Weekly Word: Purdue football, Big Ten basketball and more
The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s Weekly Word, we discuss Purdue football’s start to the season, the Big Ten basketball season to come and more.
ON PURDUE FOOTBALL’S START
Purdue’s got some momentum coming out of the Virginia Tech, enough to suggest a strong showing in this pivotal September is on the table. After that, who knows? The most important thing is the Boilermakers keep improving.
No telling how the rest of the season turns out, but because I need something to write about and because I don’t want to assign some unique importance to every single game, here are just a couple of thoughts on the season thus far, from someone who knows about as much about this team as most of you do.
• Purdue has a solid defensive foundation.
In modern football — maybe more so the NFL — I think you win with edge rushers and corners. Those are the most important positions.
Along those lines, Nic Scourton is outstanding, an NFL talent who could have named his spot (and made a bunch of money) had he split after last season along with all those other D-linemen. But Kydran Jenkins has been great, too.
They play key roles in this dynamic defensive system and look like they’re up to everything being asked of them, especially the pass-rushing part.
Meanwhile, those two new corners, Marquis Wilson and Markevious Brown, have quietly been really good. Quiet is good at that position. Purdue hit on both those additions.
• Tyrone Tracy has found his place.
Looked to me last year as if Tracy as a concept could have impacted Purdue’s offense but Purdue never really figured out how to turn concept into reality.
Now, Ryan Walters, Graham Harrell, etc., seem to have figured out how to make it work with their position-optional senior. He was a key cog in the Virginia Tech game plan, and has been effective in different ways out of two-back offense. Betcha there are ways to use his receiving skills in a big-play context out of those packages.
• Dillon Thieneman has been a godsend.
Overstatement? Sure. But the freshman safety — living in a world where freshman opportunity gets cannibalized by transfers — has not just survived as an every-snap player, but he’s thrived. Best freshman safety Purdue has had since Bernard Pollard, who came a year after Stu Schweigert.
• Hudson Card will keep getting better and better.
Purdue was a very different team offensively in Week 2 than it was Week 1, reflective of the fact that everyone’s still settling in together, from play-caller on down. That obviously involves Purdue’s new quarterback, who looks to me like he’s gonna be really good, though he could use another weapon or two.
Purdue’s Braden Smith (Photo: Jacob Wright)
SOPHOMORES STAND UP
With college basketball being what it is nowadays, the term “one-and-done” has taken on a new meaning as it pertains to instant-impact players. There are still those special high school players who show up on a campus, make their presence felt for a few months, then bolt. But the more common story may now be the senior transfer. Most everyone will recruit them, like what Michigan has this year in Olivier Nkamhoua, or what Ohio State hopes to have in Jamison Battle.
Such cases do take away from freshman opportunity, but also subsequently put the onus on the sophomores who had to wait a year when they might have otherwise played, or starred, right away.
The Big Ten used to be a league dominated by seniors, but we’re just two seasons removed from Kris Murray, Jaden Ivey and Johnny Davis all being first-round picks after just two seasons.
This year, I doubt you see that same NBA attention, but you will see a league dominated by age, but heavily influenced by whatever next steps last year’s rookies make. Maybe the emergent sophomore is the new impact freshman.
Reason I bring it up is that this week I filled out my preseason All-Big Ten ballot — only two five-man teams, 10 guys total — and considered Purdue’s Braden Smith and Wisconsin’s Connor Essegian not just worthy, but no-brainers.
A third team would have included Fletcher Loyer and I’m sure someone else from his class.
Ohio State’s Bruce Thornton, Indiana’s Malik Reneau, Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn (a third-year player), Rutgers’ Derek Simpson and Illinois’ Ty Rodgers come to mind. Each of them either had to wait behind older guys last season or had to play through their youth, or both.
Purdue Flag (Photo: Chad Krockover)
RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK
• You know, when you pretty much have a zero-percent approval rating and everyone’s mad at you for something at all times, you become an easy target, and you might have a run like the NCAA is on.
College sports’ governing body, in theory, can do no right. it seems.
To clean up the transfer “epidemic” people hated, the NCAA changed the system so that transfers — one-time transfers — came without year-in-residence penalty. And a waiver system remained in place.
Well, schools hate the transfer portal and want some semblance of order when it comes to waivers.
The NCAA denies a waiver and big-brand North Carolina points its nukes straight at Indianapolis. Grant every waiver and you suck; deny any waiver and you’re a ghoul.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck for the kid — hey, I covered Keith Smith years back and that sucked — but the reality is that the rules are written down and sometimes they’re enforced accordingly. I remember there being a school that had athletes in fake classes years ago who came away unscathed because the rules are written in such a way that academic fraud is not an NCAA matter. Eligibility is, but not academic fraud. That’s up to the schools themselves to litigate.
Therein lies the point. The NCAA is not only a collection of figureheads and accountants and event-planners. It’s the schools. The NCAA is the schools and the schools are the NCAA, and so the rules are written as the schools want them written.
Granted, I won’t soon defend the fact that Albany’s A.D. might be influencing rules that affect Alabama, nor should anyone. It’s an inane concept that has finally come to its breaking point, as it would appear as if the cream of the NCAA crop in football and possibly basketball could be headed to do their own thing, which is to say whatever they want. COVID showed us who’s boss between Big Football and the NCAA. Realignment has shown us who’s boss between Big Football and Big TV.
In the meantime, the NCAA exists to, well, suck, and might be getting tired of the abuse, as evidenced by the clapping back that’s been done in public. Snark solves very few problems, and the NCAA can not allow itself to look vindictive or petty, because pettiness rules the day around it.
There are rules. Jim Harbaugh allegedly broke some of those rules. The NCAA’s investigation became a punchline on Michigan Twitter, and anything but the ground-breaking scandal it would have been had Ohio State or Michigan State (welp) been involved. As is America these days, Harbaugh became the victim, the victim of his own university self-imposing penalties upon him.
There are rules. Schools write the rules. When the rules don’t benefit them, they bitch. When the rules benefit a rival, they bitch. When there’s nothing to bitch about, they bitch.
I’m no apologist for the NCAA, as you all know by now, but those poor folks just can’t win.
• You never draw conclusions too early, but, man, the Big Ten West looks wide open. Nebraska’s Revival under Matt Rhule — the Rhulevival if you will — ain’t happening this year, it wouldn’t appear. If Rhule can’t do it, no one can, but there’s still a good deal of Scott Frost there hat you just get off with one shower. And when your quarterback hands over footballs like a Pez dispenser dishing out candy, you’re not beating anybody.
Wisconsin again looks beatable. Doesn’t mean Purdue will do it for the first time since we became an industrialized nation, but they’re beatable. Minnesota, meh. Illinois, welcome back to reality. Northwestern is atrocious and bound to come apart at the seams and find a sub-atrocious level. Purdue, we’ll see.
That leaves, you know who, Iowa, sitting there waiting for everyone else to screw up and hoping beyond hope at Ferentz Family gatherings to score 25 points a game.
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