Spurning home

This was a no-brainer, or so some of the wise guys thought. Who doesn't want to go home again, if offered the chance? Especially when the chance comes with so many dollar signs attached to it?

And so Jeff Brohm was going to go to Louisville. He was, wasn't he?

The circumstances were all weighted in that direction, after all. He was a high school star in Louisville. Then he was a collegiate star there, just as his brother had been.  If Louisville, a basketball school in a basketball town in a basketball state, had a first family of football, it was the Brohm family.

Who better to resurrect the football program Bobby Petrino had just burned to the waterline, than the guy who sorted through the wreckage Darrell Hazell left behind to win 13 games in two seasons at Purdue?

On the other hand ... who better to stick around and see the job through?

Which you have to figure was at least partly what it came down to for Brohm, who hinted at as much in announcing he would turn down home to stay 180 miles away at Purdue. If the fit sounded as right as a fit gets, it seems, the timing wasn't. Everything at Purdue was just getting started. He'd made commitment to both the university and a passel of recruits. Louisville, if it ever happened, could wait.

And you had to wonder, when the news came down yesterday and all of West Lafayette audibly exhaled, just when Brohm's decision shifted in Purdue's favor. Does it go this way without a certain October night in Ross-Ade Stadium, when Purdue crushed the life out of then No. 2 Ohio State and Brohm got swept up in the magic of a lost program finding its mojo again? Does it go this way without athletic director Mike Bobinski's concerted push to pour money into the football program? Or Purdue solidifying its commitment to that program, and to Brohm, by reportedly topping Louisville's offer?

So many variables. What if Ohio State had beaten Purdue that night the way the Buckeyes had in three of the last four meetings? What if Bobinski's predecessor, Morgan Burke, hadn't decided to retire? Would Brohm had stuck around if Burke had stuck around?

Fair questions all. And, of course, a tidy window into just how much karma or circumstance or plain old garden variety luck plays into these things.

Far too often, plain old garden variety luck has turned its back on Purdue. This time it didn't. Score it a W.