The Purdue Boilermakers: Know Your Opponent

Dig in for another edition of Know Your Opponent, where WFNY reveals everything Buckeyes fans need to know about their favorite team’s football opponents. This week – The Boilermakers of Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA!

Our customary hype video hors d’ouvré come to us this week from “CrAzYL 4.” It’s not the slickest hype video I’ve ever seen, but give a man 30 minutes with Adobe Creative Suite and Premiere Pro, and anyone can shit one of these out.

FBS Stats (unranked; stats per NCAA.org)

YPG: 10th

PPG: 42nd

YPGA: 92nd

PPGA: 44th

Record: 3-3, 3rd in B1G West

Northwestern, L 27 – 31

Eastern Mich., L 19 – 20

Missouri, L 37-40

Boston College, W 30 – 13

@ Nebraska, W 42 – 28

@ Illinois, W 46 – 7

Coach: Jeff Brohm

A Kentucky native and former Louisville QB, Brohm has coached the Boilermakers since 2017. He was a standout in high school baseball as well, even being drafted by our own Cleveland Indians in 1990. Alas, he never made it out of the minor leagues, playing there in the summers until graduation, where he went undrafted in the NFL. He was a career backup for many NFL teams, including our beloved Cleveland Browns for one game in 2000. He finished his playing career with the Orlando Rage of the XFL. He moved into coaching in 2002, where his career as gone as such:

Louisville Fire (2002)

Louisville (2003–2006) (QB)

Louisville (2007) (AHC/PGC)

Louisville (2008) (AHC/OC)

Florida Atlantic (2009) (QB)

Illinois (2010–2011) (QB)

UAB (2012) (OC/QB)

Western Kentucky (2013) (AHC/OC/QB)

Western Kentucky (2014–2016)

Purdue (2017–present)

Remember how Urban Meyer got burned earlier this year for protecting a terrible coach who was beating his wife, all because the guy was a family friend? I’m sure this is a completely unrelated situation, but Brohm’s brother Brian is the Purdue QB coach and co-offensive coordinator. Jeff also recruited Brian to play QB at Louisville while Jeff was coaching there. I’m sure the fact these guys are brothers has nothing to do with them working together at every school after Brian’s CFL career ended. Just like Kirk Ferentz hiring his son at Iowa was purely a football move, or how Kyle Shanahan’s career is entirely of his own making, or how the Ryan brothers never got jobs from or because of their famous coach father. Every time you hear a football guy run his mouth about hard work or “putting in the time,” there’s a 50/50 chance they got their start in the field from a family member or family friend.

Mascot: Purdue Pete

Pete is the unofficial mascot, but is way more interesting than the official “Boilermaker Special” train that cannot show up anywhere for fear of destroying turf or court. He carries the traditional hammer of the Boilermaker, a trained craftsman who produces steel fabrications from pipes and tubes. Believe it or not, but the profession began in the wooden ship era, named for the men who made the boilers for steam power. When shipbuilders began to use metal, it was easiest to adapt the boilermakers’ skills to the entire enterprise, which then carried over to other industries over the years. Boilermakers still exist, usually working on pipes in power plants and boilers for commercial buildings.

Pete got his start as the mascot for a school bookstore in the 1940s, his appearance adapted from a local campus stud and used to sell books with the flash of an ankle. In the 1950s the bookstore crafted a costume and started sending a real life Pete to games, and he kind of just stuck around until he became a school stalwart. See, persistence pays off kids, especially when you’re the functionally immortal conceptual archetype of a scholastic community. For us flesh and blood types, hopefully you are born to parents who can afford to cosign your student loans.

Silly Traditions

Purdue is best known outside of the collegiate world for bringing factory workers, firemen, white cab drivers, garbage men, seamstresses, and longshoremen their favorite drink, the Boilermaker. A traditional Boilermaker is a shot of grain alcohol dropped into a mass-market American beer, then chugged. I once read a Men’s Health article that sought to rebrand the Boilermaker as fancy drink, like dropping a shot of liqueur into a hard lemonade, but that’s like putting lipstick on a pig. No, a Boilermaker is best consumed in its traditional form — as foul as possible.

My one real life experience with a Boilermaker was in college, at the Ravari Room on N. High Street. It was my 21st birthday, which I shared with my friend Jen (name changed to protect the innocent), and a group of our pals took us out for too many drinks. Jen and I both have red hair, so our joke sometimes was that we were fraternal twins. At the bar, some rando was interested in Jen and was under the impression we are siblings, so he’s making an effort to be friendly with me as well. This involved buying me drinks, of which I was not complaining. However, he either was catching on to our ruse, or was trying to hasten my inebriation to more readily seal the deal with Jen, so he suggested that he and I try a Boilermaker. His go-to combination, to which I readily complied because I had (have) no self control, was Miller Lite and well gin, which we then chugged. Folks, it was bad. Needless to say, this decision is ranked at least in the top 50 of the worst college drinking decisions I made that year.

Famous Alumni

Ohio’s own Neil Armstrong is a Purdue alum. He made an appearance here last season in the USC edition, where he went to grad school. There’s no need to educate the readership of an Ohio sports blog on Armstrong’s exploits, unless of course you’re a graduate of Eastlake North, you dummies. Heeeyyyyyoooooo!!!! No one tell Stipe Miocic about this joke, please.

A ton of astronauts attended Purdue besides Armstong, the most famous of which is WWII and Korea veteran, and test pilot archetype, Gus Grissom. Grissom was the second American to fly in space, and the first to do it twice. He perished in 1967 during a pre-launch test mission gone awry for Apollo I at Cape Kennedy, Florida.

Famous Hudson River plane lander and Tom Hanks character, Sully Sullenberger, attended Purdue. I’m still not sure why we give the man credit for correcting his own mistake while sinking a $30 million aircraft in an already polluted river, but I’ve been told the glass-half-empty shit is getting old, so I’ll move on.

Barely-edible-pizza seller and failed 2012 Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain, is a Boilermaker. Readers will remember him from his one week leading the polls during the primary, taking his customary turn before the party settled on Mitt Romney. You may also recall his 9-9-9 tax plan, which like all Republican “policy” proposals, was pitched to appeal to the anti-intellectual soft spot in the brains of all white baby boomers, which had the inadvertent effect of also making him popular with grade school children. Imagine seeing the CEO of the Godfather’s Pizza chain and thinking anything besides “we should throw chunks of cinder blocks at this asshole.”

Popcorn tyrant Orville Redenbacher is a Purdue alum, where he got his degree in agricultural science on his way to cornering the diabetes-contributing movie theater snack market.

Notorious child pornographer, Eric Justin Toth, is a proud Boilermaker. He used his position as a DC public school teacher to prey on children. He fled to Nicaragua before being captured and extradited to the USA in 2013, where he was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. I’m no fan of the death penalty as an institution, but it’s garbage humans like this who make me seriously reconsider my position.

Boilermakers Currently in the NFL

Ricardo Allen, S, Atlanta

Ja’Whaun Bentley, LB, New England

Drew Brees, QB, New Orleans

Anthony Brown, CB, Dallas

Gabe Holmes, TE, Arizona

Dennis Kelly, OT, Tennessee

Ryan Kerrigan, LB, Washington

Raheem Mostert, RB, San Francisco

Kevin Pamphile, G, Tennessee

Kawann Short, DT, Carolina

Noteworthy Players

Isaac Zico, WR

Antonio Blackman, CB

KeyRon Catlett, WR

Benaiah Franklin, WR

Tario Fuller, RB

Navon Mosley, S

Simian Smiley, CB

Tobias Larry, LB

Joe Schopper, P

Jackson Anthrop, WR

Richie Worship, RB

Ja’Qurius Smith, LB

Brooks Royal, LS

Bearooz Yacoobi, OL

Branson Deen, DL

Eric Swingler, OL

Grant Hermanns, OL

Chazmyn Turner, DE

Giovanni Reviere, DE

Robert McWilliams III, DE

Jack Cravaack, DE

Semisi Fakasiieiki, DE

Prediction

One of Purdue’s things is they have spoiled a number of #1 teams over the years, and have granted themselves the nickname “Spoilermakers.” Most of these spoils were against Notre Dame, with Michigan twice, but the list I found did not have the Buckeyes on it. We’re also at No. 2 for now, not No. 1, which helps. Therefore I think we’ll be fine this weekend, even though the Buckeyes’ first half performances against Indiana and Minnesota have some people worried.

My take on this phenomenon is that lesser-tiered teams can outplay and out-scheme the Buckeyes for a half, but our guys’ superior conditioning and talent takes over after the break. When even your third stringers are 4- and 5-star recruits, it is very difficult to gas the Buckeyes, whereas a team like Minnesota without the depth loses a step when they start substituting at the ends of games, and the Buckeyes can take advantage. I hope that our supposedly world-class coaches cook up some schemes of their own this week!

This week, I predict the Buckeyes get the win, 36-21. This will likely be another offensive showdown with Purdue breaking off some big plays early, but here’s to hoping the return of some injured defensive starters has the Buckeyes in this one from the start. Enjoy your free weekend next week — mow your lawn, engage with your children, call your elderly parents before they’re gone and you regret it, or just day-drink all day with no excuse, and we’ll see you back here in two.