A lot of words. Almost as many as I use.
A couple of holes in your comments. Young was an outstanding coach, maybe better than Tiller, and we let him go.
My point about UNLV is that with smart scheduling, it should be easy for that team to win 8+ games every year. And the reason they didn’t? Bad coaching!
I’ve never been a Hope fan. The only thing I liked about him was that his salary was dirt cheap. I’ve said it many times. If you want to only win 4-7. Games a year, just keep Hope as your coach. Rather than spending a lot of money on a coach.
Many people say how great we were to win the western side of the conference and play in the conference championship game. The facts were the western side of our conference had a bad year. Has the western side of our conference ever won the championship game over the eastern side? Do they give trophies for winning the western side? Does anybody outside of Purdue even care? If Purdue was in the eastern side, would they have been competitive against any of those teams?
Brohm was a good coach, but the reality was he was never going to take Purdue any higher than 4th place in the conference in his best year. And adding Washington, Oregon and usc. We’re only going to make our finish lower.
Purdue showed how great they were that year in their bowl game. Yes we had key players who decided not to play. But that exposed our total lack of depth. I also believe a truly good coach would stick around for a bowl game and also motivate his players to play in the bowl game. Look at OSU this year! After losing to Michigan , their players could have entered the portal or they could have been like the Purdue players and decided it was in their best interest not to get injured playing in a bowl game. But they all stuck it out and played. And then entered the transfer portal after the last game was played. I have to believe their coach had something to do with that.
Hazell and Walters were bad hires. But maybe not. They were bad hires because of the wages they received. They should never have been paid the amount Purdue paid them based on their lack of head coaching experience. Their salary was close to what an experienced successful coach would receive. And neither coach had much head coaching experience before being hired. On the other hand, if Purdue had paid them Under $1 million a year like they did Hope, with a low buyout, And they produced 3-4 wins like Hope did, people would not be so upset by their hires. Unfortunately with their salary, people expected a lot better results than they produced. At least Walters was a good recruiter.
I will give you props. It’s nice to see someone on this board finally stating who the alternative to Walters was. I had heard Walters was not the AD’s choice, but rather was forced on him by the university president. This makes me ask the question, How many other ADs are not allowed to choose their own coaches? And how many university presidents are calling the shots for coaching hires? To me, if you give a person a job, you have to show faith in the person to do their job. The hiring of Walters by the President was a slap in the face to our AD.
You mention the WKU coach. I don’t doubt he is a good coach. But that’s kind of sad and revealing that he would be thought of as the best possible coach that Purdue could attract to be our head coach.
Odom was not a bad hire. But it’s still sad to realize he was the best coach That was actually interested in coming to coach at Purdue. Is Purdue that bad of a school That no elite coach wants to come here?
As for stupid decisions and bad coaching hires, Jim Tressel is now the Lt Governor of Ohio! Much like Tommy Tubberville, he knows nothing about politics or the requirements of his job. But he has a recognizable name. I guess Woody Hayes wasn’t available.
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