Three Thoughts From The Weekend: Gene Keady, Purdue football and more
GoldandBlack.com’s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column runs every Monday morning, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting or whatever else comes to mind. In this week’s edition, we discuss discuss Gene Keady’s Hall of Fame induction and more.
ON GENE KEADY
Gene Keady’s induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame was a long time coming, and for years now, there was no guarantee it would. It’s been two decades since his retirement, but his eventual selection proved he was far from out of sight, out of mind. I’m sure many of his allies and admirers rallied at this late hour to lobby for his induction as he gets on in years. Ultimately, Keady got in not just for his résumé — a great one, but one that doesn’t line-item stack up with some of his contemporaries (in part because he didn’t become the head coach at Purdue until he was in his mid-40s) — but because he was the coach’s coach, the sort peers tended to revere and respect even if he rarely drew the spotlight. Even today, how hard is it for media around here to write a story about Keady without making it about Bob Knight?
But that’s the shadow Keady existed in, relished and ultimately broke out of officially when he put on that strange tangerine jacket Friday night.
His legacy is his career, the lives he impacted, his influence on the Big Ten and the game nationwide, but also Matt Painter.
Make no mistake: While Painter credits his college coach at every turn for laying the foundation he’s now building upon, they are two very, very different men and very, very, very different coaches. That said, they generally stand for the same broad principles, though the game has changed so much in 20 years. Painter has modernized Purdue, won as consistently as Keady, commanded respect around the game much like his predecessor did. Eventually, Painter will pass Keady to become Purdue’s all-time-winningest coach and probably join him in Springfield.
To this point, the two men’s trajectories as coaches have been strangely symmetrical. Massive success, nationwide respect but also that albatross of what might have been at this moment or that moment.
It’ll happen for Purdue eventually, that national championship or at least Final Four. When it does, here’s hoping Keady’s there to see it.
ON PURDUE FOOTBALL’S SEASON
Purdue has a new staff, obviously, and it’s quite possible that this season won’t always be smooth sailing. The first month is all high-major or off-brand high-major competition and the Big Ten schedule drops all the advantages that helped the Boilermakers win the West last season.
Often a new staff, particularly one as energized as Purdue’s, is good for an early jolt, but that tends to be more likely to happen when a team has stunk and is tired of it. See: 1997 and 2017. The returning roster is actually kinda sorta used to success, but will be needed to conduct itself very differently. Whether it’s relevant context with the coaching staff and almost every contributor from last season gone, I don’t know, but Purdue will still be viewed as reigning divisional champion.
Does it even matter how many players — and how many dudes — a new staff inherits anymore? These coaches nowadays have a luxury, but also a peril, that none of those who came before them did: They can recruit a whole new team in an off-season. Ryan Walters and his coaches haven’t quite done that, but when this season kicks off in a few weeks, you’re gonna want that roster handy, because all those new guys, they’re not just on the team, but they’re on the field.
It used to be where that four- and five-year floor plan was ironclad in terms of expectations for new coaches. Now, they’ll be expected to win quicker as roster turnover isn’t nearly as laborious. And when a job changes hands in a winning state, people are gonna view you as all set up.
I’m telling you, though, that this is going to be more of a process. Walters does have the advantage of having his quarterback from the outset, which is a huge deal.
That said, even if this isn’t a straight rebuild, it’s definitely a construction job. Expectations obviously lie in the eye of the beholder, and Purdue’s hopes will remain high, but there’s reasons to look at this both from half-glass-full and half-glass-empty perspectives as an outsider.
Maybe somewhere in the middle the truth will lie. It’s not like .500-or-slightly-better seasons haven’t constituted marked success at Purdue before.
ON EXPANSION
Last week, we discussed at length the Big Ten’s realignment moves and their potential impact on the conference. But what of those two newcomers — Washington and Oregon?
Chasing that TV money bag may come with significant competitive concessions for both. The Ducks and Huskies could have stuck in the decapitated Pac-12 and enjoyed significant upward mobility as the league reorganizes as the lead-in to “Ted Lasso.” That conference, by the way, would have still had Playoff access, for the time being at least, and that AQ bid would be sitting right there for the taking.
Now, you have followed the prominent programs who’ve been your biggest hurdles for years, you’ve maybe now affected your standing in your recruiting base, you’ve taken on travel that’ll hurt the West Coast teams more than the existing core of the Big Ten and you run the risk of a perpetual middle-of-the-pack existence. Nebraska was the ultimate cautionary tale. (That doesn’t mean Nebraska isn’t well compensated for its modern mediocrity.)
There’s no question that the Big Ten is absolutely stacked, to a potentially stifling extent for a bunch of these schools.
One dynamic here that I don’t know if any school wants to say out loud is the worry about selling yourself out competitively. TV money is great but you still want relevance, an engaged following, recruiting punch, prime-time cachet. Lose those things and suddenly you become Rutgers.
I do wonder if the Pacific Northwest tandem didn’t sell themselves out competitively.
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