Boilermusings May 6, 2021

Welcome to Boilermusings where I take topics that I can’t flesh out into a whole article and mash them together to make one article. Think of it as a Vultron type article. Or maybe Captain Planet. Choose your late 1980’s early 1990’s cartoon analogy.

NIL Coming to B1G

It seems inevitable that the Big Ten Conference will pass some sort of name, image, and likeness bylaws in the next year or two. The question is what will they look like (pun very much intended). With athletes now able to profit off of their image (and I guess name and likeness) will this become a scenario where the rich get richer or will it help out all schools and all athletes? I tend to think you’ll see the high profile athletes and the big name schools find ways to make this work for them. Alabama football players are gonna show up in a lot of car dealer ads for example.

So what does this mean for the swimmer? The softball player? The golfer? I think it will be better for them than most people think. One of the biggest things out there for the non-revenue sports are the off-season sport camps. Being able to send middle school, high school, or even elementary schools kids to camps with college athletes can be a big draw for lots of parents. If new rules go into place it means the athletes would actually get a cut of these camps and it means that the organizers can advertise and profit off of the athletes. If done right this could be a good thing for athletes in the revenue and non-revenue sports. Let’s just hope there are regulations put it place to prevent abuse.

Ross-Ade Renovations

This was announced a couple weeks back but it bears mentioning as I don’t think we covered it much on the site but the renovations of Ross-Ade are currently on hold. This comes straight from the horse’s mouth.

Bobinski has been put into an uncomfortable spot here. He knows that football success is the driver of the athletic department from a financial standpoint, but he also knows that due to the pandemic and decreased revenues for over a year there just isn’t the money to make this happen. Nor, quite frankly, is there demand for additional seating at Ross-Ade Stadium. It’s a sad reality.

With the 2021 season apparently a go for full seating capacity, and rumblings about season ticket renewals going well, there’s hope that 2021 could be a bounce back year from a financial standpoint. Will this be a one year pandemic bump with everyone wanting to get back to normalcy and live sports? I don’t know, but a lot of that will depend on the product that’s on the field. If Brohm can turn it around after a down couple seasons then it’s likely that fans will continue to find their way back to Ross-Ade in 2022. Only then should considerations of renovations be on the to-do list.

Transfer Portal - Purdue football

Purdue has been active in the transfer portal this offseason. And I mean that in both ways. They’ve had plenty of players leave, but they’ve also had numerous players come into the program, most of them on defense. If my math is right Purdue has added 5 players to the defensive side of the ball this offseason with the most recent being a defensive tackle from Indiana. It’s no secret that Purdue’s defense needs help. When Karlaftis went down last season it signaled a five-alarm fire for that side of the ball. With five transfers coming in (hopefully) ready to play and a couple impact freshman the team could look very different on defense. That would be a good thing. Normally you want your team to get old and stay old like Matt Painter always says, but if your team isn’t good while young I don’t know how much help getting old will be.

There’s little doubt that Jeff Brohm needs the 2021 season to be a success for his future here at Purdue and we can at least be assured that he’s putting in the work on the transfer portal. Will this work out? It’s certainly too early to say but it seem apparent that Brohm knows the defense is a problem and he’s trying to fix it. That’s a step in the right direction.