Three Thoughts From The Weekend: Purdue-Illinois, Zach Edey 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, In this week’s Three Thoughts, we discuss Purdue’s budding rivalry with Illinois, Boilermaker basketball’s coming season and more.
ON PURDUE’S NEXT FOE
This weekend, the trophy no one has put all that much emotional investment into — the Cannon — has some actual rivalry cachet.
Illinois is going to be a legit rival for the Boilermakers now, not just a geographically convenient one.
These two coaching staffs know one another very well, and I don’t get the sense this is going to be friendly. Respectful? Sure. Or probably. But these staffs aren’t going to be vacationing together, I don’t think. They will clash in recruiting often, and that part of it is often not for the faint of heart. Betcha Luke Williams could tell you about that. And I’m sure Illinois loves the story about Ryan Walters and Graham Harrell picking Hudson Card up in Champaign for his visit to Purdue.
These games in the near term may not be much to look at. Illinois plays ugly football and is back to being a bottom-feeder after being a success story last year, a surge for which I’m sure the credit remains up for grabs. Purdue has shown the past few weeks that the process here is going to be real.
But these Cannon games now actually will involve something more than an over-sized Monopoly piece.
ON PURDUE BASKETBALL
While it’s a redundancy most years when a college basketball team starts “official practice” — there’s limited practice all summer these days, it really means something for Purdue starting Tuesday.
On one hand, the Boilermakers are one of the most established teams in college basketball, with almost everyone back from a great team last season; on the other hand, its new-ness is so much of its up-side. There are exciting new pieces and interesting new lineups that could take Purdue from great to greater.
On one hand, no one practiced and played this summer more than Purdue, because of the Europe trip; on the other hand, most every one of those practices’ relevance toward the season was qualified by Zach Edey‘s excused absence. Purdue’s got some new dynamics, yeah, but make no mistake whose team this is and whose shoulders it rides upon.
Every player who is not Zach Edey is affected by Zach Edey and thus must learn to, or improve at, playing with him, complementing him and being better because of him.
In that sense, his presence is where preseason practice for Purdue really does “officially” begin.
ON FOOTBALL RULES
After watching another Zapruder film of a hit on a quarterback last night during the Raiders-Steelers game, including a full audit of how much contact to the head was absorbed by a shoulder, it revived a half-baked take of mine from a few weeks back about personal fouls, late hits, targeting, etc.
Protect the players at all costs, make guidelines, but maybe some subjectivity should be added into the equation. You know it when you see it, that kind of thing.
There are specific criteria in place for targeting, but what the Colorado State kid to Travis Hunter weeks back, lacerating the Colorado star’s liver, that was “targeting,” in every sense of the term, except in the rules. Just a personal foul; no ejection, no suspension. Should there be a higher level of personal foul for such things?
At the same time, Purdue’s gotten hit with a couple roughing-the-passer calls on which it tackled the quarterback below the knees. It didn’t hit the quarterback below the knees. There’s a difference between wrapping something up and delivering blunt force to it, right? There are distinctions drawn between facemask and illegal-hands-to-the-face, roughing the kicker and running into the kicker. Give roughing the passer its due consequence, but the stuff-happens variety, how about a lesser-impact, five-yard illegal contact penalty.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but sports are guided everywhere by subjective rulings by human arbiters. Fouls, balls and strikes, spots. With issues that involve player safety, for which consequences can change games, intent should be assessed before technicality if you ask me.
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