Purdue Media Day

I always love Purdue's football media day. While not a lot of groundbreaking news often comes out of it, it is a day lets the team have some fun. They get to go to Ross-Ade, pose for goofy pictures, and give the fans a feeling that the season is near. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend media day yesterday. Real life got in the way as I had to work my semi-real job. Also, I had the important task of replacing the windshield in my Jeep because the heat caused a five inch long crack earlier this week. While these are exciting notes from my life, there were much more exciting things that came out of media day.

Ralph Bolden - We learned that Ralph is currently only at 50-60%, which is much farther along than I expected from him. When Gold and Black tweeted that yesterday I was kind of surprised. Maybe he can play by the time the Big Ten season comes around. In the pictures published you couldn't help but notice the double knee scars on poor Ralph. Here is hoping to a speedy recovery and an impact on the field again.

Season ticket sales are struggling mightily - We knew this a month or two ago, but a nine percent drop for a program like Purdue is staggering. I know we're not Ohio State, Michigan, or Penn State. We're not going to sell out 110,000 seats and still have a waiting list. Some say it is because Ohio State and Notre Dame aren't on the home schedule, but Ohio State was far from a sellout last year. The $70 per ticket price for those games were ridiculous, but that isn't an excuse this year. It ultimately comes down to winning. If Purdue beats Notre Dame in the opener you may see a small boost in sales for the rest of the year. Until we start winning though, we're going to see numbers like this. I did my part. My two seats are sitting on my desk, but I can't buy anymore until I get some little T-Mills crawling around.

The number issue - As I have been doing the countdown on players I wondered about the problem of players wearing the same numbers. It is explained here. The simple explanation: It is allowed, but two players wearing the same number can't be on the field at the same time.

Ricardo Allen is a hot commodity - This is exactly what we needed coming into the season. If you read any article from outside the program about our chances it is all the same: "Purdue has a talented offense, but they have to replace four starters in the secondary and three starters on the line." Because of that, some people predict as little as five wins. No one is giving us a chance at Notre Dame. I challenge that stigma. What if the four new starters are better than the ones that left? I know that may be an incredible leap in logic, but apparently no one else thinks this way. All we need is for a few players to become answers instead of questions. Ricardo Allen seems to be well on his way to being such an answer. I don't care of some of those answers are freshmen. If they perform better than last year's team we become a better team. It's that simple. We'll then let our play on the field dictate our record. The truth is that everyone loses players every year. It is how you replace them that decides your program. Personally, I am already excited for next year because we only lose 12 seniors total.

The Indianapolis Star is officially a useless rag when it comes to Purdue - I would really hate for the state's largest paper to cover one of the biggest colleges within its borders. Instead of sending a reporter to Lafayette they continue to piggyback off the Journal & Courier's coverage. I love what the J&C does. Mike Carmin and Jeff Washburn are excellent, but the way the Star treats Purdue makes me sick. Well, if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem. Starting August 23^rd I will be writing for the new SBNation: Indiana site that has a goal of providing better coverage than the Star. I've already been granted media access to the Notre Dame and Ball State games, and we have some other things planned for both pro and high school coverage as well. This won't prevent me from writing here, but it will have a more straight news tone.