I went to Purdue immediately after Drew Brees led the Boilermakers to the Rose Bowl. While I was there, they continued to be a decently regarded football team, reaching bowl games each season while I was there. Thanks Kyle Orton!
The hot ticket in town, as you might imagine, was for Ross Ade Stadium. Everyone wanted to go to Boiler football games, ESPN College Gameday came to town once and the focus of collegiate athletics in West Lafayette was on the football team.
Meanwhile, Purdue basketball was extremely pedestrian in the final years of Gene Keady's coaching career. They missed the tournament a couple of times, and didn't really make much noise in the Dance when they got there. Basketball tickets were easy to come by.
Of course, that wasn't the trend before I got there. Purdue football had enjoyed a couple of good quarterbacks through the year, but before Brees and coach Joe Tiller, Purdue football was bordering on embarrassing. Keady was in the waning years of his career while I was there, but before I got there, that career was long and storied, and marked by 1st and 2nd seeds in the Tournament, as well as superstar players, like Glenn Robinson.
Almost immediately after I left, the Boilermakers football team started veering downhill. Tiller retired, and was replaced by a couple of underwhelming head coaches. Jeff Brohm is there now, and while there is some recent success, nobody is talking about Purdue football like there were in the 2000s. They are a non factor, even when they are at their best.
Of course, on the other hand, Matt Painter seized the helm of the basketball team from his mentor Keady, and quickly recruited teams that steadily got good seeds and made it to the Sweet 16. It started with the Jajuan Johnson, E'Twaun Moore, Robbie Hummel triumvirate and continued with top recruits and eventual NBA draft picks like AJ Hammons, Carl Landry and Caleb Swanigan. They were a whisper from the Final Four in 2019 on the back of Carsen Edwards and Dakota Mathias.
And some how, they might be bringing in their best team yet. Not only do they have Trevion Williams as a veteran presence in the paint, but they also have Jaden Ivey and Zach Edey, who have been playing for their respective countries on the international stage, and will bring more experience to the roster than the typical sophomore provides.
Purdue flipped upside down a bit when I was a student, but things are back as they ever were.
