However strangely the news may have been delivered, Purdue did the right thing Friday.
By extending Coach Danny Hope's contract by two seasons, through 2016, the Boilermaker athletic department did what it had to do, which is to say it did something.
A year ago at this time, Purdue declined to offer Hope a contract extension after an injury-ravaged 2010 season, the circumstances of which could have justified a lengthening of the coach's deal.
By passing, it allowed Hope's deal, after this season, to run down to only three remaining seasons in a recruiting climate where such a small number is perilous. Kids have no idea how many years coaches have on their contracts. Rivals recruiters, however, can recite that info like the ABCs.
So A.D. Morgan Burke had to do something here, whether it be to extend the coach's contract after Purdue earned its first bowl bid since 2007 or make a coaching change after Purdue earned its first bowl bid since 2007. As we've written numerous times, either option could have been justified, given the circumstances, which include dwindling attendance and the financial strain that's come with it.
In short, inaction wasn't really an option here. And, really, in a zero-sum game as this was, the extension was the right move. It's bad business to fire coaches after just three seasons and there have been signs that this thing is headed in right direction, whether it's been the several signature wins, the bowl appearance and what have you, especially given the gut-wrenching plague of injury that Hope's endured.
What mattered was for Purdue to take a stand one way or the other, and by tacking on a couple years to Hope's deal to round it up to recruiting's magic number, five, Burke has put pen to paper to back up his apparent support of Hope, who the athletic director is obviously quite determined to see succeed at Purdue. That said, Burke is clearly conscious of the possibility of setting the program back even further by making a quick change, that or leery of escalating price tags of the open market.
Of course, the terms of this extension are unknown and will be telling once revealed. Contracts are only as supportive as their terms, so we'll see if Hope was given a raise and we'll see what that buyout looks like.
The benefit of extending contracts as Purdue did Friday is to make the public (translation: recruits) aware that the university supports its guy.
That's where the intrigue here lies in how Purdue went about making this extension known. Purdue didn't exactly trumpet this news from the rooftops.
In case you don't know, today was the media's final on-campus access to Hope, players and coaches prior to the team's trip to Detroit for the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl.
Practice was set to conclude at 3:15 p.m. and those of us who happened to be taking children to zoos today can only assume it did. Roughly an hour later, well after that final round of on-campus interviews had concluded - again, as the zoo crowd can only assume - an e-mail went out announcing the extension, more or less akin to Purdue throwing press releases out of the back of the bus as it pulled away for the Motor City.
On the night of the bowl announcement, Burke said of his time frame for a decision on Hope's contract, "I always do it after the season and the season's not over. I haven't done anything (before the season ends) with Matt Painter, Sharon Versyp or anyone else. (The media) is making a bigger deal of this than it needs to be. .... Every revenue sport coach I've had, I've had a place-marker in there for discussion. It's nothing new."
Hope's contract mandated it be re-visited and his compensation evaluated, but not until Dec. 31, at which time the season will be over.
So that plan was deviated from.
Oh, and by the way, this news was dropped at a time where it's certain to be buried, a Friday afternoon announcement on the eve of a Christmas Eve that happens to fall on a Saturday, meaning a lot of newspapers will be left on the curb in the morning and Twitter and the message boards will be ghost towns. It's the veritable perfect storm of under-the-radarness.
So, yeah, the timing was, interesting.
But the news was as well.
Ten days ago, in an extended interview about the football season, Burke made it very clear, though without actually saying it, that Hope was coming back for Year 4.
"If I was unhappy," Burke said, "I would have made a move."
He based his support on the time it took to "balance" Purdue's roster; academic achievement and respectable off-the-field behavior (to the latter point, this was 10 days ago, mind you); Hope's work ethic; and favorable, however fluid, recruiting rankings.
With this extension - the announcement came with a mandate for Purdue to improve its marketing for football - Burke is banking on a payout from the incremental gains made thus far.
It's great that Purdue made a bowl game this season. It really is. This program had to rebuild and any time you rebuild, you have to start somewhere.
But for this season and the trip to Detroit that came with it to mean all that much in the grand scheme of things, it all has to be the start of something more.
If Purdue beats Western Michigan next week, it will have recorded a much-needed winning season, maybe the most unimpressive winning season ever, but a winning season nonetheless. Again you have to start somewhere.
If it loses to the Broncos, it will be saddled with the program's fourth consecutive losing season, the third under Hope. But at least it can say it returned to the postseason, a building block headed into 2012 and the relatively user-friendly schedule that comes with it (if there's ever going to be such a thing for Purdue ever again in the newly aligned Big Ten).
Either way, Purdue is clearly viewing 2011 as a move forward.
And by supporting Hope in writing, it's intent on allowing him the chance to continue to carry out what he's started.
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This post was edited on 12/23 10:46 PM by Brian_GoldandBlack.com
