With Stanford off the board, Purdue is the lone Power 5 opening: Assessing the Boilermakers' job, candidates in the mix?
With Troy Taylor landing Stanford’s head coach opening, Purdue is now the only available Power 5 job.
A week ago, the Boilermakers were still basking in the program’s first Big Ten West championship and just their second consecutive winning season in 15 years, but then the market turned upside down, as maligned Louisville coach Scott Satterfield found his get-out-of-jail-free-card at Cincinnati.
With the Cardinals’ job vacant for the second time since 2018, Purdue’s fans worst fears were realized as six-year head coach Jeff Brohm was finally ready to return home.
Purdue wasn’t shocked that Brohm would leave for Louisville, but the timing is rough — right after the Dec. 5 transfer portal window opened, just weeks before Early National Signing Day and at the start of bowl prep — and the overall job is even tougher.
With the marjory of Purdue’s staff reportedly headed to Louisville with Brohm — including co-DC Ron English, S&C coordinator Domenic Reno anddirector of football ops Greg Brohm, among others — the rest of the skeleton coaching staff is trying to keep the train on the tracks as the Boilermakers have had a flurry of decommitments in the last few days.
So how good of a job is Purdue? Who is reportedly in the mix for the Boilermakers?
Purdue’s A1 selling point is that it’s has that Big Ten patch on its uniforms. Divisions will go away in a year or two, but the Boilermakers’ spot in the conference is safe, which means it’s a program that has a lot more money to spend compared to most others in the country.
Brohm was making $5 million annually and easily could’ve demanded a raise north of $7 million had he wanted to stay in West Lafayette. His assistant salary pool was very workable at around $4.5 million, too.
But that’s pretty much where Purdue’s advantages start and end.
Historically, Purdue is a tough place to win.
Brohm established a new floor with the Boilermakers — a competent Big Ten team — but he also likely took the program to its ceiling in the last two years — 6-3 records conference record in 2021, 2022.
It’s going to be next-to-impossible to replicate six conference wins a season with a Big Ten that’s seen Nebraska, Wisconsin and Michigan State significantly up their investments in football, and USC and UCLA set to enter the league in 2024.
Before Brohm took over Purdue, the Boilermakers went 9-39 under Darrell Hazell. They were slightly better under Danny Hope, who took over after famed coach Joe Tiller, but had just a single winning season (7-6) in four years.
But now they’re a year away from losing their advantage of the Big Ten West divisional structure and they don’t have the roster, recruiting footprint or powerful NIL collective to avoid a regression.
The Big Ten’s billion dollar media right’s deal is great for the conference, but recourses don’t mean as much if you can’t get as many transfers into your academic institution due to rigorous standards. Or if you don’t have a unified booster base spending the money.
Purdue hasn’t had a 10-win season in 43 years, so simply making a bowl game, something Brohm did four times in five full seasons, would be maintaining the program’s current “momentum.”
The expectations cannot and should not be anything more than that.
As for candidates, most expect Purdue to continue its history of hiring an offensive-minded head coach. The Boilermakers’ pass-happy scheme night not be as much a contrasting style in the conference anymore though, as Wisconsin is clearly looking to modernize and Lincoln Riley is a year away from Air Raid’ing his way through the Big Ten.
A.D. Mike Bobinski understands the urgency needed to make a hire quickly, but he (and the search firm he’s using) will not rush into anything, which is a tricky balancing-act.
Purdue needs to land a head coach ASAP to simply salvage its own roster and make some movement in the portal, which means a marriage with rumored candidates like Georgia OC Todd Monken and Michigan co-CO/OL coach Sherrone Moore harder sells. Both College Football Playoff assistants are quality candidates, but in the new world of college football, it’s harder and harder to sell juggling dual-jobs for a month with so much happening in December.
Bobinski is said to prefer head coaching experience, which is why several Group of 5 coaches like Western Kentucky’s Tyson Helton, Marshall’s Charles Huff and former Kent State head coach and current Colorado OC Sean Lewis are popular names mentioned around the opening.
Helton coached at WKU under Brohm and would bring a similar spread-scheme to West Lafayette.
But again, Purdue has money to spend, so can it swing bigger than a G5 coach? Can the Boilermakers poach a sitting Power 5 head coach?
There’s obvious reasons for skepticism, but two names who have been mentioned around the search in a similar Satterfield-to-Cincy clock reset are Syracuse’s Dino Babers, who was an assistant with the Boilermakers in the early 90s, and Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson. Clawson isn’t in any hot seat danger at Wake but he could simply want a fresh start elsewhere. He definitely wouldn’t be intimidated by Purdue’s academic standards.
Personally, I think Purdue should take a swing at former Florida coach Dan Mullen, who’s currently a TV analyst for ESPN.
Mullen seems to be enjoying not coaching right now, so it looks like a hard pull, but Purdue is not dissimilar from a tough Mississippi State job — one that Mullen managed to turn the Bulldogs into a solid SEC program. He’s also an offensive head coach who’s proven to do more with less, too.
However the coming days of Purdue’s search shakes out, the Boilermakers’ program is in a weird spot right now.
They just had their best two seasons in nearly 20 years and they’re the only Power 5 job available, but with each passing hour, the opening becomes a more difficult transition into a new era because the sport’s landscape is a lot different than when Purdue when through the same musical chairs in 2018.