Express Word: Purdue's atypical rise and football's big chance

The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In this week’s edition, we take a deeper look at this upstart Purdue basketball team, break down the Boilermaker football program’s moment in the spotlight and more.

HERE IT COMES AGAIN

Purdue’s top-five in college basketball again, with a team that probably shouldn’t be already, or at least conventional thinking suggests. As a result, we’re all about to be subjected to takes from those who don’t really get it, who look at Purdue’s youth, various shapes and sizes and — let’s call a spade a spade here — its prevailing demographic and see a team that’s exponentially better than its collective eye-test results. That was the story of the 2019 team, with the undersized, hyper-active scorer, the Stretch Armstrong euro at center, the power forward-sized point guard who couldn’t shoot and the — gasp — walk-on starting at forward. I swear, after every road game that team won that year, Painter was asked about his team as if he’d brought a handful of sporks to a knife fight.

What do you think the same folks will think about Ethan Morton — a former national recruit, by the way — when he’s averaging three points per game in January? Or Brian Waddell when he’s still averaging 1.2 points halfway through the season?

I have no idea where this weird Zach Edey ranking that gets cited on TV came from — “Zach Edey was ranked No. 1,896,095th in his class out of high school” — but let me explain something …

First, Baylor offered Edey. That’s forrmer national champion Baylor.

Second, Edey reclassified and in so doing cut a whole year out of recruiting. Had he not done that, someone might have seen him, you know, play and then all of a sudden he gets ranked and recruited at the same sort of level as Isaac Haas, who was a top-100 player who was offered by Kansas and UCLA at one time or another.

Mason Gillis would have been a top-100 player had he not wrecked his knee not once but twice, the first of those injuries occurring literally during his first game on a visible grassroots circuit. Pre-injury Mason Gillis was a different player than the one you see now, and Ohio State doesn’t just offer anybody as juniors.

And let’s not forget that both of Purdue’s current frontcourt backups were offered by North Carolina.

Was Braden Smith under-recruited? Of course he was, but I’ll be honest here, too. I don’t blame the people who looked past Smith. Painter sees value where others don’t as much. That’s a credit to Purdue more than an indictment of the others. I thought there were real questions about how Smith’s game would translate from high school to college, and was wrong, so who am I to point a finger at Indiana or Michigan or Michigan State for not recruiting a kid who’s going to be a star at Purdue?

Fletcher Loyer was a top-100 sort of player who should have been ranked much higher, as Myles Colvin will be coming in right behind him. Purdue just turned out a high-level pro and there may be more to come.

I guess my point here is that it’s not like Purdue’s rolling out a noonball team here. Purdue gets good players and don’t let the prevailing “less with more” takes to come make you think otherwise.

TIME TO LIVE UP

Purdue made it to the Big Ten championship game, a monumental achievement for the program, and one that — let’s be honest — came via the Boilermakers not always playing great. Someone had to win the division.

To their credit, though, whenever they needed to make a play or win a game to get this done, they did it, whether it was closing out close games against Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska or Illinois or pounding Indiana in the second half with everything to lose. The final two months of the season were sort of the opposite of the first.

And so Purdue won a championship, a meaningful one, without always necessarily looking like a champion.

Saturday night comes another chance.

Yeah, I know, Purdue’s a heavy, heavy underdog, as it should be. Michigan’s more than earned heavy-favorite status, and the Boilermakers’ season of skating past Big Ten West chum doesn’t stack up to what the Wolverines have done. Obviously.

Now, it bears mentioning that Purdue’s history in games like this one under Jeff Brohm is pretty good. Purdue ought to be one of the faces that top-five opponents are least eager to see given how things have gone down for a few of them.

That said, Purdue’s already a winner here. It’s won a championship, and that would have been true even if Iowa hadn’t tripped all over itself against Nebraska this past weekend and the Boilermakers merely shared the Big Ten West title and watched the championship game on TV.

Purdue can win here, though, too, by playing well, by pushing Michigan and by giving its division a bit of credibility, a division that’s never won one of these things and sometimes . It can prove itself worthy of the platform by doing so. It doesn’t matter all that much in the long run. Championships endure the test of time, even if these divisions don’t.

But this is a golden opportunity for Purdue to do something memorable, whether that’s in victory or even defeat.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• You know, the Big Ten’s gazillion-dollar (give or take) media rights deal is a triumph for football and a testament to the power of college football in an era when live sports is an absolute cash machine. For basketball, it’s really not such a hot deal. I mean, it’s fine, and the more money athletic departments have, the more money gets spent on basketball, but there are a number of layers to this issue that go beyond that.

ESPN has been good to college basketball. You could argue ESPN made college basketball. It certainly made it as accessible as can be long before BTN came along with all its Ro-Tel and Buffalo Wild Wings money.

Look no further than this week. The Big Ten/ACC Challenge is being played for the last time. This has been great for college basketball, great for the Big Ten, great for ESPN, just great. Nothing but great, except for ESPN’s half-assed scheduling approach below the biggest brands.

The Challenge is done. It’s ESPN’s deal and ESPN has been cut out, outbid for football, with the basketball baby going out with the bathwater.

Is Ohio State ever going to host Duke again? Will Purdue ever get Virginia to come to West Lafayette again? What about Indiana and North Carolina?

It’s hard to imagine these games being played on campuses all that often anymore. This is going to be neutral-site fodder — Maui, Atlantis, whatever — from here on out, if these games happen at all. Sure, these schools can try to work out home-and-homes and stuff, but it’s not like every coach is lighting himself on fire to go lose games on someone else’s home floor. The Challenge forced them to, as the Gavitt Games has as well, for Big Ten teams.

And you know, let’s say that North Carolina wants to play at Purdue, just for the sake of argument.

Well, ESPN has still invested a ton in the ACC and other leagues, and my strong suspicion is that the World Wide Leader would strongly prefer the Tar Heels to go play at Kentucky or Tennessee instead, so that away game suddenly becomes an SEC Network holding. Right?

If Carolina plays at Purdue, that game belongs to the Big Ten’s rights-holders, so it would be FOX most likely. ESPN, to whatever extent its influence exists, will fight that. That’s just business, good business. Scheduling is hard enough. Now there’s another Challenge to it.

Right now, the Big Ten is strewn all across ESPN and ESPN.com. This time a year from now, you can forget it. Hell, Joe Lunardi just moved Michigan to his first four out for the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

The Big Ten’s king-making new media deal was a coup for the conference, but a complicated topic for basketball, whether anyone wants to say that out loud or not.

You will, most likely, when you have to subscribe to Peacock to see Purdue on some random December Wednesday before long. Hey, while you’re there, maybe you can check out some old “Alf” episodes or something.

Anyway, the Big Ten/ACC Challenge will be missed, the first casualty of the afterthought basketball was during the Big Ten’s TV manifest destiny.

• You know what, folks, I’ve been quick to pick on Nebraska a lot over the years, about that program’s past having a firearm to the back of its head, in a sport that may have passed them by, in a conference that doesn’t benefit them in any way beyond the cash register.

But I have to hand it to them: I think they just made the best hire they could have made, landing Matt Rhule.

I’ve always compared Nebraska football and Indiana basketball to a certain extent when it comes to making hires. Just don’t hire a clown (Tom Crean), a freakshow (Bo Pelini), a narcissist (Scott Frost) or a cheater (figure it out) and you’re good. Just a normal guy who people will like, who can build bridges, handle the magnitude of the job without incident, keep a level head and just coach.

The shockingly mild-mannered-seeming Rhule would seem to check all those boxes, with NFL street cred no less, and that’s a big deal.

I do think there are real existential questions about Nebraska’s place in modern college football, but if Rhule’s not the guy to answer them, I don’t know who is.

• I think the opening of the Portal next week and is going to be one of the most newsworthy days college football has ever seen, and I don’t think I’m overstating that. No one is going to be immune from this. No one. This cycle will be unlike anything anyone’s ever seen.

Yes, there are going to be strong NIL under-currents to all this, but also the reality that coaches who don’t have solid relationships with their players are going to be laid bare.

• This is kind of the best of NIL right here: Money being raised for Aidan O’Connell’s family. This is the rare instance of honest-to-goodness, no-strings-attached altruism, of which I’m sure there’s a lot more out there being obscured by the perceptions of the jaded among us.