Three Thoughts From The Weekend: The Purdue season to come, signs and more

GoldandBlack.com’s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column runs every Monday morning, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting or whatever else comes to mind. In this week’s edition, we discuss Purdue basketball’s weekend in Arkansas, football’s bottoming out at Nebraska and more.

ON PURDUE BASKETBALL

So tonight, Purdue’s much anticipated season begins. I have no real horse in this race but one sincere hope: That everyone can just enjoy the ride. From fans to coaches — they’ve earned this opportunity — to fans to selfishly, well, me. I get to go to a lot of cool places this season and see a lot of great games.

For the fans, this season, I suspect, is shaping up to be a year-long panic attack, and I’m not sure the vocal minority — majority, sometimes, perhaps — always realizes or cares who much they can impact everyone else. We’re all connected nowadays, and swimming in everyone else’s negativity all day every day is no good for anyone’s well-being.

Try to enjoy yourself.

No matter what happens, the sun will come up the following morning. Life is too short.

Thanks for listening.

ON PURDUE FOOTBALL

So, Michigan’s mad at Purdue because its coach said something out loud about its black-ops scouting shenanigans that is objectively true, verified by several varieties of multimedia and confirmed Friday night by the resignation of the culprit in classic Friday (night) news dump fashion.

Ah, this glorious history of silly beef between Purdue and Michigan, from snake oil, to Meeting Zach Reckman, to Purdue not having central air and a cold martini waiting for Jim Harbaugh in its visitors locker room. Fun stuff, man, the ridiculousness of college football in a nutshell.

So, to recap, what Ryan Walters said was allegations that there was a scurrilous scouting scheme put into place by the “recruiting analyst” who Michigan coordinators kept strangely close during games, undoubtedly for his expert, uh, recruiting analysis during games, that those allegations are “true.” This has not been denied, has it? Jim Harbaugh’s involvement has been denied, but no one has argued that Secret Agent Man wasn’t breaking rules.

The most important point to make about all of this is that it is not illegal to steal signs. Everyone’s trying to. College football’s impact on the black-vinyl and Giant Cardboard Will Ferrell Head industries has been profound, for a reason. It is against the rules to do so off campus and to record what you see.

The reality is that none of this is anyone’s fault but Michigan’s. I know everything’s a “witch hunt” nowadays for those actually maybe about to be held accountable for their misdeeds, or it’s the “leaker’s” fault or a “stupid rule” or a “yeah, but they …” It’s never your coach’s fault, even if he’s just a few weeks removed from previously being suspended for more drama for the sake of drama, the sort of stuff a place like Michigan, at best, should be above or, at worst, shouldn’t need to resort to.

That Wolverine team that waxed outmanned and overmatched Purdue on Saturday, that’s a great team, a great team that shouldn’t need your signals. That it has been mining them in most Wile E. Coyote fashion, it speaks to insecurity and honestly, cheapens one of college sports’ iconic brands. Michigan ought to throw a party when Harbaugh splits for the NFL, because it shouldn’t want this, same way Indiana basketball shouldn’t have wanted all the drama that came with Kelvin Sampson or Tom Crean.

Should Purdue have poked the bear? Up for debate, but why not? Ryan Walters needs to send a message that this place isn’t going to back down from anyone. And Purdue needs all the pub it can get still. (Should also mention that Walters said he said well off the beaten path of mainstream media. This wasn’t an old WWF promo; that’s Ryan Day’s lane).

The point, I guess, is that this is all so silly, but the silly started with the strange fellow whose block M stood for “Manifesto.” Hey, that rhymes.

You know what will happen now? The NCAA won’t, or can’t, do anything. Because of its impotence but also because its dumb “cheeseburger” clapback some time ago would make this look personal. The Big Ten won’t hit one of its money programs when money is all that matters. So they’ll change the rules. What Michigan did will become legal. Then someone will go buy a drone.

That’s how this works. Years back, Colorado involved strippers in its recruiting weekends, so in response the NCAA barred the use of private (stripper-free) aircraft for recruiting-visit logistics. Here, who knows? The wireless-comms thing has been thrown around, but there’s expense and infrastructure and other complications apparently that would be an awful lot, but made necessary by the reality that when you put competitive men, many of them egomaniacs, into high-stakes, highly pressurized jobs with millions of dollars at stake, they are going to find ways to cheat.

What the NCAA should address — but won’t as to not piss off Big Football — is staffing. Go look at a college football sideline this weekend and try to figure out who the hell all those people dressed like coaches who aren’t coaches. This unlimited-staff-size stuff has created this situation where personnel multiply like Gremlins doused with water, dressed up with nebulous job titles and even more nebulous job descriptions. You know how many Connor Stallions there are in college football these days? Many of them, I’d imagine, are doing more than stealing signs.

You know what happens in this business? Established coaches use young coaches to launder their loads of grey, taking advantage of their ambition when they should be incubating it. This is a basketball issue, for sure, but I can’t imagine football’s any different.

At the very least, make schools list all their pay-rolled staff members and their job descriptions and biographies online, same as the other coaches.

Not to pick on Michigan here, because it’s certainly not alone in this, but it has 12 people listed on its official roster as members of its coaching staff. Alabama — known for having head coaches-in-waiting just kind of hanging around — has just 15 people listed. I’m just now noticing as I write this that Purdue has all its coaching staff bloat publicly visible.

Anyway, this is all so silly, and I’ve gone completely off the rails with this thought, so on to the next one.

ON BOB KNIGHT

Let me tell you something: Bob Knight was one of the most interesting people I’ve ever been in the presence of, albeit briefly and to no notable extent. He was one of those people where you just hang on their every word. He was one of the most intimidating people I’ve ever been in the presence of. I’m not sure people realize that guy was about the size of a Kodiak bear. The reactions he brought out of people was a superhuman power I’m not sure I’ll ever see in flesh-and-blood form ever again, both the adoration of Indiana fans at Assembly Hall and the vitriol of Purdue fans in Mackey. He was a force of nature just by being.

You know, one of the disconnects we fall into with celebrity is conflating brilliance in one’s field with character, normalcy, the thought that what we see is static reality.

Knight was a brilliant basketball mind, way ahead of his time, and without him, I’d imagine Gene Keady wasn’t Gene Keady, Matt Painter isn’t Matt Painter and Purdue basketball isn’t Purdue basketball as you know it today. College basketball in general, maybe basketball, period, isn’t as you know it today.

He was brilliant, but he was also, yes, a huge jerk, an abusive figure who always struck me as having been driven mad by the sheer impossibility of perfection. Not uncommon. Brilliance often comes with trade-offs. Think of how many of our most genius musicians have battled addiction, how many of our greatest artists couldn’t stand living in their own skin, how many of our most politically-skilled leaders are just terrible humans and how many of our greatest comedians could charm everyone but their own demons. It’s just the way it is.

People go out of their way to bring up the softer side of Bob Knight and that’s fine, especially after someone’s death. But our both-sides nature of discussing these things sometimes treats both sides as equals, when in reality, if you are undeniably a brute, the moments of humanity are amplified, standing out like neon green paint smeared across a jet-black canvass.

Knight leaves two distinctly different legacies, one being that he was one of the greatest and most influential basketball coaches to have ever walked the earth. The other: A volcanic-tempered bully with the unique ability to break into mainstream recognition simply for obnoxiousness and controversy and a brilliant artistry using a certain profanity that rhymes with the word “luck.”

He was one of the most complicated sports figures ever, an icon easy to revile, but also a sympathetic figure toward the end.

I will never forget the, well, joy I felt looking on a few years back in Assembly Hall when he finally came back. What he meant to all those people, it was an energy I’ve never felt at a sporting event before. He was a feeble old man, a shell of what he once was, clearly on his way out, and a symbol of the fact that life is just too short and there are way more important things in this world than pettiness and pride.

When I heard prior to Purdue’s exhibition game the other night that Knight had passed away, my first thought was, “Well, typical Knight, trying to overshadow Purdue,” and my second was to realize how special a human occasion I was fortunate enough to witness that day in Bloomington.