Express Thoughts: Purdue’s scheduling advantage, college basketball issues

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

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL

You win Big Ten titles on the road.

With that in mind, it’s important to note that Purdue re-opens Big Ten play next week with a marked advantage: Michigan, Michigan State and Illinois all come to West Lafayette. Purdue’s been jobbed by schedule quirks before, but now this stands as a break that makes the Boilermakers the enduring favorite, in my opinion, even if Michigan looks like the Monstars right now.

Here’s the rub, though: Nebraska appears to be good, and there are PBA demons for Purdue to exorcise, same as there were at Rutgers. The difference: Rutgers stinks. Purdue is better than Indiana but that’s been true for a decade and a bunch of those games in Bloomington have gone bad. Wisconsin isn’t great, but Wisconsin is still Wisconsin. The California trip won’t be easy, nor will be coming back to host Illinois a few days later. That’s what cost Purdue that Ohio State game last season.

Point here is, Purdue has a huge advantage, but has to win other big games away from home to realize that advantage.

And so, the defense and rebounding that have buoyed the Boilermakers of late loom large, because that’s how you win on the road.

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COLLEGE BASKETBALL COACHES GONE WILD

Amidst absurd college football news cycles — as if there are any other kind — college basketball told its sibling revenue sport during the holiday break to hold its beer … or egg nog.

Scott Drew is simply the worst, and his handling of this James Nnaji situation just put all of college sports on very slick ice. Guardian of the game, my you-know-what.

These dudes can’t help themselves, then are shameless in their justification of their own behavior.

Everyone is blaming the NCAA and that’s fine. It’s sports’ softest target. But if Scott Drew hadn’t already understand that the NCAA is about as agile as the Empire State Building, then I can’t believe he was smart enough to figure out how to add an NBA draft pick to his team mid-season. You can’t blame the NCAA for not legislating hypotheticals before they were even realistic, just like you can’t go 30 miles per hour over the speed limit, get pulled over, then blame the sign.

When coaches blame the NCAA for not stopping them from doing this stuff, they are telling on themselves.

The NCAA is a just a projection of its membership, so the rules in place are those agreed upon by university presidents, athletic directors and coaches. They make the rules than they then squirm right through when it suits them, and as a “director” in the NABC knows what’s best for college basketball at this delicate moment and knows deep down this ain’t it. We’ll expect him to start championing “collective bargaining” come spring. He must lead the charge to stop his very behavior.

Head coach Scott Drew responds to the criticism surrounding the mid-season addition of James Nnaji, a former NBA Draft pick:

"Until we get to collective bargaining, I don't think we can come up with rules that are agreeable or enforceable … We're always going to adapt to put… pic.twitter.com/Rki7CieyI9

— Baylor Bears on SicEm365 (@SicEm365) December 29, 2025

I used to feel bad for Baylor, because BYU bought its best player away last spring. But when you live in the grey, what goes around comes around.

I just hope the Knicks call James Nnaji up in February, so we can hear Baylor’s coach blame the NBA.

To everyone else in the coaching world: Call them out. By name. Institutions — media, coaches, police, doctors, lawyers, whatever — don’t benefit from the good ones closing ranks to protect the bad ones out of some self-sabotaging sense of fraternity.

ON PURDUE AND COLLEGE FOOTBALL

This insane college football hiring cycle fell as it was being redefined what it means to be a college football coach these days.

These aren’t teams. These are organizations, and in the revenue-sharing/NIL Era, it’s about resource allocation, to the point that these GM positions seem to creeping up on the actual coaches in importance.

However, one very important reality that people are losing sight of: In the NFL, when you make investment-based decisions based on a fixed amount of dollars, you are dealing in known commodities. You’re trading in physically developed, accomplished, finished-product professionals.

In college football, you’re trading in the most volatile commodity on the planet: The adolescent male.

This will always be a coach’s game.