GoldandBlack.com Saturday Simulcast: The AD search, Purdue hoops and more

In our June 6, 2026 edition, GoldandBlack.com’s Brian Neubert and Alan Karpick get you caught up on goings on in Boilermaker Athletics. Topics this week include AD Mike Boibinski’s decision to return as of Dec. 31, 2026, and the upcoming search. Also, talk turns to Purdue hoops: the start of practice and recent play of future Boilermakers Luke Ertel and Isaiah Hill.

https://youtu.be/G9GkEsUzCRE

Audio only

ON THE PURDUE AD MIKE BOBINSKI ERA (Brian Neubert’s Weekly Word)

I understand fully that every athletic director at the level Purdue exists in is only as good as the result of their last football game. And yes, Purdue football the last couple years has circled back to its woebegone state of about a decade ago.

But if you are capable of putting that aside and taking a clear-eyed, sober look at Mike Bobinski’s tenure as Purdue’s athletic director, you should realize how transformative and, at the end of the day, successful it has been.

Bobinski shepherded Purdue through an era in which it committed to its most significant extent to occupying a seat at the big-boy table in the Big Ten and nationally. It started spending money at a much higher level, taking much more of the approach of spending money to make money. Bobinski supported his coaches 100 percent and gave them what they needed to be successful within the boundaries of Purdue’s inherent limitations, which should not be overlooked in any conversation about the success or lack thereof of Purdue sports.

Is Matt Painter’s success the past decade possible without the institutional commitment that the program got both from Bobinski and his bosses? I cannot say that for certain, but institutional support has been an enormous key to Purdue basketball reaching the levels it has reached. If you are not familiar with what goes on behind the scenes in these programs, that might not make sense to you, but Painter has had everything he has needed to be successful at the level at which he has been successful, and that is a big part of Bobinski’s legacy at Purdue and, again, part of the university commitment that was made upon his hiring as Purdue’s AD. There have been very few limitations on Purdue’s money programs being successful, at least not that anyone can control. Basketball is the face of that.

Yes, Ryan Walters was a disastrous hire. There is no way around that. If there is a stain on Bobinski’s legacy at Purdue, that is it. It is still difficult to understand what all went into that hiring. But for one bad football hire, Bobinski hired one of the best coaches available on the market two out of three opportunities to do so. If you think Bobinski destroyed Purdue football, you hereby forfeit the right to talk to your friends at parties about the Tyler Trent game, Rondale Moore and all the other incredible memories and moments Purdue football experienced under Jeff Brohm, all of them part of Bobinski’s résumé in West Lafayette. Retaining Brohm the first time around when Louisville pursued him, when everyone knew how that was going to end eventually, was an enormous win for Purdue.

Obviously, the story is left to be written on Barry Odom, but Odom might have been the most sought-after coach on the market when Ryan Walters was fired, considering the success he had at UNLV. I don’t think anybody should be complaining about making that hire, on paper. Obviously Year 1 did not go as planned, but judging these things after one season is a fool’s errand.

Bobinski shepherded Purdue through the onset of the NIL Era and into the revenue-sharing era. NIL was a double-sided story for Purdue, for a wide variety of reasons a lot of fans don’t want to read about, but Purdue came out of it OK. At least basketball did.

Bobinski securing from the university its commitment to match the $21 million revenue-sharing agreement was a coup that no one ever talks about. In an era in which athletic departments all over the country are trying to figure out where that money is going to come from, Purdue entered this new world with the university committed to the cause.

During Bobinski’s tenure, the entire job changed. He got an athletic department through a pandemic reltively unscathed, and still got a stadium project done thereafter.

Money doesn’t flow from the faucets at Purdue the way it does at Texas or Ohio State or even Indiana, and that’s just the nature of the job, but Purdue has invested competitively and kept in the black, albeit just barely lately.

G