Express Thoughts: Omer Mayer, Purdue football and more

Gold and Black Express Thoughts from the Weekend column, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind.

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ON PURDUE FRESHMAN OMER MAYER

Freshman Omer Mayer‘s arrival at Purdue this weekend was much anticipated given some of the complications involved, though none of them turned out to be all that complicated.

So after chomping at the bit the past few months to arrive, it is now so for the highly regarded international import, likely a high-impact player for Purdue this season, and an eventual star if he’s around long enough.

The immediate must: Learn and fit.

Much like his experience with his pro team in Israel, Meyer’s a puppy on this senior-dominated Boilermaker team. This is a season where a lot of stars are lining up for Purdue and for Meyer that’ll inevitably mean finding a winning role immediately. We can speculate all we want about what that may be, but winning is the name of the game now, and that’s got to be the mission for him and for those around him as it applies to him.

Purdue’s had some really highly influential freshmen join well established teams before. Purdue’s 2014 freshman class (Vincent Edwards, Dakota Mathias, PJ Thompson, etc.) deserved immense credit for helping Carsen Edwards do his thing. They provided stability around him, were never threatened by him and were patient with him, at least within public view. Same for all those guys a few years later when Caleb Swanigan came along. There weren’t really egos, best I could tell at least.

So it’s up to Meyer now to fit in and inevitably sacrifice, as he signed up for. But it’s also up to everyone else to embrace him and help him along, even if that means handing over some minutes, some shots, whatever it might be.

It’s areas like this where Purdue has been great of late — team over self — and I wouldn’t expect this to be any different.

ON PURDUE IN THE CURRENT COLLEGE FOOTBALL CLIMATE

Big Ten media day(s) in Vegas reminded of just how distinctly every paradigm around college football rebuilds has reversed.

A world that used to belong to the home builder is now a flipper’s paradise. The quick-fix turnaround is more do-able than ever now, whereas it used to be about the three-, four-, five-year view.

“A program is built in four stages,” Bobby Bowden was long ago quoted as saying. “First you lose big, then you lose close. Then you win close, and finally, you win big.”

Now, teams are built in four months. Maybe every year. But programs are a different story. Constructing an organization quickly is arguably a greater challenge than assembling a roster, particularly if trying to building something that will endure.

The long-term stability is still the hard part, but stability probably now takes on a whole different meaning.

The elites will still be the elites and most of the hoboes will remain hoboes but in between there were would seem to be more room than ever for both upward and downward mobility, but also year to year turbulence.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL RECRUITING

I guess this is another point to make on Meyer, brought to mind by this long-known web site’s projections, which have four Purdue 2026 recruiting targets — Cameron Williams, Colben Landrew, Anthony Thompson and Taylen Kinney — listed as first-rounders this far out.

I doubt Purdue gets any of those guys, but it already has the best 2026 recruit it could have gotten, because if you can keep Meyer a second year, his talent level plus a year in the program would make him better than anything — anything — Purdue could get out of the current senior class.