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Congrats, you just beat a horrible Purdue team. Party like it's 1996!
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The Boilermaker football team is nothing if not creative. Week after week, this team finds really creative ways to lose ballgames.
Start the season looking kind of flat, yet win a few games... Yay.
Then lose to a MAC team. At home. Boo.
Start the Big Ten season 2-0. Yay.
Get lambasted by OSU. Boo.
Expect to get railroaded by Wisconsin, but lead them at the half! Yay!
Get torched in the second half. Boo.
Feel like the season is over... but then come ready to play against 9-1 MSU and look great for three quarters. Yay!
Fold in the fourth quarter. Boo.
And then there was today's 34-31 loss in OT. "Boo" doesn't quite do it.
I'm getting tired of coming up with new ways to describe Purdue's football failures. IU is a terrible, terrible football program. Not just a bad team -- a bad program. And if I just read that sentence and liked IU, I might say, "Well, then what does that make Purdue?"
Indeed, a good question. Purdue just lost to a horrendously bad football program. So what does that make Purdue?
You can stop now with all the "if only" talk. There were injuries, yes, I get that. But how many games do the players and coaches need to get the team ready to beat IU at home? Again, I don't want to hear blame on the injuries. Rob Henry is a Division I football player. So were all the guys out there. Purdue wasn't starting walk-ons and volunteers. Other teams had injuries, too. You move forward as a unit.
Another thing this does is eliminate any of the consternation over missing a bowl game because of the loss to Toledo. 4-8 isn't even close to a bowl game, Toledo or not. In fact, losing to Toledo and IU in the same season should make you ineligible for a bowl game even if you finish 10-2.
I feel terrible for guys like Dan Dierking and Ryan Kerrigan. Seniors who played their asses off for this program but finish with three straight losing seasons. These guys (and others) deserve better.
Another thing I keep seeing is a stream of complaints about the officiating. Let's just knock that off. The officials did not give IU this game. IU beat Purdue, plain and simple. Yeah, you could maybe argue about some of those pass interference calls, but I think only one was really a bad call. The others were legit pass interference. You can't tangle the receiver up or grab him before the ball is there. Simple as that. And again, the refs didn't give this to IU. Let's not forget they threw an IU player out fo the game for a scuffle. I don't care if you get bad calls against you -- you need to be able to beat IU if you're going to be even a marginal program. Purdue is not that right now.
For a change, I didn't think the coaching was a huge problem today. Play-calling seemed okay (not great, but okay), but the problem seemed to be execution. Maybe it was preparation. Maybe it was -- and this is hard to believe -- overconfidence. Whatever it was, Purdue's defense gave up 34 to IU. And Purdue's offense only manage 31 against a truly terrible defense. I blame everyone.
Those of you crusading for Hope to be fired, you might have more traction now with the loss to the Hoosiers, but I still don't think you should expect anything to change. He'll get next year to prove himself, at the very least.
As of now, when we think of Purdue football, we get to think of this image for the next 9+ months.
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| This should make you very angry. |
