CHICAGO -- For years, Purdue had a leg up on its archrival Indiana, regularly winning the Old Oaken Bucket and reaching bowl games, while the Hoosiers languished.
Then, coach Curt Cignetti came along and led Indiana to consecutive College Football Playoff appearances and the school’s first national title last season. Indiana’s stunning run has Purdue’s attention, especially at a time when the Boilermakers are digging out from a 7-30 slide the past three seasons.
“What he’s done in two years, it’s never been done in the game before, ever,” Purdue coach Barry Odom told ESPN. “Thirty years from now, we’re going to be sitting on the beach, looking back and say, ‘Yeah, that was unbelievable what they did.’ I mean, just remarkable. You can’t take it from them. And it just so happened 90 miles down the road from us.
“So it’s put everybody else on what’s happened, what are we doing? That’s real.”
Odom has been fundraising “every day” in the offseason, including here for Big Ten media days, as Purdue tries to increase its football budget and keep pace with Indiana and others in the Big Ten. Purdue played for a Big Ten title in 2022 and reached 16 bowl games between 1997 and 2022. But the team is winless in Big Ten play in each of the last two seasons.
“You look at four seasons ago, Purdue’s in the Big Ten Championship game, and then the last three have been awful,” Odom said. “I can own one of those. So what are we going to do to fix it?”
Odom admitted “the game has changed” in recent seasons, and Purdue is motivated to keep pace, through uniform patches and other sponsorship agreements.
“Creatively, with 600,000 alumni, with so many Fortune 500 companies that we have contact and communication with, in how you do business, we better try to be competitive,” Odom said. “So you’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to have a fundraising mentality in every level of your administration within college athletics, in how important that is, and then capitalize on it. ... Because if if you don’t, you’re going to get so far left behind that you’ll never make it back up.”
