AD Mike Bobinski: Brohm was 'best choice from the get-go'

More: Brohm is next coach | A closer look at Brohm's WKU assistants | Brohm's offenses versatile, high-scoring |

Analysis: Gold and Black Radio Express: Purdue gets its guy ($) | What Brohm inherits in personnel ($)

After Monday's introductory press conference for new football coach Jeff Brohm, athletic director Mike Bobinski fielded more questions from reporters about the search, what "commitment" means and more:

GoldandBlack.com: I know you’re not speaking specifically on financials quite yet, but there was a report six years, $20 million. Is that the range?

Bobinski: “The six years is correct. But it’s in the neighborhood, yes.”

GoldandBlack.com: When you talk about supplemental support from the administration, you’re talking about things like assistant coach salary pool …

Bobinski: “It’s that. It’s the entire organization. It’s building up the player personnel side of things. All those different things that kind of go into programs at our level these days. We want to make sure we have all the appropriate resources and manpower that we need to be good.”

GoldandBlack.com: Also in terms of support staff, strength coaches …

Bobinski: “Huge.”

GoldandBlack: Right, we’ve heard there are typically five at some schools just for football. How are you potentially looking at changing that as well?

Bobinski: “Every single candidate we talked to, without exception, said maybe the most important hire we make is the strength and conditioning person because they spend so much time with the players, maybe moreso than the coaches, particularly when the coaches aren’t around. So reinforcing the culture, reinforcing the work ethic, reinforcing the accountability, it matters. So finding the right person and putting together the right team in that area is going to be really important.”

Question: Would that be up to Jeff?

Bobinski: “Absolutely. That’s up to Jeff. That’s his call.”

GoldandBlack.com: Mitch Daniels spoke about additional revenue, the upcoming new TV deal. That's important because we’re talking about a significant increase to this whole pool, where it could be $8-10 million you’re spending next year?

Bobinski: “Yeah, it’s going to be a significant investment to get us where we want to be.”

GoldandBlack.com: There was no hesitancy on your part.

Bobinski: “No. The Board, the president, everybody is fully committed. It’s great.”

Question: Do you have a range of what you’re going to need financially to bring this program up to speed?

Bobinski: “Obviously, we’re invested at some level already. So this is all not new. It’s incremental on top of. It’s significant, but it’s not, like, oh my gosh, end of the world. (laughs) A couple million dollars for sure of additional investment.”

Question: When you came here and saw some of the deficiencies, were you surprised how much work was going to be needed to bring everything up to where it needed to be?

Bobinski: "I think I knew most of it. But before I came, I had those conversations. I didn’t come blindfolded and in the back of a van. I came here on my own volition. But I had had lots of conversations with the president and Mike Berghoff and others about if we are in position to make a football change, are we committed to get this thing right and the answer has been, at every step, yes. We’re going to do this. We want this thing to be what it can be. You tell us what that needs to be and we’ll be supportive of it. So I’m very confident in that."

GoldandBlack.com: During the press conference, you said the process was 'interesting.'

Bobinski: “Yeah, it’s amazing. ... When I got to the field at Indiana two weeks ago, people said, ‘Hey, you hired P.J. Fleck?’ ‘Is that so?’ … With all due respect to P.J. — he’s a hell of a coach — but we had not hired him, obviously. It was a certainty in some peoples' minds. So all of that was very interesting.

"But, to me, it was interesting to meet lots of great coaches, lots of great people, some of whom I knew, some of whom I didn’t know, and to hear their take on Purdue and their vision on how we might move this thing forward. That part was really good and energizing to say, ‘Wow, these guys believe. They have a vision on how this can get done.’ That was really, really positive for me."

Question: How did the process unfold?

Bobinski: “You got a couple hours? So, obviously, when we got into it early in the season, midway through, we didn’t jump right to it, but we spent 10 days, two weeks just getting organized, getting my thoughts together. I had some sense of a field of who I thought might be reasonable candidates and once we engaged our search firm partners in it, we started the process of doing background and doing much more deep research on them to see if, in fact, what I initially thought would be true. There other candidates were developed as we worked through all that. So started with an initial group, some came and went out of that group and others were added as we went through it. Then we actually went and saw and had conversations with a number of those candidates to see, OK, is what we think real and does it feel like it might be a potential fit. You just work it down from a group and the funnel narrows until you find, ultimately, the person — and, again, I was not kidding — Jeff was somebody that was very early on, high on the list, we didn’t get to see him until later on because he was playing and coaching, but he was a guy I had great interest in from the get-go, and once we saw him and once I did all this background and research on him, it was just positive, positive, positive. No negatives were unturned at any point. It was just all good."

Question: At what point did you lock in on him as No. 1 guy?

Bobinski: “In my mind, I would tell you he’s been there for a bit. But, again, we tried also to be really respectful of other coaches’ seasons, their teams. I think you got the point (Monday) from Jeff. (Sunday) when we finally got this done, a condition of it was that we would not say anything official about a press conference or anything until he had a chance to get to his team first. That really mattered to him. We’ve tried to be as respectful as we can throughout. So folks who didn’t want to talk until they were done-done playing, that’s what we did. We didn’t try and get in their ear beforehand. I think that’s just the right thing to do. I think it sends a message about who we are and we intend to be going forward. I feel very comfortable about our process. I don’t think we missed a beat. We turned over every conceivable possibility but, again, landed with the guy that I believe was the best choice for us from the get-go."

GoldandBlack.com: With the Baylor and Cincinnati stuff that came out Sunday, were you ever concerned that he wasn’t going to be here?

Bobinski: “Until it’s done, you’re not done. Was I concerned? Of course I was. There was always varying levels of concern throughout. But, at the end of the day, even as I evaluated the opportunities that might be available to him — and they’ve been available to him — this is a better fit for lots of reasons. In our conversations, that’s something he brought up. I didn’t have to point that out to him. (He said), ‘Honestly, this makes about as good of sense as it possibly can from my own personal history background and my familiarity geographically and all that.’ So it made lots of sense for him.”

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