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 highlights and accomplishments.
Part I | Part II
It might not necessarily seem like it right now because of football's current state, but a central piece of Morgan Burke's enduring legacy at Purdue will be the hires that he made, the outside-the-box thinking that has paid off in a number of cases.
He did not bat a thousand, nor would anyone in the job he held for the past 23 years, but his total body of work as a hirer was solid even if the past two football hires either didn't pan out or haven't yet.
It starts with Joe Tiller, who quickly proved to be the right coach at the right time at the right stage of his career for Purdue when he was hired in 1997. I say the right stage of his career, because a younger man might have quickly bolted on the back of the early success Tiller enjoyed. But once he rebuffed Colorado in '98 - rebuffed, get it? - it was pretty evident Purdue was going to be his last job.
That hire transformed the football program and positively impacted the university as a whole. Something on campus really ought to be named for Tiller one of these days.
Sure, Burke may have wanted Bob Davie as his first choice - so did a lot of people back then - and maybe Davie would have been good at Purdue too outside the Notre Dame deep-frier, but it's not about hypotheticals. It's about what's real. And Burke was the man who brought in the man who brought the Rose Bowl, Drew Brees, 10 bowl games, 87 wins and a hell of a lot of attention to previously utterly irrelevant Purdue.
Yes, Tiller didn't command a massive contract, but it also took a bit of gumption to hire your funny uncle to run some chuck-and-duck offense that was never, ever going to work in the Big Ten. That was not necessarily a safe hire at the time.
Again, no one's going to go out of their way to give the credit for that success to anyone beyond those coaches and players, but Burke does get credit for that hire.
As he does for Matt Painter.
Those transitions are difficult to pull off, as Purdue found out the hard way too a few years later, and yes, Purdue was fortunate to have a promising alumnus in the coaching ranks willing to take on that sort of arrangement at that stage of his career.
But it was a good hire, one that at least on its surface got Purdue out of a sticky situation with the end of the Gene Keady Era - finding that balance between doing right by an icon while moving on when it was clear you needed to - and breathed live into a decaying program.
Dave Shondell turned a middling volleyball program into a strength practically overnight. Burke deserves credit for some courage there in hiring a high school coach to coach in the Big Ten. That was a great hire.
Lonnie Greene, too.
Devon Brouse's hiring away from North Carolina to lead Purdue's golf operation when the new courses were built led to a national championship and countless other honors.
The facility was a big part of that, obviously, and that's the other part of the story in terms of areas where Burke has left Purdue better than he found it.
Some of what Burke's done with Purdue's facilities has simply kept them up to code. Had Purdue not done the first Ross-Ade project in the late '90s, the structure might have drifted off into the celery bog by now.
Before the aquatics center, Purdue's divers were driving to Indy to, uh, dive; before the tennis center, the Boilermakers were practicing with GenPop behind the Sam's Club in Lafayette.
Those were needs. Non-negotiable needs that underscore just how much ground Purdue had to make up on the facilities front.
But Purdue did them right.
Without that nice pool, there's no David Boudia at Purdue. Maybe he'd have gone to IU. Without that awesome golf course, there's no women's golf national title.
That's a damn nice stadium Purdue baseball's got now. Softball, too. Wrestling is taken care of. Tennis, too.
Volleyball's always had a nice gym.
(When it's not underwater. I kid.)
Credit too goes to the benefactors on those projects, clearly, the families who gave the money to make those projects happen.
But the total body of work is that Burke leaves behind a solid infrastructure.
Basketball has what it needs.
(Air-conditioning in June notwithstanding. I kid.)
The stadium will have to be addressed again long-term, but in the short term, football will be closer to having what it needs once the training center opens. But there's always more that can be done for football and maybe the strength of the existing department infrastructure allows Mike Bobinski to tackle that harder than he might otherwise have been able to.
When Bobinski says that Burke has left him a strong foundation, he is largely talking about the brick-and-mortar stuff, the actual structures.
You can't be an A.D. for 23 years and not build a bunch of stuff, but in his nearly quarter century at Purdue, Burke did it right.
Today, we look at highlights and accomplishments.
Part I | Part II
It might not necessarily seem like it right now because of football's current state, but a central piece of Morgan Burke's enduring legacy at Purdue will be the hires that he made, the outside-the-box thinking that has paid off in a number of cases.
He did not bat a thousand, nor would anyone in the job he held for the past 23 years, but his total body of work as a hirer was solid even if the past two football hires either didn't pan out or haven't yet.
It starts with Joe Tiller, who quickly proved to be the right coach at the right time at the right stage of his career for Purdue when he was hired in 1997. I say the right stage of his career, because a younger man might have quickly bolted on the back of the early success Tiller enjoyed. But once he rebuffed Colorado in '98 - rebuffed, get it? - it was pretty evident Purdue was going to be his last job.
That hire transformed the football program and positively impacted the university as a whole. Something on campus really ought to be named for Tiller one of these days.
Sure, Burke may have wanted Bob Davie as his first choice - so did a lot of people back then - and maybe Davie would have been good at Purdue too outside the Notre Dame deep-frier, but it's not about hypotheticals. It's about what's real. And Burke was the man who brought in the man who brought the Rose Bowl, Drew Brees, 10 bowl games, 87 wins and a hell of a lot of attention to previously utterly irrelevant Purdue.
Yes, Tiller didn't command a massive contract, but it also took a bit of gumption to hire your funny uncle to run some chuck-and-duck offense that was never, ever going to work in the Big Ten. That was not necessarily a safe hire at the time.
Again, no one's going to go out of their way to give the credit for that success to anyone beyond those coaches and players, but Burke does get credit for that hire.
As he does for Matt Painter.
Those transitions are difficult to pull off, as Purdue found out the hard way too a few years later, and yes, Purdue was fortunate to have a promising alumnus in the coaching ranks willing to take on that sort of arrangement at that stage of his career.
But it was a good hire, one that at least on its surface got Purdue out of a sticky situation with the end of the Gene Keady Era - finding that balance between doing right by an icon while moving on when it was clear you needed to - and breathed live into a decaying program.
Dave Shondell turned a middling volleyball program into a strength practically overnight. Burke deserves credit for some courage there in hiring a high school coach to coach in the Big Ten. That was a great hire.
Lonnie Greene, too.
Devon Brouse's hiring away from North Carolina to lead Purdue's golf operation when the new courses were built led to a national championship and countless other honors.
The facility was a big part of that, obviously, and that's the other part of the story in terms of areas where Burke has left Purdue better than he found it.
Some of what Burke's done with Purdue's facilities has simply kept them up to code. Had Purdue not done the first Ross-Ade project in the late '90s, the structure might have drifted off into the celery bog by now.
Before the aquatics center, Purdue's divers were driving to Indy to, uh, dive; before the tennis center, the Boilermakers were practicing with GenPop behind the Sam's Club in Lafayette.
Those were needs. Non-negotiable needs that underscore just how much ground Purdue had to make up on the facilities front.
But Purdue did them right.
Without that nice pool, there's no David Boudia at Purdue. Maybe he'd have gone to IU. Without that awesome golf course, there's no women's golf national title.
That's a damn nice stadium Purdue baseball's got now. Softball, too. Wrestling is taken care of. Tennis, too.
Volleyball's always had a nice gym.
(When it's not underwater. I kid.)
Credit too goes to the benefactors on those projects, clearly, the families who gave the money to make those projects happen.
But the total body of work is that Burke leaves behind a solid infrastructure.
Basketball has what it needs.
(Air-conditioning in June notwithstanding. I kid.)
The stadium will have to be addressed again long-term, but in the short term, football will be closer to having what it needs once the training center opens. But there's always more that can be done for football and maybe the strength of the existing department infrastructure allows Mike Bobinski to tackle that harder than he might otherwise have been able to.
When Bobinski says that Burke has left him a strong foundation, he is largely talking about the brick-and-mortar stuff, the actual structures.
You can't be an A.D. for 23 years and not build a bunch of stuff, but in his nearly quarter century at Purdue, Burke did it right.
