A lonely word of caution

Six days along, the shine is still not off it, down there in West Lafayette. This is what happens when you capture lightning or magic or the pure essence of fairy tale in a bottle, and so they were still talking about it, still reveling in it, still crowding around all the principle figures.

Purdue 49, Ohio State 20 was the biggest night for Purdue football since Joe Tiller was walking its sideline, and that would have been enough to hang onto the glow for as long as possible. But you add a courageous young man fighting an ugly form of cancer, and the way the football team and the entire Purdue community has wrapped its arms around him, and how by some miracle of God's grace he was actually there to see the big moment he'd predicted ...

Well. That kind of story has no expiration date.

And so Tyler Trent has been on ESPN with Scott Van Pelt and various radio shows and in all the papers this week, and what a great thing that is. And the architect of the signature victory, Jeff Brohm, has been compelled to talk about it all week, and about how he's suddenly the hottest commodity in college football. And that, too, is a great thing, because if you're Purdue University, the last thing you want is a football coach no one else is interested in.

Here's the thing about all this, though: It's still only October 26.

Which means Purdue has another football game this Saturday.

Which means the wonderful story, to remain wonderful, can't have an expiration date yet, either.

To keep this thing going, in other words, the Boilermakers have to go up to East Lansing, Mich., and do last Saturday all over again, and you wonder how that's going to happen when all they've talked about this week, all they've been asked by the outside world to focus on, is what happened against Ohio State.

Michigan State, on the other hand, is a football team that has its own issues with last week. The Spartans are beat up and they're hurting and they've had six days to seethe over the spanking they took on their home turf from that bleeping Harbaugh and those bleeping Michigan Wolverines. And now they get a Purdue team radiating sweetness and light and all kinds of sudden hype?

I would not have wanted to be Coach Brohm this week, trying to get his team ready for that while all anyone wanted to talk about was Ohio State.

Now, I would not be so foolish as to bet against Brohm and his Boilers, at this point. But I would not be equally so foolish as to be shocked if Sparty rises up and smacks them, given everything that's happened in both camps this week.

You can regard that as the Blob trying to ruin someone's party, if you like. The Blob prefers to think of it more benignly.

Call it a word of caution. Nothing more.