O'Gara: Purdue fans, this Indiana grad is finally willing to admit how jealous he is

I’m not proud of what I’m about to put on the internet.

It’s not a day that I ever thought would come. Even waking up on Easter morning, I didn’t think the day had arrived. I certainly didn’t think the day arrived when Dalton Knecht was splashing jumpers like Steph Curry and Tennessee sprinted out to an 11-point lead. But somewhere in the midst of Zach Edey getting mauled while simultaneously never getting called for a foul/travel/3-second call en route to a performance for the ages, it hit me.

I, an Indiana grad, am finally jealous of Purdue.

It’s not that I’ve never had jealous thoughts about the Boilermakers. I’ve been in denial for years, even as Matt Painter racked up the type of regular seasons that have become once-in-a-blue-moon for IU. I could always default to Purdue’s March struggles as a reason I never had any reason to feel any ounce of jealousy toward Painter’s program. I took comfort in the fact that Purdue’s last Final Four berth happened during the Jimmy Carter administration, which was 10 years before I was born.

Don’t get it twisted, Purdue fans. I’m not a “banners on the wall” guy. Sports fandom is about the things that have happened in your lifetime, or at least during a time when you have actual memories of the events taking place.

It’s for that reason that, even as an Indiana grad, I won’t put IU in the “blue-blood” category. In the time that I’ve been old enough to use a toilet without adult supervision, my alma mater has been to the Elite Eight once (I admittedly wasn’t even rooting for Indiana as an 11-year-old during that runner-up season because I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago). That’s it. I’m about to turn 34 years young. If Indiana is a blue-blood but UConn isn’t, well, I’m assuming that’s coming from someone who’s at least 50 years old.

Or like me, they’re in denial.

I’m jealous that Purdue has someone like Edey, who’s equal parts polarizing and historically dominant. I’m a year removed from watching Trayce Jackson-Davis, perhaps the most dominant force that Indiana has had in 3 decades, leave after winning 1 single NCAA Tournament game (miss me on counting the First Four as an NCAA Tournament game). That’s one of the most depressing thoughts I’ve ever had as an IU grad.

Sure, IU didn’t suffer some catastrophic loss to Saint Peter’s as an elite team that watched its national championship dreams go up in smoke. But the best Indiana team of my lifetime, the 2012-13 squad, had a week to prepare for Syracuse in the Sweet 16 and somehow played surprised/scared/unprepared when the Orange came out in its patented zone defense. That was embarrassing. In Tom Crean’s defense, it’s not like that was some well-known detail about Syracuse.

Speaking of Crean, who took over the program in my freshman year of college and started with the worst 3-year stretch in program history because of text messages, he’s a big part of my closet denial of Purdue jealousy. He took over after text messages derailed the 2007-08 Indiana season, and ultimately Kelvin Sampson’s tenure in Bloomington. The fact that Sampson later took over a Houston team that hadn’t won a single NCAA Tournament game since Phi Slama Jama and is now one of the steadiest, top-tier programs in America doesn’t bother me at all. Nope.

(OK, it bothers me a tremendous amount. There’s blue-collar toughness and there’s whatever Houston is. The IU fan base that literally rioted after Bobby Knight’s firing — even after we all watched him choke a player — would’ve loved Sampson’s Houston identity in Bloomington.)

I started truly rooting for Indiana during the 2007-08 season because that’s when I decided it was where I was going to college. So since that point, I’ve watched these coaches:

Kelvin Sampson — Fired in the middle of Year 2 after beating Purdue in a top-15 matchup because of NCAA investigation into sending too many text messages to recruits
Tom Crean — Totally rebuilt the program that was left in shambles post-text message investigation but lost in Sweet 16 with that aforementioned Syracuse debacle in 2013 and then only had 1 of his final 4 seasons in Bloomington include an NCAA Tournament win
Archie Miller — Failed to have a winning record in conference play, was fired after 4 seasons after failing to reach the NCAA Tournament (IU would’ve made it in the 2020 canceled tournament but was a bubble team going nowhere) and was objectively awful from the moment he showed up
Mike Woodson — Was made fun of after being hired because he wasn’t Brad Stevens, then not made fun of after exceeding relatively low expectations in Year 2, but then made fun of again in Year 3 because he’ll be on every hot seat in America entering a 2024-25 season in which he has 6 open scholarships after 1 loud Liam McNeeley decommitment.

That’s half my lifetime. I’m sure Woodson’s successor will totally be “the guy.”

Meanwhile during that stretch, Purdue has had Painter. That’s it. He was there before Sampson arrived in Bloomington, and he’ll inevitably be there after Woodson is sent out of Bloomington.

Somehow, all the 7-footers end up in West Lafayette and they stay for 13 years. Meanwhile, IU’s “7-footer” was the good, not great Cody Zeller, who spent 2 years at IU and went 4-0 against the Boilermakers but was nowhere near Edey’s level of dominance.

(I remember covering Zeller’s arrival at IU for the student newspaper. Our crew shadowed him all afternoon, including his introduction at the annual freshman “Traditions and Spirit of IU” at Assembly Hall. I’ve never walked with Beyonce through Times Square, but I imagine that’s a fair comp.)

While the rest of college basketball now looks at 7-foot post-players like they’re VHS tapes, Painter looks at them like they’re antique records that can still spin. And you know what? As much as I’ve mocked guys like Matt Haarms and Isaac Haas — I’m sure I’ve also mocked Edey at some point but I just felt those guys didn’t make me look as dumb for making jokes at their expense — Painter’s way has worked. Getting to a Final Four with this Edey-led team now makes it undeniable.

It’s also undeniable who the better program has been when you do the side-by-side of Purdue vs. IU since Painter arrived in West Lafayette in 2005.

Since the 2005-06 season:

Head-to-head record: Purdue leads 21-12
Overall win %: Purdue leads 0.689 to 0.578
B1G win %: Purdue leads 0.648 to 0.481
Reg. season B1G titles: Purdue leads 5-2
B1G Tourney titles: Purdue leads 2-0
Sweet 16 trips: Purdue leads 7-3
Final Fours: Purdue leads 1-0

Goodness, I hated doing that. Usually when I put tables together for this job, I become more intrigued with each data point. Each data point I entered into that table felt like a gut punch.

I realize that by doing this, I’m giving every Purdue fan exactly what it wants. I’ve known plenty of Purdue grads, and while they wouldn’t personally say it to my face, I can bet their friends have repeated the joke about how the best way to find an IU grad is to order a pizza. I’m not sure why they’ve gotta bring pizza into this, but sure, joke landed. And on the flip side, I’m sure I’ve made some sort of joke about how obsessed/thirsty Purdue is when it comes to showing its superiority over IU.

(I can’t make the joke that Purdue is 95% dudes because 2 of my good friends are women who went to Purdue. That joke doesn’t really get to them.)

When I watched Edey not use the ladder to cut down the nets in Detroit — what a flex that was — I realized that any superiority I might’ve felt as an IU grad was now gone.

To be clear, I’ll take Bloomington over West Lafayette every day of the week and twice on Sunday (my then-girlfriend, now-wife worked in Lafayette out of college so I spent enough time there in my early 20s to actually form that opinion). I’ll demolish an entire Mother Bears pizza before I go face-deep into the peanut butter-loaded Duane Pervis All-American cheeseburger at Triple XXX Family Restaurant. I’ll take a night at Kilroy’s over a morning of Breakfast Club. Give me cream and crimson over black and gold.

Purdue can win the next 10 national titles and I won’t cave on those things.

But the day has finally come for me to eat black and gold crow. That sounds revolting because it is.

At least it is for me, a bitter IU grad who’ll watch Purdue in the Final Four through gritted teeth with pure jealousy.