Michigan sucked for most of the 60s. The reason Schembechler got hired (68 or 69) was because Michigan was losing way too much, including to Purdue (Jack Mollenkopf) regularly.
Purdue getting no love at all...
- Thread starter TwinDegrees2
- Start date
In the 60s,Jack Mollenkopfs team beat ND seven times out of ten and overall they were ten and four vs.the Irish with Jack as the coach.Purdue lost to Michigan in 61 and 69 but beat them five straight times from 62 through 66. Michigan and OSU didnt dominate the league until .starting in 1969 through 1980 when one or the other won the conference title each year.Purdue destroyed OSU 41 to 6 in Columbus in 1967 before losing to them in 68 and 69 at the Shoe.To this day I dont know why Purdue had to play three straight years in C Bus.Purdue didnt start playing ten games until 1965 and from then through 1969 they were 40 wins,ten losses and one tie overall.
I’d love to send this team back to 2005 to play that season.. I’ll give them that much …
Whose dumbass idea was it to get rid of mollenkopf.. I just remember hearing about fire fat Jack
A stellar LB crew...maybe as good a group as Purdue has had, and, to your point, they have not seen many (if any) as good collectively since.
The Kyle Smith dropped interception was critical and is indeed lost in the aftermath of that game...very much like the Gonzalez error (a whole other debacle that I do not wish to revisit in light of the painful memories). There were other plays in that game as well...and, Purdue had a chance at the end to win it, but, played for a FG that ultimately was missed by Ben Jones...who, to that point, had been VERY good. Purdue was dominated up front in the first half of that game, but, was really good in the second half...I can still see the fumble happening almost in slow motion, and, thinking to myself after it did..."that seems about right" as a Purdue fan, as, I had become accustomed to it as Purdue and Cubs fan.
Us old timers recall Purdue being No1 in the land after beat ND in 1965 and again for the first three weeks of the year in 1968.
The fire fat Jack crowd I think was small but loud and went away after the Rose Bowl win in 1967.He retired on his own accord as he was almost 65 after the Bucket win in 1969.
But the problem was never being #1 at the end of the year. But who then would know that those were the good times. More recently I've been outside of the country for 23 years where I couldn't really follow Purdue football. I guess I was lucky. While visiting my mother and seeing Purdue on TV, I would always marvel how DH2 could snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.
DH2 was hopeless.Maybe it isnt much consolation,but only three BIG teams have won a national title since,`1968 with OSU doing it in 2002 and 2014 while Michigan took the National Championship in ,1997.
Wasn't there a dropped TD pass in the end zone as well? I've tried to forget about that game.
The thing that was crazy about 04 was .. you were close enough to the right one bowl and still in the midst of all those bowls.. so, instead of being a high point, leading against Wisconsin and ranked top ten undefeated seemed like “ok logical next step for tiller .. come one.” And who knew when where and if the joe tiller party would ever end at that point …
In the moment you didn’t know abridging either way about the spread being neutralized, tillers assistants not being as good as the ones who had left, lack of use of the jet for recruiting (I sound like a real IU fan right lol), tiller wanting to kinda halfway secretly retire to fish. That would all become known but in the moment it seemed like the right trajectory. You’d never have watched kirsch lose out to Orton and think “this guy is gonna become a moron.”
even if you thought to yourself “Wisconsin could beat us” you thought we’d be 11-1, 10-2.. before you know it (forget the order) Bryant gets knocked out by Ernie shazor, Orton is out vs northwestern and kirsch gets stopped by a hair on 4th and 1 and we lose to Iowa as some ok KC turn on Taylor stubble field and are actually calling him butterfield late in the game due to some key drops
In four weeks you went from thinking “god can you imagine how recruiting kicks off after this season for the 06 high school class” to something there seemed more like brohms first year.
you route notre dame and beat penn state in a white out at happy valley in consecutive weeks and end up 7-5.. wow
I think I know why. Back in those days, Purdue would get a bigger payday playing at OSU and at Michigan. Purdue was incentivized to play those two teams on the road in their huge stadiums. Seems odd to me too, but that’s my understanding.
I thought I also recalled that Jack started getting sick due to early stages of cancer in his last few seasons as HC. When he retired, he had had enough. He died in 1975 of cancer.
Good point.Purdue finished 5 and 2 in league play in 64,65,68 and 69.In 66 and 67 they were 6 and 1 and each year they played four conference road games and only three at Ross Ade.The overall mark was 17 wins with one loss at home in those seasons and that loss was in 1965 14 to 10,to National Champ MSU>
