IMHKHO --
When MB was hired as AD:
1) Purdue basketball was an elite basketball team (on the cusp of the 3-peat as B1G Champions) with a Hall of Fame coach he inherited, that sold out every game in the 1990s.
2) Purdue football was struggling with a disgruntled fan base.
Today:
1) Purdue basketball, after being the worst in the schools history (2012-2014), have rebounded and is an up-and-coming team (albeit not a B1G champion...yet), and attendance is starting to grow with an energized fan base.
2) Purdue Football is a complete laughingstock after back-to-back poor hires, and a disgruntled fan base. Attendance and donations are drastically down.
Burke's tenure is really no difference than any other CEO. Work hard in your early career (Inland Steel's HR cost-cutting hatchet man), get noticed and hired by a different organization and change the way things are done. Strengthen the base of the organization's product line (continued MBB strength, continued WBB strength) and achieve a major success with a new or struggling product (hiring Tiller and his entire staff from Wyoming, and the luck we had landing an injured-h.s. recruit that everyone else overlooked in Brees).
Success provided some financial windfall that we reinvested in facilities. Burke was recognized as an outstanding AD who did things financially prudent. We'd laugh at O$U borrowing money to build a bigger stadium full of $80 tickets and hiring top salaried coaches, as our AD would never risk a budget in the "red" to fuel athletic growth and achievement. The idea of "investing" in your product was not the "fiscally prudent" way Purdue AD did things. (it was better to enter the race with used race car and hoped for the best, than to borrow money and buy/build a new race car.)
Then you lose your edge and the competition catches up to you.
The "game" is different today than it was 20 years ago when MB was hired. His decision to pinch pennies on MBB and FB salaries screwed over the two premier programs ... while we can all boast about how we now have a Big Ten-caliber pool, tennis facility, baseball and softball stadiums, basketball arena and an improved, but still sub-par, football stadium. That he hamstring MBB with restricted recruiting and assistant coach budgets led to MBB historic faltering. Painter had to go public and accept an offer from Mizzou in order to get MB to allocate the money to keep assistants and recruit properly. The result was a few years later we saw stability in the staff and an improved team. We are where we are in MBB because he finally allowed MP to pay his assistants a competitive wage and recruit on par with the rest of the B1G.
After bringing in Tiller and his staff from Wyoming the team had success and coaches were offered jobs elsewhere (often times better positions, sometimes lateral moves for more money) and Burke's refusal to allow Tiller to pay a competitive wage meant that Joe had to get guys who specifically wanted to work for him, OR hire NOT the most desirable candidate, but the best he could afford under Burke's budget. Hence we lost staff consistency and the quality of the staff (and recruiting) went down with replacements. Tiller has often spoke of this. Joe became disillusioned and knew that he'd never have the support he needed to sustain a winning program (note: there were obviously other factors involved, including our luck not finding another Brees and that the rest of the B1G caught on to "Basketball on Grass."). With Joe's dissolution he "retired" while still on the job; publicly stating that Purdue would never be elite until the administration committed to it.
Tiller is asked to retire and Burke picks Danny Hope because 1) he'd experienced a little bit of success at Eastern Kentucky, 2) he had spent time at Purdue under Tiller, 3) because he'd sign a SUPER cheap contract, and 4) he'd accept the "Coach in Waiting" situation that appeared to work so well with Keady/Painter. After the honeymoon Danny started to complain that he couldn't bring in top assistants because of Burke's budget restrictions. Danny fails, and while the much of the fault lies in his own poor (in-over-your-head) coaching decisions, his lack of support from administration for competitive asst. coach salaries certainly contributed. At the time of their hiring, the standing Purdue fan response to who was being hired for coordinators and key position coach positions was, "WHO? never heard of him."
Burke -- now knowing that he was in the "4th quarter" of his career and his legacy in jeopardy goes out and tris to hire a top candidate coach in Butch Jones to restore respectability to the FB program. Jones pretty much laughs at Purdue and it's penny pinching AD before taking over a downtrodden Tennessee program. Burke falls to plan B (or was it C?) and decides that his best option to protect his legacy was to pay top dollar to entice a young candidate hopeful to Purdue. Contrary to his S.O.P. of not giving his HC and staff competitive salaries, Burke opens the treasury hoping to hire someone to that will allow him (Burke) to leave with the program in better condition than when he arrived 20 years prior. He's able to entice a coach with ONE year of successful HC experience at a MAC team to come to Purdue, and pays him far more than would be expected to a young HC with no P5 HC experience. He also gives his program savior plenty of money to go hire top assistants. But is was all for naught, his gamble to save his legacy has not paid off. The program had already slid so far for consistency that a young, relatively inexperienced HC, who chose not to bring his whole staff with him was unable to build a competent staff. His inexperience led him to believe that he could immediately manage Purdue as if it were tO$U-lite and recruit the "State of Purdue" for the top athletes to run Tresselball junior. His recruiting strategy to wait until late in the recruiting season to "properly vette his recruits" before making a schoolie offer backfired and the recruiting ranking slid even further when he'd miss out on top candidates and allowed mid-level recruits build strong relationships with other programs before "feeling the love" from Purdue's staff.
While I applaud MB for his hope to build Purdue into the 80/20 program (80% grad rate with top-20 Director's Cup finish) program, IT WAS NEVER ACHIEVED in his 20+ years.
Morgan, was a good hire in 1994, but his career is a near perfect "bell curve" that quickly rose, leveled off and then dropped back down. Morgan's time has passed and the athletics department needs new leadership NOW. Football will not improve simply with a HC change or the change in OC/DC. We need a new AD with energy and vision. A new start for Purdue to re-energize the football program with a hire with new vision and AD support; someone to re-energize the fan base to support the program through donations and ticket sales.
Boiler Up!
When MB was hired as AD:
1) Purdue basketball was an elite basketball team (on the cusp of the 3-peat as B1G Champions) with a Hall of Fame coach he inherited, that sold out every game in the 1990s.
2) Purdue football was struggling with a disgruntled fan base.
Today:
1) Purdue basketball, after being the worst in the schools history (2012-2014), have rebounded and is an up-and-coming team (albeit not a B1G champion...yet), and attendance is starting to grow with an energized fan base.
2) Purdue Football is a complete laughingstock after back-to-back poor hires, and a disgruntled fan base. Attendance and donations are drastically down.
Burke's tenure is really no difference than any other CEO. Work hard in your early career (Inland Steel's HR cost-cutting hatchet man), get noticed and hired by a different organization and change the way things are done. Strengthen the base of the organization's product line (continued MBB strength, continued WBB strength) and achieve a major success with a new or struggling product (hiring Tiller and his entire staff from Wyoming, and the luck we had landing an injured-h.s. recruit that everyone else overlooked in Brees).
Success provided some financial windfall that we reinvested in facilities. Burke was recognized as an outstanding AD who did things financially prudent. We'd laugh at O$U borrowing money to build a bigger stadium full of $80 tickets and hiring top salaried coaches, as our AD would never risk a budget in the "red" to fuel athletic growth and achievement. The idea of "investing" in your product was not the "fiscally prudent" way Purdue AD did things. (it was better to enter the race with used race car and hoped for the best, than to borrow money and buy/build a new race car.)
Then you lose your edge and the competition catches up to you.
The "game" is different today than it was 20 years ago when MB was hired. His decision to pinch pennies on MBB and FB salaries screwed over the two premier programs ... while we can all boast about how we now have a Big Ten-caliber pool, tennis facility, baseball and softball stadiums, basketball arena and an improved, but still sub-par, football stadium. That he hamstring MBB with restricted recruiting and assistant coach budgets led to MBB historic faltering. Painter had to go public and accept an offer from Mizzou in order to get MB to allocate the money to keep assistants and recruit properly. The result was a few years later we saw stability in the staff and an improved team. We are where we are in MBB because he finally allowed MP to pay his assistants a competitive wage and recruit on par with the rest of the B1G.
After bringing in Tiller and his staff from Wyoming the team had success and coaches were offered jobs elsewhere (often times better positions, sometimes lateral moves for more money) and Burke's refusal to allow Tiller to pay a competitive wage meant that Joe had to get guys who specifically wanted to work for him, OR hire NOT the most desirable candidate, but the best he could afford under Burke's budget. Hence we lost staff consistency and the quality of the staff (and recruiting) went down with replacements. Tiller has often spoke of this. Joe became disillusioned and knew that he'd never have the support he needed to sustain a winning program (note: there were obviously other factors involved, including our luck not finding another Brees and that the rest of the B1G caught on to "Basketball on Grass."). With Joe's dissolution he "retired" while still on the job; publicly stating that Purdue would never be elite until the administration committed to it.
Tiller is asked to retire and Burke picks Danny Hope because 1) he'd experienced a little bit of success at Eastern Kentucky, 2) he had spent time at Purdue under Tiller, 3) because he'd sign a SUPER cheap contract, and 4) he'd accept the "Coach in Waiting" situation that appeared to work so well with Keady/Painter. After the honeymoon Danny started to complain that he couldn't bring in top assistants because of Burke's budget restrictions. Danny fails, and while the much of the fault lies in his own poor (in-over-your-head) coaching decisions, his lack of support from administration for competitive asst. coach salaries certainly contributed. At the time of their hiring, the standing Purdue fan response to who was being hired for coordinators and key position coach positions was, "WHO? never heard of him."
Burke -- now knowing that he was in the "4th quarter" of his career and his legacy in jeopardy goes out and tris to hire a top candidate coach in Butch Jones to restore respectability to the FB program. Jones pretty much laughs at Purdue and it's penny pinching AD before taking over a downtrodden Tennessee program. Burke falls to plan B (or was it C?) and decides that his best option to protect his legacy was to pay top dollar to entice a young candidate hopeful to Purdue. Contrary to his S.O.P. of not giving his HC and staff competitive salaries, Burke opens the treasury hoping to hire someone to that will allow him (Burke) to leave with the program in better condition than when he arrived 20 years prior. He's able to entice a coach with ONE year of successful HC experience at a MAC team to come to Purdue, and pays him far more than would be expected to a young HC with no P5 HC experience. He also gives his program savior plenty of money to go hire top assistants. But is was all for naught, his gamble to save his legacy has not paid off. The program had already slid so far for consistency that a young, relatively inexperienced HC, who chose not to bring his whole staff with him was unable to build a competent staff. His inexperience led him to believe that he could immediately manage Purdue as if it were tO$U-lite and recruit the "State of Purdue" for the top athletes to run Tresselball junior. His recruiting strategy to wait until late in the recruiting season to "properly vette his recruits" before making a schoolie offer backfired and the recruiting ranking slid even further when he'd miss out on top candidates and allowed mid-level recruits build strong relationships with other programs before "feeling the love" from Purdue's staff.
While I applaud MB for his hope to build Purdue into the 80/20 program (80% grad rate with top-20 Director's Cup finish) program, IT WAS NEVER ACHIEVED in his 20+ years.
Morgan, was a good hire in 1994, but his career is a near perfect "bell curve" that quickly rose, leveled off and then dropped back down. Morgan's time has passed and the athletics department needs new leadership NOW. Football will not improve simply with a HC change or the change in OC/DC. We need a new AD with energy and vision. A new start for Purdue to re-energize the football program with a hire with new vision and AD support; someone to re-energize the fan base to support the program through donations and ticket sales.
Boiler Up!
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