GoldandBlack.com is doing a series of blogs this week on the legacy of former Purdue athletic director Morgan Burke, covering different angles of the story.
Today, we look at football, with a look at highlights and accomplishments to come tomorrow.
Part I
Morgan Burke's legacy at Purdue is now inextricably linked to the current state of the Boilermaker football program.
That may not be necessarily fair when you're talking about a career that spanned nearly a quarter century and included a revival of the program that was every bit as dramatic as the downfall that followed.
But that’s the reality, that football's jack-knifed state of the past few years casts a pall over the legacy of Purdue's outgoing athletic director, as does all that comes with it: A disenchanted fan base, bottomed-out ticket base, crashing revenues, etc.
It wasn't all that long ago things were very different. Purdue won under Joe Tiller and it entertained. Football was a source of pride at Purdue.
Understand that all that did occur under Burke's watch, and it was Burke who hired Tiller. Few would go so far as to give the credit for the success to anyone beyond those coaches and players, but that success does go on Burke's permanent record same as the failures do.
But the end of the Tiller Era will go down as the most regrettable part of Burke's time at Purdue. Moved into action at least in part by the cries of fans who'd grown tired of six- and seven-win seasons, Burke moved Tiller out ahead of the coach's planned departure date.
Tiller was not the energetic-beyond-his-years coach he'd been years earlier, as he'd admit, but he did have enough left in the tank and a good enough staff around him to keep things going a few more years.
(It should also be noted that Purdue was fortunate, I guess you'd say, to catch Tiller at a certain age. Once he turned down Colorado in 1998, it was pretty clear Purdue would be his last job. A younger man might have jumped.)
But perhaps buoyed by his own success in hiring Tiller and pulling off a jackpot with the basketball succession plan years earlier, Burke tried his hand at it again.
It was a tough situation for all involved. Burke did not want to hire the obviously qualified internal candidate, Brock Spack - why, we don't entirely know - and the prospect of an outsider coming in to join, then take over, an unfamiliar staff was awkward for everyone.
(It worked for Barry Alvarez because it was Barry Alvarez who hired Bret Bielema as his own successor.)
In a moment of honesty, Burke would likely admit today that the Danny Hope hire was his greatest mistake at Purdue, a bad fit from Day 1 that played a role in the 2008 season going sideways and pushed the program toward its depths today.
To Burke's credit, he acted quickly on the problem with Hope when the optics of it didn't look great - he was fired when he'd just gotten Purdue to a bowl game - but it was followed up with a hire that looked good at the time but has not yet produced anything near the results Purdue hoped for.
Obviously.
Where did Burke go wrong? Well, maybe it was just too easy a solution to let Tiller hand off to Spack whenever he was ready. Maybe Spack was viewed as more of what fans had grown tired of with Tiller, I don't know. But the Hope hire was a bad one.
Purdue did make an increased financial commitment to football to hire Hazell and his staff, but did so reactively, when it was backed into a corner.
Had such an investment been proactively made years earlier when Tiller was hiring great young assistants every year and losing great young assistants every year and recruiting could have used a few more shiny things, well, you never know. And, yes, I know Burke got Purdue's stadium up to code in difficult economic times; weathered some financial challenges even when football was producing a surplus; and always dealt with certain realities at Purdue when it comes to big-time sports.
Again, Purdue made that sort of investment in 2013 when it hired Hazell, gave him a $2-plus-million salary and suffocating guarantees, and an increased salary pool for his staff. Burke declared upon hiring Hazell that he wanted "all-stars" on Hazell's coaching staff, looking for added return on that investment. Hazell needed to hire big-name coaches.
The result was a limitation of sorts on who could come to Purdue with the coach who was just given the $2-plus-million salary, at the same school where Tiller benefited so greatly from bringing his entire staff and where "continuity" has always been a buzzword in hiring decisions.
I'm not saying things would have turned out much differently for Purdue the past few seasons had Hazell brought his entire Kent State staff, if he wanted, but I will say this: What's everyone's opinion these days on John Shoop? Well, he was an NFL coach, and thus fit the "all-star" criteria.
As we wrote yesterday, Morgan Burke wanted to win at Purdue. But wanting to win and knowing how to win are two different things.
Purdue won big in football under his watch, to the tune of perhaps the best run of success in school history.
After that, mistakes were made.
And the result goes down, inevitably, as part of his legacy.
Today, we look at football, with a look at highlights and accomplishments to come tomorrow.
Part I
Morgan Burke's legacy at Purdue is now inextricably linked to the current state of the Boilermaker football program.
That may not be necessarily fair when you're talking about a career that spanned nearly a quarter century and included a revival of the program that was every bit as dramatic as the downfall that followed.
But that’s the reality, that football's jack-knifed state of the past few years casts a pall over the legacy of Purdue's outgoing athletic director, as does all that comes with it: A disenchanted fan base, bottomed-out ticket base, crashing revenues, etc.
It wasn't all that long ago things were very different. Purdue won under Joe Tiller and it entertained. Football was a source of pride at Purdue.
Understand that all that did occur under Burke's watch, and it was Burke who hired Tiller. Few would go so far as to give the credit for the success to anyone beyond those coaches and players, but that success does go on Burke's permanent record same as the failures do.
But the end of the Tiller Era will go down as the most regrettable part of Burke's time at Purdue. Moved into action at least in part by the cries of fans who'd grown tired of six- and seven-win seasons, Burke moved Tiller out ahead of the coach's planned departure date.
Tiller was not the energetic-beyond-his-years coach he'd been years earlier, as he'd admit, but he did have enough left in the tank and a good enough staff around him to keep things going a few more years.
(It should also be noted that Purdue was fortunate, I guess you'd say, to catch Tiller at a certain age. Once he turned down Colorado in 1998, it was pretty clear Purdue would be his last job. A younger man might have jumped.)
But perhaps buoyed by his own success in hiring Tiller and pulling off a jackpot with the basketball succession plan years earlier, Burke tried his hand at it again.
It was a tough situation for all involved. Burke did not want to hire the obviously qualified internal candidate, Brock Spack - why, we don't entirely know - and the prospect of an outsider coming in to join, then take over, an unfamiliar staff was awkward for everyone.
(It worked for Barry Alvarez because it was Barry Alvarez who hired Bret Bielema as his own successor.)
In a moment of honesty, Burke would likely admit today that the Danny Hope hire was his greatest mistake at Purdue, a bad fit from Day 1 that played a role in the 2008 season going sideways and pushed the program toward its depths today.
To Burke's credit, he acted quickly on the problem with Hope when the optics of it didn't look great - he was fired when he'd just gotten Purdue to a bowl game - but it was followed up with a hire that looked good at the time but has not yet produced anything near the results Purdue hoped for.
Obviously.
Where did Burke go wrong? Well, maybe it was just too easy a solution to let Tiller hand off to Spack whenever he was ready. Maybe Spack was viewed as more of what fans had grown tired of with Tiller, I don't know. But the Hope hire was a bad one.
Purdue did make an increased financial commitment to football to hire Hazell and his staff, but did so reactively, when it was backed into a corner.
Had such an investment been proactively made years earlier when Tiller was hiring great young assistants every year and losing great young assistants every year and recruiting could have used a few more shiny things, well, you never know. And, yes, I know Burke got Purdue's stadium up to code in difficult economic times; weathered some financial challenges even when football was producing a surplus; and always dealt with certain realities at Purdue when it comes to big-time sports.
Again, Purdue made that sort of investment in 2013 when it hired Hazell, gave him a $2-plus-million salary and suffocating guarantees, and an increased salary pool for his staff. Burke declared upon hiring Hazell that he wanted "all-stars" on Hazell's coaching staff, looking for added return on that investment. Hazell needed to hire big-name coaches.
The result was a limitation of sorts on who could come to Purdue with the coach who was just given the $2-plus-million salary, at the same school where Tiller benefited so greatly from bringing his entire staff and where "continuity" has always been a buzzword in hiring decisions.
I'm not saying things would have turned out much differently for Purdue the past few seasons had Hazell brought his entire Kent State staff, if he wanted, but I will say this: What's everyone's opinion these days on John Shoop? Well, he was an NFL coach, and thus fit the "all-star" criteria.
As we wrote yesterday, Morgan Burke wanted to win at Purdue. But wanting to win and knowing how to win are two different things.
Purdue won big in football under his watch, to the tune of perhaps the best run of success in school history.
After that, mistakes were made.
And the result goes down, inevitably, as part of his legacy.
