Express Word: Quarterback topics, Purdue basketball and much more

Gold and Black Express Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s edition, we discuss quarterback drama at all levels of football, Purdue basketball’s newcomers and more..

This week, we change our years-long three-subject format to a more flexible one.

ON COLLEGE FOOTBALL PRESEASONS

I don’t know if this is the case at Purdue or not, but it undoubtedly is around the country, adding a new layer to positional competition during training camps: Revenue-sharing incentives based on an athletes’ standing on their team. Specifically: Quarterback.

It is a real thing now that a starting quarterback gets X dollars and backups X. As a result, we have entered a new era of agents and other interested parties leaking teams’ quarterback decisions to national media for documentation’s sake while coaches have even more reason to be as methodical and occasionally paranoid about the matter.

The Kabuki theater of programs’ public stances toward their quarterback decisions and announcements now involves more serious considerations than just the silliness of the past. Throw in the portal and ability to retain players you want to retain and college football quarterback drama is now the best reality TV fodder I can think of.

Fun times.

ON QUARTERBACK PLAY IN ALL OF FOOTBALL

Joe Flacco is a starting quarterback in the NFL again, reflective of that silly league’s incompetence when it comes to evaluating and developing its sport’s most important position.

Look, Flacco had his day. He won a Super Bowl and landed the team-wrecking contract that inevitably comes to quarterbacks who win the big one, even if their defense did the heavy lifting. And it was Flacco who made a notable cultural impact in bringing us the worst sports-take debate of all time, at least this side of LeBron-Jordan.

But now at age 40, Flacco is an apex predator feasting on front offices’ quarterback mistakes. Had the New York Jets not screwed up pretty much everything at quarterback and had the Colts not whiffed (to date) on Anthony Richardson, Flacco might have been out of the league a half decade ago, instead of being brought into those situations like Crash Davis.

Now it’s the Cleveland Browns. The Browns are actually making a smart organizational decision by bringing in an old head to keep Dillon Gabriel and/or Shedeur Sanders on the sideline for the time being, but they would not have been in this position had they not botched things with Baker Mayfield — or before that, Johnny Manziel — making them desperate enough to make one of the worst trades in NFL history for Deshaun Watson.

Quarterback failures set franchises back years and mistakes beget mistakes. I am a Jets fan so I know better than most. Many of my readers are Bears fans, so they do also.

The NFL has to stop reaching for quarterbacks at the top of the draft no matter what. Stop drafting guys just because they look like action figures. Every situation is different, every fit is different and quarterback success is organizational success and vive versa, at all levels. Hudson Card was a good quarterback, but as much an organizational failure as anything.

Back to the NFL: Take a look at the organizations that are bad and stay bad and figure out the common denominator. They chase the quarterback, screw it up, then chase their tails for years on end.

I know it is easier said than done, but there are a lot of ways to build winning teams, and it is worth noting that Jalen Hurts was a second-round pick, Tom Brady a fifth-rounder and Patrick Mahomes not even the first QB taken in 2017. Drew Brees was a second-rounder and Russell Wilson a third-rounder. Lamar Jackson was the 32nd pick, as both he and Josh Allen were drafted behind Sam Darnold, said action figure. It’s all a crapshoot, a flip of the coin, yet teams with blue-chip picks keep running to the opportunity to screw it up.

This is instructive to college football programs, who are now bound to overspend out of necessity on the quarterback position, which will be just like NFL free agency every year now. The player is only as good as his situation sometimes.

That will be true this season at Purdue, presumably for Ryan Browne, as his success will depend on offensive design and philosophy, logical, realistic and self-aware play-calling, protection, etc. Quarterbacks get outsized credit and disproportionate blame (in most cases, but not all), but in a situation like Purdue’s right now, they’re more likely to just be avatars for the overall infrastructure.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL NEWCOMERS

Gratitude is one of the greatest components to contentedness, and one vibe emanating strongly from Purdue basketball’s newcomers is just that.

When you recruit international players, you are often getting players who are untainted by the American entitlement you sometimes get from the Corporate Basketball Machine in the U.S. Overseas imports, generally speaking, didn’t grow up getting apparel-company-branded SWAG bags as eighth-graders and being recruited to — and in many cases paid to — play for certain summer programs under the banner of certain logos. They didn’t have college coaches recruiting them as high school freshmen or high school coaches kissing their asses to make sure they didn’t transfer. They were coached hard, often by hard men from hardscrabble places. Global and regional conflict sometimes hung overhead. Worst of all, they didn’t get ice when they ordered soda in a restaurant, which will harden any man.

Basketball infrastructure in many cases was crude.

Now, Omer Mayer comes to Purdue from Israel, having already been in its military complex, and Oscar Cluff comes from Australia, where everything is twice as big and three times as deadly as it should be, by way of the Bermuda Triangles that are Pullman, Wash.; Sierra Vista, Ariz.; and Brookings, S.D. Life at a well-heeled — but far from obnoxiously, uh, heeled — high-major American college basketball program must really be something.

By every account, the two of them have relished and appreciated the opportunity, a five-star positive sign heading into a season in which any egos brought to campus will need to be checked at the door. Sacrifice is a must on the parts of many this season to come and happy-to-be-here guys are the best in that regard.

Throw in Antione West. All the same vibes from him. Patience is going to be imperative for him. There’s no way around it considerIng the landscape around him. Happy people align better with patience than angst-ridden, over-eager, unrealistic types.

Again, it’s only August, and I’m only formulating opinions based off what’s being said, but it sure seems like Purdue has not only crushed its roster completion but done so with optimal character composition.

ON RECRUITING

There’s a long way to go in this 2026 recruiting cycle but whether Purdue signs a big-time class or not from the bevy of elite players interested, the portal is inevitable.

The Boilermaker program has reached a level where there should be no rebuilds. They never looked at things that way anyway, but now it’s especially true. Purdue’s reached its zenith in program history and staying there is just as challenging as getting there.

Its model to doing so will remain unchanged: Building young cores and developing them, but when you look at the frontcourt, forward and center are going to have to be addressed with quick fixes, it seems, after Trey Kaufman-Renn and Oscar Cluff, respectively, depart. The key then is once you patch a hole, having reinforcements ascending the ranks ready to step in.

The portal is going to be Purdue’s most important 2026 recruiting area, same as the spring was heading into this year.

Keep that in mind as these high-end recruits start visits — starting with Quinn Costello this weekend — and eventually making decisions.