Express Word: University Leadership and Sports

The Express Word is GoldandBlack.com’s Express column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s edition, university leadership, Purdue basketball recruiting and more.

ON UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS

As the university embarks on a presidential search, it is important to remember that if you are on this site, chances are you exist in a little bubble of sports that will not be the driving force in this decision. Athletics are really important to universities. That goes without saying, I think. Are they the No. 1 priority? Very, very rarely.

Purdue, and every university of its reputation and magnitude, needs to make these hires based on advancing academic excellence, managing an organization the size of a small state, and nowadays more than ever engaging in political détente with its state government.

All that said, athletics are very important, and getting a president who recognizes that and is willing to acquiesce to the athletic department’s needs should be a very important consideration. Purdue’s friends to the south just showed in no uncertain terms what athletics can do to elevate the profile of an entire university. Purdue has never been a win-at-all-costs place, from Hovde Hall on down, but it has committed in recent years at its highest level ever.

Just because football is in the tank right now competitively should not distract from the fact that Purdue is coming pretty close to maxing out its commitment to sports. Mike Berghoff, the former chair of the trustees, really drove that and gave Mike Bobinski the sort of resources needed to take basketball to another level and to make the Jeff Brohm Era for football happen.

Mung Chiang continued that, and the university’s commitment to helping Purdue with its revenue-sharing money every year was a really, really important deal that Bobinski was able to sell his bosses on. Both sides of that deserve immense credit. These are not easy times financially for either side of that equation.

Athletics will endure, but “alignment” isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a necessity for success in college sports. Purdue’s athletic department needs a supportive presence in the big chair, someone who gets the value sports can bring a university and is willing to help make it happen, while also having some understanding — or at least an interest in understanding — what college sports actually are now.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING

Purdue’s recruiting at a really high level right now, and a bit of a relative subtext is this: I think it’s a really good time for the program’s best players to be two-way presences, a reality underscored by the great careers of its outgoing seniors and how much more they could have accomplished.

But if Luke Ertel and Sinan Huan and Isaiah Hill and if Purdue gets Kevin Savage Jr., then that’s a nice core of really gifted players who can be very good defensively. But It has to start now with CJ Cox and Gicarri Harris and Daniel Jacobsen, etc.

Purdue’s an offensive program now, one of the best in its sport. But the time is now for the program to move away from being an offense-only program. That sounds harsh and certainly isn’t meant to suggest Matt Painter’s commitment to defense has dipped in any way, but there have been times lately when elite offense looked like Purdue’s most important asset but also its worst enemy.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• I said it at the time and I’ll say it again: As soon as Baylor finagled James Nnaji onto its roster, it pushed every creative-minded staff in America’s nose into the rulebook looking for loopholes. This was bound to happen, as coaches do what’s best for themselves, not what’s best for the game that’s been so good to them.

It’s up to the coaches to stop this insanity. But winning is all that matters and wherever there’s a Will there’s going to be a Wade. When soul-less coaches get hired at soul-less universities, the game is going to suffer. It takes quite an effort to bring the SEC down a peg ethically, but leave it to LSU.

• On this topic of Big Ten and SEC “secession”: Why? They already can do whatever they want, and power conferences earned legislative autonomy long ago. COVID showed us who calls the shots in college football, and that applies across the board.

So are Michigan and Ohio State and Alabama and Georgia really going to initiate a Big Bang moment just to not have to share a few million dollars every year with Purdue and Mississippi State, then have to negotiate their own hostile-takeover media rights packages? And then live in a world where suddenly you go from being the apex predator to staring down the prospect of mediocrity.

Nah.

• When Purdue again sticks to its preseason-prep processes instead of deviating for a week to really try to win versus UConn in the Oct. 27 exhibition game that doesn’t count, will that cause a stir among both fan bases as it has in the past?