Express Word: Purdue-Oregon, The Smith Legacy

The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com’s weekly opinion column, written by Brian Neubert. In today’s edition, we discuss Braden Smith‘s emerging legacy at Purdue, Dan Lanning and more.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL AND BRADEN SMITH’S LEGACY

I’ve written a lot of stupid things in my day. It’s an occupational hazard when you get paid by the word.

But every dog has his day, and sometimes you just trip over something prescient. It was in Portland two years ago that I predicted Braden Smith would be “Purdue’s Cassius Winston.” This was right after, I think, the then-freshman triggered game-winning sequences against Marquette and West Virginia and right before Purdue then shocked the college basketball world by beating Gonzaga and Duke to win the PK85.

Purdue’s point guard is now only a junior, but already has three Big Ten title rings, a Final Four, myriad other honors and a chance to leave Purdue as its greatest winner ever, thus the comparison to Winston, one of the winningest players in the modern Big Ten. Keep in mind that Smith is only halfway home here. It’s hard to say the best is yet to come, but there’s a lot more to come, very likely more Big Ten titles, maybe All-America honors, likely more March feats, if not this year, then next. Maybe both.

You’ve got to take a wide view with legacy in the moment, but if these next two seasons go as they should, Smith is going to leave Purdue as its greatest-ever winner, and this season can be a big part of it.

You know Smith is going to score and you know he’s going to get a ton of assists, but for Smith this season, it’s about how he leads, how he raises those around him to his competitive level and brings more out of those around him.

Leadership should not be a concern for this team, even if Zach Edey’s relentlessness and Mason Gillis’ voice are gone and Carson Barrett is no longer in uniform on the bench.

It’s a point guard’s job to make the people around them better, in every meaning of the term.

That will be the story of the junior’s season and another component to his beyond-reproach legacy of winning.

ON PURDUE FOOTBALL

Hear me out …

Purdue and Oregon are not peer programs, as the Ducks swim in a very different pond from their new Big Ten colleague. Oregon has every advantage, from a corporate sugar daddy of a booster, to a national brand, a better recruiting base, tons of money, including NIL support enough to field a semi-pro team this season.

But what’s happening at Oregon under Dan Lanning is, on some level, what Purdue hoped for with Ryan Walters.

A young, energetic, brash and boundary-pushing defensive guy at an offensive school, with no head coaching experience, but making up the difference with energy and ingenuity, affecting both the on-field product and recruiting in this new meat-market roster-management world. It’s a lot easier at Oregon, but on a different scale, what you’re seeing at Oregon with Lanning was the idea Purdue when it hired Walters.

It’s worked big-time at Oregon; to date, it has not worked at Purdue.

But if you’re sitting here thinking the risk took in hiring a young, untested coordinator it really came to like was some egregious breach of hiring judgment, the team Purdue hosts Friday night shows the model can hit and hit big. It worked at one place, just not at the other, at least not to this point.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

• The results here have been what they’ve been, and Purdue will be a massive underdog Friday night against an elite team, but you’ve got to admit: The Boilermakers are catching the Ducks at a perfect time, in a perfect situation.

So, Oregon just played a taxing and emotional game, now has a short week and a cross-country trip (for its first time this season) to play against arguably the most overlookable team in the Power 2.

I’m not saying Oregon couldn’t win without playing its best, but if it can bring its best in this game, it’s gonna win the national title, because it’s a machine.

• On news reports today of the Big Ten and SEC discussing a scheduling alliance, hey, great.

How great could it be for college football to have Alabama and Ohio State playing in September? It would be cool and maybe fun to see rematches in the Playoff.

From a scheduling perspective, how great would it be to see a format like the old Big Ten/ACC Challenge in basketball, where every school was guaranteed a respectable game every year and, in football, wouldn’t have to schedule 15 years out? As long as the dates are locked in, it doesn’t matter who the opponent is, so if Purdue doesn’t find out it’s been assigned to play at Mississippi State until the January prior, so be it. Nobody would have to pay for an opponent and presumably this would be a mutually profitable — or at least break-even — deal.

The scary part would be for the rest of college football, if this wound up just being another step toward total world domination, more lop-sided revenue distribution and more tilted Playoff access. But college football is a sport of self-interest and self-interest, so all that would be Kansas State’s problem.