Summit Group Presents: Bobinski and Brohm in sync on scheduling philosophy

Purdue's philosophy of playing a rigorous non-conference schedule is shared by the three men in charge of shaping such things for the Boilermaker program.

Purdue athletics director Mike Bobinski said last week in an interview that he agrees, for the most part, with Jeff Brohm's thought process of wanting to play some of the more challenging non-conference schedules in the country. Per FBSchedules.com, Purdue is just one of 13 Power Five programs to play two other P5 schools as part of its non-conference schedule and that could be the start of a pattern that will continue for many years as long as Bobinski and Brohm are leading the Boilermaker athletics department and football program, respectively.

However, Brohm's boss has admitted he may have to serve as the counterbalance to Brohm's urge to overload the non-conference schedule with power-conference opponents in advance of nine-game Big Ten seasons.

"I've heard Jeff repeatedly say that he wants to play the toughest schedule in the country and be known as a program willing to accept such a challenge," Bobinski said. "Trust me, I tend toward his way of thinking on this as well. Good teams want to play other good teams."

A day after speaking with GoldandBlack.com for this story, Purdue announced a home-and-home contract with Syracuse for the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Counting the previous season and the current 2018 campaign, Purdue already has two Power Five opponents on its non-conference slates for eight of the next 11 seasons and the 2022, 2025 and 2027 schedules still have slots available for additional P5 opponents.

"Scheduling football games is never a unilateral exercise and when you're talking about three games per year, it's my job to get together with your football staff and other members of our department to find some reasonable reality that we can all agree on is best for Purdue," Bobinski said. "What I will say is, coming together with Jeff has been an easy part of this challenge."

Brohm, Bobinski and deputy athletics director Jason Butikofer all share this philosophy for two distinctly different reasons as the football coach sees it as an opportunity to make his players and program better on the field each week by scheduling challenging opponents. Brohm has said repeatedly he relishes such challenges and the benefits that can come with them and that's what the Boilermakers will be hoping for each season through at least 2025. Over the next two seasons, Purdue will open on the road for the first time in the Brohm era when they travel to play at Nevada and then open the 2020 season at Nebraska. In 2021, Purdue will begin with a home game against Oregon State before renewing the rivalry series against Notre Dame in South Bend. In 2023, Purdue will open its slate with a road game against Virginia Tech before hosting Syracuse.

Brohm said he’d prefer to emulate his college coach, Howard Schnellenberger, in scheduling his program’s non-conference games. During his time at Louisville, Schnellenberger showed a willingness to play practically anybody in the nation to get on television and eventually that exposure landed the program in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

"I'm a little old school when it comes to scheduling," Brohm said. "We have two Power Five games this year (and) we'll have two every year," Brohm said. "If it were up to me, we'd have three."

Brohm's thinking is not the typical philosophy of a head coach inheriting a football program that had won nine total games over a four-year period before his arrival. A perfect example of the prevailing trend in scheduling is when Mississippi State hired Florida assistant Dan Mullen in 2009 and he saw a schedule with Georgia Tech and a Houston program with Kevin Sumlin as its head coach, current West Virginia head coach Dana Holgersen as its offensive coordinator and Case Keenum as its quarterback. In his nine-year period from 2009-17 at MSU, Mullen's non-conference schedule included two Power Five games, both resulting in blowout losses (2009 home game vs. Georgia Tech and a 2013 neutral site game vs. Oklahoma State in Houston). A former senior athletics director at MSU, who was in charge of the football program's scheduling effort, confirmed years ago it was his job "to schedule our way to six (wins)" and therefore continue MSU's school-record streak of qualifying for a bowl game in eight consecutive years.

To combat this form of cupcake scheduling, the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference mandated in 2014 all their schools were required to schedule at least one Power Five opponent each season. The Big Ten followed with a similar rule the following year. In all three conferences, independents Notre Dame and BYU are considered acceptable exceptions to scheduling a Power Five Conference opponent. However, the significant difference separating the Big Ten from the SEC and ACC is the fact its commissioner, Jim Delaney, announced in 2011 that the league would use a nine-game conference schedule starting in 2017. The nine-game conference slate allows one less non-conference opponent for the 14 members of the Big Ten and in effect guarantees Big Ten schools will play one more challenging game per team than SEC or ACC members will.

Bobinski enjoys the competitive spirit of his football coach because of the fan interest potential high-profile non-conference matchups generate for ticket sales and national exposure for Purdue's athletic department as a whole. In each of Brohm's first two seasons, the Boilermakers have begun their seasons with nationally televised games on FOX or ESPN and it is indeed possible the 2020 opener at Nebraska and 2022 opener vs. Penn State will be on a nationally televised broadcast partner as well.

Bobinski has indicated that the Big Ten doesn't consult its schools on scheduling beyond accepting submitted requests beforehand for mid-week dates they'd like to avoid during a particular season. Bobinski said the Big Ten doesn't consult with its 14 schools before either A) releasing its future schedules or B) flexing its games to a mid-week date similar to how the season opener vs. Northwestern was moved to a Thursday night at the request of ESPN executives.

Since accepting the A.D. position in August of 2016, Bobinski has said one of his most important jobs is to gauge the interest of a new community. His current assessment of a majority of Boilermaker supporters is that they don't want to see a scheduling philosophy similar to Mississippi State or other Southeastern Conference programs because they're less likely to attend games at Ross-Ade Stadium that aren't compelling matchups.

"Now you don't want to schedule three killers and get in that situation but what we also don't ever want to do is undersell the non-conference portion of our schedule to our fans and alumni because our folks will reject a non-competitive non-conference schedule as part of a season-ticket package," Bobinski said. "You're not going to please everyone but in a majority sense, our fans typically reject a game where their initial thought is, 'Who the heck is that?' and then say, 'We're not interested.'"

Bobinski said his goal is to have seven home games each season but this task becomes much more difficult in years in which Purdue only has four Big Ten home games.

"At that point, you're buying somebody for that seventh home game, which is fine but that's just the nature of what you're dealing with in a league with a nine-game schedule," Bobinski said.

While Brohm's philosophy doesn't have much to do with economics, Bobinski can appreciate his football coach making life easier for his department's budget.

According to USA Today, 45 matchups this season will involve one school paying out at least $1 million to an institution to host that school for a football game. The largest payout was the $1.7 million Ohio State paid out before its 77-31 win over Oregon State the opening weekend of the season. Arkansas State received that same $1.7-million sum for a Sept. 8 game against Alabama, which the Crimson Tide won 58-7. During the opening weekend of the season, eight Big Ten schools (Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Penn State, Nebraska, Iowa, Rutgers and Illinois) paid at least $1 million for a one-off regular season game. Purdue agreed to a $550,000 payment to Eastern Michigan of the Mid-American Conference, a game it lost 20-19 two weeks ago. The price of guarantee games has quickly risen into seven-figure territory.

"They get very expensive and that is what I always hear now is the market has been raised to X amount of dollars," Bobinski said. "The first quotes you get from those Group of Six Conference programs for a home game is that $1- to $2-million number they're getting from the Alabamas, Ohio States and Michigans of the world with their 100,000-seat stadiums that can afford that payout price. It becomes a challenge for us and our ability to explain to them our economic realities aren't the same."

Therefore, it becomes more fiscally responsible for Purdue to schedule home-and-home series against Power Five opponents where the guaranteed price is much lower than trying to spend in the neighborhood of $2 to $3 million per season trying to buy two non-conference wins.

A final way for Purdue to combat the big prices for non-conference games is the idea of getting a third party to pay out a fee to both teams for playing a neutral site game that makes sense regarding location and date.

Purdue has made it a public issue what location they'd love to have back on the schedule soon - Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

"The answer is yes," Bobinski said of trying to get a future game in Indianapolis. "We've had discussions with the people at Lucas Oil and continue to value that relationship with those folks and the people in Indianapolis. That just works in a lot of different ways for us."

The only caveat to Purdue's desire to return to Indianapolis is an unwillingness to move any of the games in its signed agreement with in-state rival Notre Dame. The two programs are scheduled to meet six times over eight seasons starting in 2021 but Bobinski said it is unlikely any of those games will be in Indianapolis and said a direct "no" to the possibility of moving any of Purdue's home matchups in 2024, 2026 and 2028 against Fighting Irish.

After evaluating the experience on multiple levels from the 2017 season opener vs. Louisville, Bobinski has made it very clear they'd like to return to Indiana's state capital soon. Currently, Purdue doesn't have a game scheduled in Indianapolis but still has possible openings in its 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2025 non-conference schedules.

Membership Info: Sign up for GoldandBlack.com now | Why join? | Questions?

Follow GoldandBlack.com: Twitter | Facebook

More: Gold and Black Illustrated/Gold and Black Express | Subscribe to our podcast

Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2018. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited.