What is the point of continually throwing money at something that is seemingly destined for failure? You can argue it only deepens the problem and if anything justifies and mandates so many of the AD's poor moves as it's akin to giving money to the panhandler and then hoping he/she find a job tomorrow (I don't wholly endorse this, but I can definitely buy the argument.)

My overall premise here is that if Purdue can dig out of this deep ugly-ass hole that football is in -- that's a direct result of numerous horrific decisions from the athletic department mixed in with bad luck and refusing from even attempting to spend commensurate with the competitive teams in the conference.....and you know, start winning again -- attendance will rocket back up, just as we will see happen in hoops this year and next. Meaning the Bucket game can eventually get back to having 55k-ish attending it (that is the rough new stadium capacity with the South Endzone having been torn out) and it will only be IU crying about bad attendance since they historically arebottom 2 in attendance due to being one of the losingest programs in D1-A football history. I realize there is no easy button and CFB is a zero-sum game, but despite many inherent disadvantages Purdue football has been a solid winning program before and CAN win again. And if it does, the fans will return, even on Turkey Day Saturday.

Am I the
only one fired up about this thinking how preposterous it'd be to move the Old Oaken Bucket game to another weekend? Anyway, I guess I started typing and never quit and my original point of just linking the story became an elongated rant. Hopefully it was coherent enough that you were able to get something out of it.

This post was edited on 12/4 1:00 AM by JHetfield99

http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/purdue/2014/12/03/earlier-bucket-game-big-ten-would-consider-it/19854643/
 
I AGREE! Don't move the game. The game would also be more relevant if we were playing for bowl position etc like say we were 10 yrs ago. Attendance is down not because students and fans are busy with X-mas shopping, ( who has much $$ in this crappy economy- depression anyways) they aren't going because the product sucks and the game isn't relevant beyond bragging rights when were fighting over sole possession of the cellar. Now Burke wants to white wash that fact and focus on something that isn't relevant to take attention from the fact his last hire has laid a rotten egg. I half expect the breakfast club crowd to start showing up in Haz-Mat suits because Haz has driven the program with Burke's blessing right in to a toxic waste dump.
 
Re: Move the Bucket gm!? How many years in a row has Oct-break been a

I would be OK skipping a bye a week and simply playing our last game against IU the weekend before Thanksgiving. That seemed to work for several decades.
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Re: Move the Bucket gm!? How many years in a row has Oct-break been a

I agree 1000% but our AD promised the fall break issue is over after this season. Ofcourse he was being reactive not proactive as this years MSU game he felt pressure since it was on ABC.
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Re: Move the Bucket gm!? How many years in a row has Oct-break been a

Not up to Purdue.
 
Re: Excellent statement on affairs at Purdue...

If I could, I would nominate you for the AD's position. One additional point is that IMHO MB is a rather arrogant person who is not very accommodating to differences of opinion. Therefore I assume his toady assistants in order to keep their jobs, agree with whatever dumb idea he invents. I know when talking to him, when I get out of the standard bs he gets very defensive and becomes somewhat of a smart ass. Rather than confront him, I just back off and talk to someone else. Maybe when I am done following Purdue sports and drop my season tix I should tell him in plain language exactly what I think which is in line with what you are saying.
 
Right on. Regular season rivalry games should never be at a neutral site. Perhaps if someone explained to Burke the seismic impact that moving Purdue-IU baseball games to Victory Field would have he might understand.
 
It's a shell game - keep popping other balls up in the air to deflect attention away from the real issue: The team has deteriorated beyond the point of recognition. What bothers me the most is that we keep comparing our performance this year to last year - last year was a complete catastrophe and should be completely dismissed as any point of reference. Nobody in their right mind would have expected that we wouldn't have been better than last year. If they are serious about getting people back to the games and having an interest in the program, a winning team needs to be fielded now. And there needs be the same intolerance and ruthlessness for subpar performance that all of us deal with in real world. I wish I could get paid $2 mil guaranteed for the next couple of years and not worry about how I perform.
 
Originally posted by loftygoal:

The team has deteriorated beyond the point of recognition.What bothers me the most is that we keep comparing our performance this year to last year - last year was a complete catastrophe and should be completely dismissed as any point of reference. Nobody in their right mind would have expected that we wouldn't have been better than last year.
These are my sentiments exactly.

I'm holding out hope that Hazell has a Ron Zook at Illinois type 3rd year.






This post was edited on 12/4 4:51 PM by Alstott2Zgonina
 
Re: Excellent statement on affairs at Purdue...

Originally posted by Bigohh:
If I could, I would nominate you for the AD's position. One additional point is that IMHO MB is a rather arrogant person who is not very accommodating to differences of opinion. Therefore I assume his toady assistants in order to keep their jobs, agree with whatever dumb idea he invents. I know when talking to him, when I get out of the standard bs he gets very defensive and becomes somewhat of a smart ass. Rather than confront him, I just back off and talk to someone else. Maybe when I am done following Purdue sports and drop my season tix I should tell him in plain language exactly what I think which is in line with what you are saying.
Ha, let me humbly say thank you for the suggestion. Prob a little high since I am not currently in a business administration position (hey I did volunteer as president of a Fraternity Alumni Board for 5 years, which is countless hours, that has to count right!!?), I'll say AD is too much to start out.....but I'd be cool with asst AD, that'll allow me to get my legs under me.

I will say on the whole "dream job" list type of things, or probably a better way to put it is pie-in-the-sky jobs that you daydream that you'd have for a day, even though you know there are pre-req's/parameters/timing/life situations that would never make it realistic, governor of Indiana and Athletic Director of Purdue have long been in the top 2 or 3.

This post was edited on 12/8 11:26 AM by JHetfield99
 
Re: Excellent statement on affairs at Purdue...

Originally posted by JHetfield99:

Originally posted by Bigohh:
If I could, I would nominate you for the AD's position. One additional point is that IMHO MB is a rather arrogant person who is not very accommodating to differences of opinion. Therefore I assume his toady assistants in order to keep their jobs, agree with whatever dumb idea he invents. I know when talking to him, when I get out of the standard bs he gets very defensive and becomes somewhat of a smart ass. Rather than confront him, I just back off and talk to someone else. Maybe when I am done following Purdue sports and drop my season tix I should tell him in plain language exactly what I think which is in line with what you are saying.
Ha, let me humbly say thank you for the suggestion. Prob a little high since I am not currently in a business administration position (hey I did volunteer as president of a Fraternity Alumni Board for 5 years, which is countless hours, that has to count right!!?), I'll say AD is too much to start out.....but I'd be cool with asst AD, that'll allow me to get my legs under me.

I will say on the whole "dream job" list type of things, or probably a better way to put it is pie-in-the-sky jobs that you daydream that you'd have for a day, even though you know there are pre-req's/parameters/timing/life situations that would never make it realistic, governor of Indiana and Athletic Director of Purdue have long been in the top 2 or 3.


This post was edited on 12/8 11:26 AM by JHetfield99
What's experience got to do with it???? A wart on a frog couldn't F-up the FB program more than the greatly experienced, fully qualified MB has and the wart wouldn't try to snow the few fans left every time a question is asked.
 
I appreciate your passion and logic.I am 62 and hope to see Purdue and IU play again when both teams are ranked in the top 20,I think the last time that happened was 1967../
 
Warren Buffett said you should only buy stock of a company that an idiot could run because eventually an idiot will run it. Eventually is what we have with Purdue athletics.
 
Move the game up one week, take our bye during October break. The atmosphere is pathetic when we play IU and it should be the exact opposite. All the students leave for home, if it was up only one week, it would be absolutely packed. Then October break can be that bye week that we have to have every season..
 
The fact that both teams were 3-9 had NOTHING to do with it.

I wish I could be that delusional. Go through life and not be accountable for anything. Why does no one come to games? Well the economy is bad. And people have social media, Internet, video game dealies to play with. Oh and it was a good season of fall blockbuster movies. Too much competition with things to do in an exciting place like West Lafayette, Indiana. Nothing to do with the fact that penny pinching and poor decisions have led to a horrific display of football. No it is everyone else that is to blame,
 
Dear JHetfield99 your OP is spot on ! Well done sir! I violently agree with everything you said. This is first year in which I decided not to drive down and waste an entire Saturday afternoon and evening until the team on the field gets significantly better!!

Again Well Said!
 
Originally posted by K_Holder:
Move the game up one week, take our bye during October break. The atmosphere is pathetic when we play IU and it should be the exact opposite. All the students leave for home, if it was up only one week, it would be absolutely packed. Then October break can be that bye week that we have to have every season..
Considering that 2 of the games since moving to Turkey Day weekend that were both involving teams with losing records, attendance and atmosphere seemed pretty darn good and stadiums decent on 2010 and 2012 in RossAde. I know 2012 (the 56-35 win when Shavers had a great game) was after Turkey Day, I'm not positive which weekend 2010's was on.
 
Originally posted by JHetfield99:
Originally posted by K_Holder:
Move the game up one week, take our bye during October break. The atmosphere is pathetic when we play IU and it should be the exact opposite. All the students leave for home, if it was up only one week, it would be absolutely packed. Then October break can be that bye week that we have to have every season..
Considering that 2 of the games since moving to Turkey Day weekend that were both involving teams with losing records, attendance and atmosphere seemed pretty darn good and stadiums decent on 2010 and 2012 in RossAde. I know 2012 (the 56-35 win when Shavers had a great game) was after Turkey Day, I'm not positive which weekend 2010's was on.
The Turkey Day weekend sucks if you're a student. This year was a noon game, RPS at IU didn't reopen the dorms until 8:00 a.m. game day (maybe Purdue doesn't do something that dumb). My kids, and a few of their IU and Purdue friends made the 3.5 hr trip that morning. I know that many more of them would have gone had they been able to spend Friday night on Campus.
 
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