The whole point is, you need a BOT and President that wants that before it even matters. They don't and, in my opinion, probably shouldn't care that much about athletics. So we could sit all day and speculate what to do with each program if they both had blank checks but that is putting the cart before the horse. However, if you want specific things that could be done if the whole focus were just to field the best football/basketball team as possible, I can think of two. First and foremost, drop admission requirements for those athletes and develop some meaningless curriculum that makes it easy for them to pass classes and stay eligible. Secondly, build a luxury dorm to house athletes and do whatever you have to do to make it legal by NCAA standards (ie have a required of regular students living there too).
Let it be known, that I'm not in favor of either thing but if you want to remove some recruiting pitfalls compared to other schools I think those could be some major things. Also, that alone won't guarantee improvement without a coach that knows how to use those players. I think it would benefit the basketball program right now because I feel what limits us there is not our coach but our ability to land enough top tier recruits. The football program, I don't think we see major improvement even if we got better recruits because I'm just not sure the coaching staff has the first clue on how to develop players and put together a team.
I've said it before with a different President that people often critiqued, and I'll say it again with the current President - university presidents are ONLY going to do so much when it comes to athletics. It is not a significant make up of most universities to where they really spend a whole lotta time on.
Basically, we've seen Purdue have four presidents while Burke has been at Purdue. None of them have really treated athletics much differently. There have been some small differences between personalities and such, but it's relatively been the same on the overarching approach.
Obviously the one common factor through 4 different presidents has been the athletic director. Purdue doesn't need some massive assistance from the university - Big Ten schools for the most part are not really getting that (there may be a student fee for tickets, but in terms of revenue - student fees actually tend to bring in less than charging students for tickets).
Purdue's big problem now is that football revenue has been so bad. For the most part, BOT/Presidents are basically just going to give approval to what the athletic director proposes. They aren't saying no, come back to me with someone else. So that falls on the athletic director.
Purdue's NOT struggling because of the reasons you are putting forth. You know what school has the toughest admissions in the Big Ten outside of Northwestern? Wisconsin. They're doing a-ok. Not Purdue. And to act like Purdue doesn't have easy classes/majors is just flat out denial. Purdue's a very good school, do not get me wrong, but it's not like it's some secretive Ivy League school that is so hard to get into and there's no easy majors at school with 30,000 students. You cannot use this excuse when you see other much better academic schools like Northwestern, Stanford, etc. have success. "Luxury dorms" for athletes are not allowed. Purdue also has a pretty nice dorm in a recently renovated Cary Quad that's literally across the street from the athletic campus.
The fact of the matter is that Purdue had success with similar situations - Purdue was good in football with worse facilities than they have now.
I think the biggest problem is just overall management - not just from Burke but from various departments. Purdue does not strive to be the best as an athletic department. It's been happening for years - every single time I get solicited by athletics, there's a complaint/negative tone. There's just a lack of positivity, vision, etc.
