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Why even in a loss, Saturday likely increased Jeff Brohm’s temptation to leave Purdue
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I imagine there’s a frustrating tradition for Purdue fans since they found out that Jeff Brohm could coach.
It isn’t losing a bunch of winnable games or falling short of sky-high expectations, though I’m sure Boilermaker fans would’ve preferred if their team followed one of its biggest victories in program history with a better showing than the one it delivered at Michigan State on Saturday.
The tradition is one of angst, bittersweet emotions with each passing week. The possibility of losing Jeff Brohm, one of the top rising coaches in the country, is surely a weekly cause for concern. After Brohm reportedly flirted with Tennessee in the offseason, that reality was put on the table.
And if Louisville keeps playing like it did on Saturday, that speculation will remain for the rest of the season. Brohm’s alma mater got one step closer to firing Bobby Petrino on Saturday.
Well, at least that’s what one would assume after the Cardinals got their teeth kicked in at home against Wake Forest for their fifth straight ACC loss to start conference play. It wouldn’t be surprising if a person or two in the Louisville athletic department thought that Petrino’s chances of turning the program into a contender left when Lamar Jackson did.
So yeah, Purdue fans. That matters.
That matters, despite the fact that Brohm was asked during the week about dealing with the increased speculation about him leaving West Lafayette sooner rather than later, and how that impacts recruiting.
“Well, the question is pretty easy in my opinion,” Brohm told Rivals last week. “When that’s happening, that means good things are going on. Our players in the recruiting world understand exactly where we’re at and we feel really confident in our future here and we feel like we’re going to continue to get better each year.”
Brohm can say and believe that all he wants. It’s not difficult for a coach to sidestep questions about leaving for another school. See Frost, Scott circa 2017.
Like Frost, there’s an appeal about coaching at your alma mater can easily outweigh how much you’ve grown to love a place after spending a couple years there. All signs point to Louisville trying to play that up as much as possible if and when they make their offseason push for Brohm.
I say “if” because there’s obviously no guarantee that Louisville parts ways with Petrino. Purdue fans probably breathed a small sigh of relief when they looked up his buyout and saw that it was in the neighborhood of approximately $14 million. There’s also the $4.4 million that Brohm would owe Purdue if he left before Dec. 5, which obviously would get covered by Louisville.
That’s a lot of cake to pony up for a place known as “a basketball school.” But perhaps in an attempt to restore at least one of the program’s two major revenue-drivers a year removed from the Rick Pitino fallout, Louisville would consider going all in for Brohm.
Speaking of Pitino, he’s attempting to sue the university for $37 million after he was fired with cause for his role in an FBI investigation. Between that and paying fired athletic director Tom Jurich a $7 million buyout, the Cardinals aren’t exactly flushed with cash at the moment.
Still, you’ve got to spend money to make money, and nothing can do that quicker than some winning football.
And to be clear, I’m not sure if Purdue winning six games or eight games would change Louisville’s potential pursuit. If the Cardinals believe Brohm is the guy, it’s not going to matter if he’s got a couple more wins. It might just slightly change his asking price.
So is this situation inevitable? Not necessarily.
If Brohm really does believe in what he preached about how Purdue is built to win, perhaps another offseason raise will silence speculation for the second straight year. Maybe Louisville will decide that it has to bite the bullet on Petrino and hope that the next Heisman Trophy winner is being groomed.
Who knows?
All I know is that Brohm’s program was the hottest story of the week in college football (or rather, Tyler Trent). He didn’t follow that up with an all-world coaching performance at Michigan State, but Louisville fans probably would’ve done a whole lot to see Brohm on their sidelines on Saturday.
Wake Forest has 35 points at Louisville with nine minutes left in the second quarter. Fans in Cardinal Stadium well within their rights to go home right now and watch Jeff Brohm's Purdue team in a battle at Michigan State.
— Pat Forde (@ByPatForde) October 27, 2018
Brohm’s right. It is a good sign that people are saying those kinds of things about him and his program.
We’ll find out soon enough if he’s the one who benefits most from that praise.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Tradition. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.