Three Thoughts From The Weekend: Sanoussi Kane and the NFL draft, Purdue basketball recruiting 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, Sanoussi Kane and the NFL draft, Purdue basketball recruiting and more.

ON SANOUSSI KANE

First off: Good for Sanoussi Kane. He got his degree, then bet on himself in the NFL draft after just three seasons of college football. Yeah, he was one of the last players drafted this weekend — some would tell you that at that point it’s better to go undrafted, then pick the best opportunity — and will have to earn his place, but I wouldn’t bet against a smart, physical and athletic player like Kane in a league where special-teamers with multi-positional versatility in the secondary are so important.

But at the same time, I can’t help of what what might have been for him at Purdue next season had he returned — or what kind of money he could have fetched going that other route. Last season, Kane was one of Purdue’s centerpiece defensive players in a new scheme that highlights certain positions. Ryan Walters and his staff kind of made Kane their Derwin James, playing him all over the place, both in coverage, but also as a de facto linebacker against the run and a real weapon as a blitzer. I thought he was damn good at it.

Betcha that with a year in the system and a year of familiarity, and with Dillon Thieneman well established playing center field, Kane could have been a terror this season. I’m sure Purdue wants what’s best for its players, but had it been able to return Kane, Thieneman, Nic Scourton and Kydran Jenkins on defense and supplement that core with incoming transfers, that might have been the makings of what Walters did at Illinois a few years back defensively.

I don’t see why Purdue can’t be good defensively this season if its transfers pan out and it stays healthy, but you don’t lose players like Scourton and Kane and not have it lower your ceiling.

ON RECRUITING

I want to make this clear: Trent Sisley is Purdue’s priority in the 2025 class, not just because Matt Painter has long loved him, but also because he’s really the only established such priority to this point. By every account, Purdue is in strong standing with Sisley, but there is going to be a process here, or at least their should be.

As of now, Purdue has one scholarship for 2025, the class that will be stepping into what very well could be a Final Four-capable team assuming Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn are all still around as seniors and Camden Heide and Myles Colvin as juniors, with all these freshmen-to-be having experience by then.

The player that that one scholarship goes to could be pivotal. Where would Purdue have been this year had it not had a scholarship for Lance Jones? Or for Zach Edey to come back for that matter?

Purdue owes it to itself to keep recruiting the hell out of Sisley, but also to keep its head on a swivel for potential Day 1 difference-makers, which Sisley might be, but you never know. Purdue wants a forward, but there are no glaring needs on paper for that class, barring anything unforeseen. Jones worked out too good to be true, which may never happen again, but the flexibility to look for a final-piece-of-the-puzzle player after this season to come may not be the worst thing in the world.

ON REVENUE SHARING

Hear me out here, because this might be an incomplete thought, but the numbers I’m hearing that are being thrown around to buy next year’s Big Ten basketball rosters are staggering, and if they’re even close to reality, ridiculous.

I’m all for the athletes getting theirs after all these years, and if schools and donors are going to be insane about this, good for the young men and women.

But this feels more and more like a step toward revenue-sharing and a “salary cap.” You can wonder about how enforceable a salary cap would be but there are no rules right now, so what can be “worse” for college sports? There is no down.

Revenue-sharing could be simple. Every school can allot X million dollars a year to divvy up as they see fit amongst their athletes. That’s not all that different from what’s happening now, just better streamlined. It doesn’t answer the question of how NIL on top of salary is handled, but again, some structure would be good here. Any structure. This was a golden opportunity for athletes to finally get theirs while offloading that expense away from athletic departments and the NCAA still screwed it up through its inaction and incompetence over the span of decades.

College students are leaving schools they don’t want to leave, sidetracking their academic progress and social lives and comforts simply because someone is offering them money they can’t in good conscience turn down for themselves and their families. Greg Gard hit the nail on the head with his comments about Chucky Hepburn specifically, that he doesn’t blame the kid for taking Louisville’s money. I’m not mentioning A.J. Storr as part of this point because everything about him screams “soldier of fortune.”

The players are making their money. Good for them. They deserve it, because without them, there’s nothing here.

But this landscape is the product of the reality that everyone benefits from a strong game, whether it’s college football, college basketball, Olympic sports or whatever.

The Monopoly Money Era has probably been fun these last few off-seasons in a waking-up-in-Vegas-with-your-pants-missing kind of way, but it is not sustainably good for the game(s). It is not good for coaches whose jobs depend on chaos. It’s not good for boosters who are pissing away their money for debatable return. It’s not good for athletes who attend three colleges in four years, no matter how juicy the short-term pay-out is. And it’s not good for fans and college communities who have no idea who’ll be playing for their teams in three months. What’s bad for fans is by extension bad for TV, which is all that matters anymore.

Let major programs take that TV money and pay their young men and women enough to where there is no offer that can’t be refused.

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