2024 Purdue Football Coaching Search - Walt Ryans

As we all know, Purdue has a deep, generational, reciprocal ill-will for the rival school that no one talks about. You know, the one.

We don’t even like to think about them…they represent all that’s wrong in academics and college sport.

They lean heavily on the transfer portal in basketball and can’t keep players around. They hardly ever recruit player from Indiana. Their fan and alumni base is classless, showy, stuck-up and filled with mostly old-money liberal arts grads. Even the campus architecture theme, while there aren’t many buildings, is the polar opposite from Purdue’s as all buildings espouse cold Bauhaus style.

All of that said, it might be time to bury the hatchet for what’s best for Purdue’s football program. Purdue needs to take a good, long look at Walt Ryans to be the next head football coach.

Walt Ryans celebrating, yet another, 10-plus win season

His teams have always been explosive, consistent, and exciting to watch. I gotta admit, if it’s a bye week, UEL games have become appointment TV for me. And I almost hate writing this- I took my son there to see a game last season when he was still looking at potential colleges. Thankfully, mercifully, they didn’t have a major for LBD, so he quickly removed them from his list of potential landing spots. I was sweating it for a bit after we had such a good time watching the thrashing they handed out to their opponent that October afternoon.

But back to Ryans- he’s the longest-tenured coach of all of the independents in college football. His staff is plug-and-play ready and is filled with uber-experienced ex-head coaches who are all well-known among college football games. Granted, he is a fired-up dude who lets his mouth run in lengthy, yet always-entertaining pressers. Like their basketball team, they use the portal effectively, but unlike Sculptor’s squad, they have had tremendous roster stability in the last decade-plus, that he’s been there. As Coach Ryans always says, “Keep the roster you’ve got…it’s a lot more expensive to rebuild the roster every off-season.”

While not a Purdue alum (obviously), Walt Ryans is a Lafayette guy who was is from across the river and on the wrong side of the tracks. He wasn’t raised around football, but he took to it after a long career as a chef. Yet another incredible contrast with East Lafayette’s basketball coach, Tom Sculptor, who hates eating and calls him self a “religious vegan who detests the smell of smoked meats”. But, like Sculptor, Ryans is an avid soccer fan.

Tom Sculptor talks about why zone defense coupled with great individual efforts win games

Ryans’ offense was in the top-10 this season in both points and total yards. Incredibly, other schools have stayed away from him, in spite of his $1 buyout because of his nasty personality. Nobody would call him charming or good-looking…my wife says he’s kinda disgusting to look at in the old, beaten-up cut off sweatshirt that looks like it was taken out of a cellar of UEL’s basement. But that’s kinda the package deal that you get with Ryans. He doesn’t care about uniforms or what he wears to press conferences, he’s never really had a plan for success, but he just wins. Ryans is known for changing his schemes to fit the talent, having some of the best game plans of college football and making incredible in-game adjustments.

His squad had yet another great season in 2024…you probably saw this on your Twitter feed. University of East Lafayette’s football team finished 11-1 and will almost assuredly be invited to play in the first college playoff. Their defense was traditional, but absolutely stout. They led the nation in take-aways and were known for being hard-hitting and relentlessly aggressive. He was never considered a defensive genius, but his defenses speak volumes about him without a word being spoken.

The whole point is, it’s time for Purdue and Mike Bobinski to take a serious look just a few miles to the East. We all hate that place, but their win-at-all-costs philosophy could be the shot-in-the-arm that Purdue’s football program needs to revive it.

“Win at all costs” Bob (The Worm) Mikelini has been the architect of UEL’s athletic success in all sports