By Jordan Hansen
Approximately one day after former Purdue coach Danny Hope was fired in 2012, the Boilermaker football program started heading straight towards a black hole.
Unless you’re Matthew McConaughey, that’s probably not going to end well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdSz12Glhlw
Yes, that scene is ridiculous but so is just how badly Purdue played the season following Hope’s departure.
Head coach Darrell Hazell was brought in and the team suffered through an abysmal 1-11 season, the most losses in Purdue history and only the second one-win season in the last 50 years.
Unfortunately for Hazell and the coaching staff, things haven’t gotten much better in the two seasons that have followed. After a marginal improvement to 3-9 in 2014, a 2-10 campaign last year was a disaster.
The team is in shambles, its coach seems to understand he’s on the way out and the school has an athletic director is entering his final season. Not a good recipe for success.
Purdue is floating through college football space untethered and alone, which makes for a rather depressing combination.
I still don’t completely get what Christopher Nolan was trying to get out of this whole “love transcends space-time” thing either, but the moral of the story is that Cooper gets out of the black hole.
Purdue probably isn’t.
For starters, there is little in the way of new talent entering West Lafayette next year. Sure, there are players who will probably see the field before the end of their careers, but no one projects as the transcendent-type players the team desperately needs.
There are a few rays of light however, starting with running back Markell Jones, who broke out last season as a true freshman. Tallying 875 yards and 10 touchdowns on the ground, he was a force to be reckoned with.
He also was a threat catching the ball, hauling in 34 receptions for over 200 yards and tacked on another touchdown. Barring injury, Jones should be in for another productive year.
Moving the ball and scoring (two rather important parts of football) have been a weak point for Purdue over the last few years. To combat this, Harrell made the last-ditch decision to fire offensive coordinator John Shoop, promoting Terry Malone from tight ends coach to the vacated position.
One of his and Harrell’s first decisions will have to be at quarterback. Austin Appleby decided to transfer to Florida, leaving the spot open for sophomore David Blough. However, redshirt freshman Elijah Sindelar has also reportedly been good and could contend for the position.
Oh, before I forget, something interesting I came across yesterday — did you know Purdue has a school of School of Aeronautics and Astronautics? Their main offices are in (of course) the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering. How cool is that?
Anyways, back to football.
Defensively, the Boilermakers are also in the process of going through change. Last year’s defensive coordinator Greg Hudson was fired at the end of the season along with defensive tackles coach Rubin Carter.
The front-seven has long been an issue for Purdue and something drastic needs to change for them to even be at a Big Ten level of competitiveness on a regular basis. There is some hope the linebackers can take a step forward, but it’s hard to predict nearly anything when it comes to Purdue.
In all likelihood, Hazell probably does not survive as the coach, but hey, neither was Cooper in the original ending of Interstellar.
But hey, who knows.
Maybe Harell figures things out. And maybe eventually I’ll completely understand the ending to Interstellar Nolan went with.
It’s just I’m not convinced either of those things will ever happen.
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