Coachin' 'em up

I don't know what bowl game Purdue will wind up in. But I do know this.

It'll be better than the bowl game it played in last year.

That's because the Boilers didn't play in a bowl named after a radial tire or a root vegetable, or even an About To Be Swallowed Up By A Telecommunications Predator DotCom Bowl. No, sir. They played in the Black-And-Gold This Is My House Bowl, which is short for "I wear black-and-gold and this is My House and I'm just going to sit here and watch other people play in bowl games."

Maybe first-year head coach Jeff  Brohm isn't the second coming of Joe Tiller in West Lafayette, but for a certainty the first Joe Tiller died with a smile on his face back in September watching what Brohm wrought this fall. What he did was, he made chicken salad out of chicken doo-doo. He took a bunch of football players who'd won five games and two Big Ten games the last two autumns, and won six games and four Big Ten games with them.

Along they the way, they only vaguely resembled the sad sacks they were the last two years, even though it was largely the same guys. Under Brohm and his staff, Purdue was the most improved scoring defense in the country this fall. They looked crisper and more purposeful on offense. And on both sides of the football, they stuck people the way a Purdue team hasn't stuck people in quite some time.

Yesterday they got bowl eligible by beating Indiana 31-24 and taking back the Bucket for the first time in five years, and it wasn't really that close. The Boilermakers led 31-10 before Indiana scored twice in the last six minutes to make it look good.

More to the point: 52,000-plus live human beings showed up to watch in Ross-Ade Stadium.

You see the difference a coach can make on the field, and the 2017 Boilers are a stark example of that. But you also see it in the stands, where coaches mostly live or die in big-time corporate college football.

Football at the Big Ten level primarily exists to generate revenue, and empty seats do not generate revenue. And so beyond the concrete lack of results Brohm's predecessor, Darrell Hazell, was generating between the goal lines in Ross-Ade, his true death knell was being sounded far above turf level, where tumbleweeds were blowing through a stadium into which Purdue had plowed a sizeable chunk of capital.

In Hazell's last season, Purdue never put more than 41,000 fannies in Ross-Ade for a home game, and only twice came close. The Boilers drew just 33,157 fans for Penn State, a marquee opponent. And they drew even fewer than that -- 30,465 -- for another marquee opponent, Wisconsin, which at the time was ranked sixth in the country.

So the place was less than half full for a top ten opponent. A reflection of how dismal the product was on the field, and not a good omen for Hazell.

But this year?

Not only has Brohm worked a miracle between the lines, he, as a result, has worked one where it most counts, too. Unlike 2016, Purdue never drew fewer than 41,000 fans for a home game this fall. For the game against No. 8 Michigan, 60,042 fans filed into Ross-Ade. The Bucket game Saturday drew 52,105. That was 15,000 fans more than it drew two years ago, the last time the game was played in West Lafayette.

In other words: There's significant evidence that Jeff Brohm is the first Purdue football coach who knows what he's doing since Tiller. And the Purdue faithful apparently sense that.

Now if they can just keep some higher-profile program from poaching him ...

Sorry, Boilers. That was cruel.