In a long offseason full of insufferable Big Ten lies, Purdue’s new Athletic Director says “Hold my beer.”
We need football. It’s never been more clear. As if the offseason wasn’t filled with enough stupidity for burner accounts and fans to scream into the abyss over, Thursday gave us yet another sign that offseason storylines are perpetually dumb and we need meaningful football to yell about immediately.
The incident happened in Indiana, as most stupid things do. There or Ohio, but you get the point. Purdue hired a new athletic director. Purdue isn’t known for much athletically. Outside of Drew Brees and cornering the market on 7-foot behemoths in basketball, the Boilermakers athletic history is pretty limited. They are the alma mater of everyone’s favorite SEC analyst Gary Danielson, too. Still, it’s hard for Purdue to do anything that makes the news in this current climate and landscape of college football.
That is until yesterday. Their new athletic director, Tommy McClelland, took to the podium with an absolute banger of a line in his opening presser. The kind of line that you know damn well he told multiple people about beforehand, and with a straight face his peers said, “Nah bro, keep that in. That’s gonna do numbers.” And they weren’t wrong. They just didn’t specify what kind of numbers.
“We are here to win championships. If you don’t want to win championships, go to Indiana,” said McClelland.
Mic drop. I know you’re new to the job Mr. McClelland, but wait until I tell you what Indiana did less than a calendar year ago. It’s hard to lose a press conference, but by God did this poor soul manage to do it. You could hear the “Bless your hearts” and collective winces all the way from the SEC.
Outside of putting raisins in potato salad and listening to a vegan talk about PETA, there are few things that SEC fans want to do less right now than agree with Indiana fans. Against all odds, Tommy McClelland found a way to do just that. There’s a lot of disagreement on the Big Ten’s stranglehold on college football right now, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a great deal of respect for the teams that have one. College football fans may not like Indiana, Curt Cignetti, and their fans after several months of arrogant chest-beating. They do respect them though.
What people don’t respect is saying something just for the sake of saying it. The emptiness and lack of candor in the words at that Purdue press conference were identical to their program in that they were laughable. And, in an offseason where the conference has deserved to boast, this buffoon gave people outside that conference reason to berate.
If you think I’m overreacting, you’re right. It’s still the offseason, and that’s what this time has clearly become about. If you think I’m being too harsh or negative, you’re right again. Then again, it’s hard to be positive about anything involving Purdue athletics.
But hey, at least they didn’t hand out rings for a fourth place finish like Ole Miss did. That’s a positive.
