So Sunday brought about the changes we all figured were coming, as Purdue fired both its coordinators and an additional assistant coach in the wake of the Boilermakers' lost 2015 season.
Something big had to change and it's been clear for a while now that that something wasn't going to involve head coach Darrell Hazell, who'll go into 2016 with one year to get this turned around in some sort of meaningful way. If Purdue is worried about recruiting, a contract extension might be in order, but even if that happens, you know how it goes.
Hazell will need new middle management on both sides of the ball now that John Shoop and Greg Hudson - his offensive and defensive coordinators the past three seasons - have been ousted along with defensive line coach Rubin Carter.
Sunday, then, was a dark day for the "all-star" staff model A.D. Morgan Burke promised when he hired Hazell, hoping to make a hearts-and-minds splash with its fan base and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Purdue is committed to football, damn it, no matter what people say. Purdue did commit greater resources to its football salary pool, a step that brought the program up to code in that area. The goal was to surround Hazell with a collection of the biggest, baddest assistant coaching résumés Purdue has seen.
Noble intent. It hasn't worked.
Not to revise history here, but there were flaws in the plan.
Every staff and situation are different, but Purdue has seen first-hand the benefits of staff continuity in the immediate success Joe Tiller enjoyed, benefiting from bringing almost his entire staff with him from Wyoming. That wasn't the reason Tiller was successful right away, but it was one of them.
Purdue understands the value of continuity so well that it's twice now built head coaching hires around succession models.
Additionally, history tells us the best coaches at Purdue have been those youngsters hungry and energetic enough to pour every ounce of themselves into their job, both in their coaching and their recruiting, the guys who'd worked their way up to Purdue through lower levels where they had to deal with a certain talent level, certain limitations on the field and in recruiting. That kind of experience is relevant to working at Purdue in its place in the college football food chain. While football is still football no matter the level, coaching in the NFL, or at Florida State, or at Ohio State, it's different. They're different jobs and the guys coming to Purdue from lower levels on their way to higher levels, those have been the coaches who've been the best coaches Purdue has had.
(Basketball is a different sport obviously, but Purdue's had success there with staffs full of guys from Eastern, Southern and Northern Illinois, largely.)
It is no coincidence perhaps, then, that the coaches on this staff that have done the best work, if you ask me, are guys like Marcus Freeman and Gerad Parker and Jafar Williams, the youngest (and lowest-paid) guys on the staff. They came to Purdue at the same junctures of their careers as the Greg Olsons, Kevin Sumlins, Mark Hagens, Terrell Williams and whoever else. They came to Purdue having coached at, and recruited to, places like Kent State and Marshall and Tennessee-Martin while the higher profile guys they were hired alongside came from Florida State, North Carolina and Virginia Tech, among others. Those guys are now all gone.
Point is, you have to hire the right coach before the right résumé. Sometimes the two are the same, sometimes not. I'm not saying Hazell would have won big had he brought his whole Kent State staff with him or just not been bound by the all-star prerequisite, but maybe things would be a little bit better.
Now what?
Well, Purdue has to fill three coaching positions, including its two most important, while staring down the barrel of what might be a clear-cut one-year scenario. Hazell will enter next season on the hottest of seats and if he goes, his whole staff goes.
That will make the hiring process a challenge, especially if Purdue keeps to its ways of not giving multi-year contracts to assistant coaches, a practice that I'd have to think now puts it in the minority among major-conference schools.
An easy answer might be to promote from within to coordinator positions, but what message would that send to a fan base you're holding onto by a thread? This isn't as much about inspiring fans anymore as it is retaining them.
And the coaching attrition may not be over. The firings are, but that doesn't mean others won't depart on their own terms to stay one step ahead of the guillotine.
Otherwise, Purdue is going to be a tough sell for any coach looking for any measure of security. I mean, how can it not be?
It will be interesting, interesting to see what this ends up meaning. Does Purdue bring in new coordinators and change philosophy to accommodate those coaches? Is Purdue going to run different systems hoping to catch lightning in a bottle?
What's this mean for recruiting? Individually, the three guys who were cut loose Sunday were far from Purdue's three most important recruiters. Some of them were almost non-factors, actually.
But the next two weekends, Purdue will host dozens of official visitors. A bunch of them will be defensive players, specifically defensive linemen, the group that now has neither a position coach nor a coordinator in place. There's questions now, questions for recruits Purdue needs to fill immediate holes, some of them being players who are bound to transfer mid-year and thus have to sign in like three weeks.
(Admittedly, Purdue is recruiting against schools in a few cases where a Big Ten scholarship and cost-of-attendance stipend alone should win out over 99-and-a-half times out of a hundred.)
Whatever recruits Purdue gets, they'll be in the same boat as whatever new assistant coaches Purdue gets: They'll be asked to be part of a dramatic, dare we say improbable about-face for this beleaguered program.
Anything's possible.
Last week there was that story I think we referenced on the site somewhere about Willie Taggart at USF, who replaced a bunch of "all-star" coaches with coaches he says he's more "comfortable" with. The Bulls have enjoyed a turnaround season.
That's the goal for Purdue next season, the goal Sunday's events it hopes were a step toward.
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Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2015. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited
Something big had to change and it's been clear for a while now that that something wasn't going to involve head coach Darrell Hazell, who'll go into 2016 with one year to get this turned around in some sort of meaningful way. If Purdue is worried about recruiting, a contract extension might be in order, but even if that happens, you know how it goes.
Hazell will need new middle management on both sides of the ball now that John Shoop and Greg Hudson - his offensive and defensive coordinators the past three seasons - have been ousted along with defensive line coach Rubin Carter.
Sunday, then, was a dark day for the "all-star" staff model A.D. Morgan Burke promised when he hired Hazell, hoping to make a hearts-and-minds splash with its fan base and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Purdue is committed to football, damn it, no matter what people say. Purdue did commit greater resources to its football salary pool, a step that brought the program up to code in that area. The goal was to surround Hazell with a collection of the biggest, baddest assistant coaching résumés Purdue has seen.
Noble intent. It hasn't worked.
Not to revise history here, but there were flaws in the plan.
Every staff and situation are different, but Purdue has seen first-hand the benefits of staff continuity in the immediate success Joe Tiller enjoyed, benefiting from bringing almost his entire staff with him from Wyoming. That wasn't the reason Tiller was successful right away, but it was one of them.
Purdue understands the value of continuity so well that it's twice now built head coaching hires around succession models.
Additionally, history tells us the best coaches at Purdue have been those youngsters hungry and energetic enough to pour every ounce of themselves into their job, both in their coaching and their recruiting, the guys who'd worked their way up to Purdue through lower levels where they had to deal with a certain talent level, certain limitations on the field and in recruiting. That kind of experience is relevant to working at Purdue in its place in the college football food chain. While football is still football no matter the level, coaching in the NFL, or at Florida State, or at Ohio State, it's different. They're different jobs and the guys coming to Purdue from lower levels on their way to higher levels, those have been the coaches who've been the best coaches Purdue has had.
(Basketball is a different sport obviously, but Purdue's had success there with staffs full of guys from Eastern, Southern and Northern Illinois, largely.)
It is no coincidence perhaps, then, that the coaches on this staff that have done the best work, if you ask me, are guys like Marcus Freeman and Gerad Parker and Jafar Williams, the youngest (and lowest-paid) guys on the staff. They came to Purdue at the same junctures of their careers as the Greg Olsons, Kevin Sumlins, Mark Hagens, Terrell Williams and whoever else. They came to Purdue having coached at, and recruited to, places like Kent State and Marshall and Tennessee-Martin while the higher profile guys they were hired alongside came from Florida State, North Carolina and Virginia Tech, among others. Those guys are now all gone.
Point is, you have to hire the right coach before the right résumé. Sometimes the two are the same, sometimes not. I'm not saying Hazell would have won big had he brought his whole Kent State staff with him or just not been bound by the all-star prerequisite, but maybe things would be a little bit better.
Now what?
Well, Purdue has to fill three coaching positions, including its two most important, while staring down the barrel of what might be a clear-cut one-year scenario. Hazell will enter next season on the hottest of seats and if he goes, his whole staff goes.
That will make the hiring process a challenge, especially if Purdue keeps to its ways of not giving multi-year contracts to assistant coaches, a practice that I'd have to think now puts it in the minority among major-conference schools.
An easy answer might be to promote from within to coordinator positions, but what message would that send to a fan base you're holding onto by a thread? This isn't as much about inspiring fans anymore as it is retaining them.
And the coaching attrition may not be over. The firings are, but that doesn't mean others won't depart on their own terms to stay one step ahead of the guillotine.
Otherwise, Purdue is going to be a tough sell for any coach looking for any measure of security. I mean, how can it not be?
It will be interesting, interesting to see what this ends up meaning. Does Purdue bring in new coordinators and change philosophy to accommodate those coaches? Is Purdue going to run different systems hoping to catch lightning in a bottle?
What's this mean for recruiting? Individually, the three guys who were cut loose Sunday were far from Purdue's three most important recruiters. Some of them were almost non-factors, actually.
But the next two weekends, Purdue will host dozens of official visitors. A bunch of them will be defensive players, specifically defensive linemen, the group that now has neither a position coach nor a coordinator in place. There's questions now, questions for recruits Purdue needs to fill immediate holes, some of them being players who are bound to transfer mid-year and thus have to sign in like three weeks.
(Admittedly, Purdue is recruiting against schools in a few cases where a Big Ten scholarship and cost-of-attendance stipend alone should win out over 99-and-a-half times out of a hundred.)
Whatever recruits Purdue gets, they'll be in the same boat as whatever new assistant coaches Purdue gets: They'll be asked to be part of a dramatic, dare we say improbable about-face for this beleaguered program.
Anything's possible.
Last week there was that story I think we referenced on the site somewhere about Willie Taggart at USF, who replaced a bunch of "all-star" coaches with coaches he says he's more "comfortable" with. The Bulls have enjoyed a turnaround season.
That's the goal for Purdue next season, the goal Sunday's events it hopes were a step toward.
--------------
Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2015. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited
