I think I had another post where I talked about Purdue basketball. Here I talk about Purdue football and, namely, the spread offense. So if you hate US football, ignore this. It does have a point, though!

Back in 1996, Purdue was a footballing backwater. We had a coach called Jim Colletto who went for a tie in a Big Ten opener with Michigan State up 35-34. We blew lots of leads against good teams, our prevent defense being even more spectacularly misnamed than most teams'. We'd been to the Peach Bowl in 1984 and that was IT. Our 1995 season would later be a winning season when Michigan State forfeited all their games. We went 5-4-2, tying Iowa in a ridiculous downpour where we missed a 25-yard field goal with time running out. On third down. And the other option was to hand off to Mike Alstott a few times. The guy who always fell forward.

The MSU game sucked, too. We were up 21-3 til MSU tweaked their offensive plan and won 42-30. Our last score was on a kickoff return. Sandwiched between 12-play drives of draw plays. IU, we dominated in the stats but somehow lost anyway. Thus died our dream of meeting a talented team VERY upset to be in a last-tier bowl game. Well, for the foreseeable future.

Then came Joe Tiller in 1997. He told jokes and wove them into motivational bits. And it worked! After Purdue lost at Toledo, they ran that crazy Bubble Screen offense to a 28-17 win over Notre Dame, who turned out to be not so good, but the students storming the field didn't know that. Quick plays where basically you place 3 receivers on 2 defenders and OH NO! Purdue got quick linebackers. They tried all kinds of crazy interesting stuff. It worked, as they mauled Ron Dayne's Wisconsin 45-20 and, on the last day of the season, archrivals Indiana--the new Worst Kids on the Block--56-7. Didn't hurt Purdue avoided Michigan and Ohio State.

Then Drew Brees was quarterback and the fun continued. But then other teams started adapting the Purdue approach on offense and defense. Purdue never really adapted and got killed by superior talent and, probably, coaches with more desire to recruit. We became the Dr Julius Hibbert of the NCAAs. Things stagnated.

Next time we avoided OSU and Michigan, we went 5-6(tipped by some wiseguys unaware of our lousy team chemistry for a 10 win season, but Notre Dame murdered us at home) then 8-6 aided by a wretched out-of-conference schedule. Only meaningful thing we came close to winning was the Fulmer Cup.

Those odd plays we ran were predictable, stale attempts to run from the fact we couldn't do much with base plays. The bubble screens were 2 yard gains to slow wide receivers. Our undersized defense was just undersized and not quick any more. Our quarterback stats were inflated by routing MAC teams, including Indiana and Minnesota(hey hey!) and eventually even the false optimism from payout games died away. Didn't hurt that the games were much closer than they should've been. (Bright side: DID NOT DO THIS.")

Just listening and watching to the game you wondered where the oomph had gone.

I felt like I was close to that with reviews for a while. The main difference being, while the bottom didn't fall out, I wasn't really going forward. But I think I'm paying good attention to others'. It's been a useful barometer for me, though. If I start drifting towards Purdue football when I think of something I've done before and I hope works again, I realize it's time to shake things up.