The Purdue Boilermakers had already tasted success when Matt Painter was named head coach of the men’s basketball team 19 years ago. Sure, they weren’t a blue blood like their national-title winning rivals 100 miles to the south, but the Boilermakers had won 1,455 games and 21 Big Ten championships across 107 seasons on the […]
Deciding what’s a “football school” or a “basketball school” is an inexact science. Longstanding tradition — not wins and losses — often determines whether most fans’ hearts belong to the gridiron or the hardwood. Culturally, Florida State didn’t stop being a football school during its recent stretch of substandard performance, nor did Michigan adopt the […]
If it were up to me — and I grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, where you could literally hear the roar of the crowd from Spartan Stadium in my backyard on game days — the Big Ten would have stopped expanding after 12 teams. Penn State, added in 1990, and Nebraska, in 2011, were […]
Boosters are the lifeblood of athletic departments around the country. The money poured into programs by supporters — from Phil Knight at Oregon to Jimmy Rane at Auburn — can then be used to do things like continually update locker rooms, install high-tech LED stadium light systems or build a slide in the middle of […]
May 1 may soon be a national holiday for fans of college athletics — call it The Real Signing Day. As the deadline drew near for players in fall and winter sports to notify schools of their intention to leave, the transfer portal — an NCAA compliance tool! — became must-click entertainment, with each new […]