In the second part of our transcription of last week's Gold and Black LIVE interview, Mike Bobinski fills talks about what is next for Purdue's stadium project, and the Big Ten with the retirement of Jim Delany. GoldandBlack.com's Tom Dienhart and Alan Karpick talked to the fourth-year athletics director about these topics and more.
Dienhart: A new Big Ten commissioner is coming in, you’ve seen all the love letters paying respect to Jim Delany. What made his tenure remarkable, and what changes are ahead?
Bobinski: With Jim, his longevity is remarkable. It’s almost impossible to believe he’s been doing that for 30 years. I was at a conference last week in New York, and the reason I went was because it was going to be one of Jim’s last public addresses, where he had a 45-minute interview on stage, as every other major conference commissioner. I would tell you that if you were wondering why Jim was the way he was, you just need to watch that interview. It was beyond impressive. He is such a strategic, high-level thinker. His ability to see around the corner, particularly over the past 20 years of his tenure, has positioned our league in a way that is to every one of our institution’s great advantage.
From a strategy (perspective), from a media, from a never losing sight the fact that our league is really grounded (he is remarkable). Do we want to win? Hell yeah we want to win. We want to win at the highest level. But our emphasis is on academics, community and values, and the top to bottom collaboration across the Big Ten institutions. And it’s not just an athletic thing. It’s a complete university integration because it’s the most powerful collection of universities in the country. There are all these big land grant schools and we have a mission and we’re all together.
Jim's ability to never lose sight of that and to sell out for athletic success is an untold part of his legacy. He never let the tail wag the dog, in terms of that. And I think that is really powerful and not often recognized. I saw it from a distance when I wasn’t in the Big Ten.
Now with (new commissioner) Kevin Warren coming in, Kevin’s really accomplished, really smart, really sharp and experienced gentleman. As Jim has pointed out and as Kevin has said, he has a different voice and a different set of experiences that he brings to the table. He is a very student athlete-centric commissioner. For Kevin, the support of our student athletes and how we do the things around them, he’s going to want to do that on a conference-wide basis and ensure that everyone’s fulfilling that commitment.
He has a son right now that is a student athlete at Mississippi State, so he’s seen it through his eyes. Kevin was student athlete, as Jim was. He’s got a different lens that he’s going to view this thing through. It’ll be different. I don’t think we’ll lose any traction on our positioning from a media perspective. I think it will be an interesting shift in voice and focus when we get together as a collective group of institutions, and not unhealthy. I think it will be a very healthy change that will continue to move us forward.
Dienhart: 20 years from now, do you think there will still be 14 teams in the Big Ten Conference?
Bobinski: I won’t be around; I can guarantee that. Sixteen is probably the outer limit for a conference. Still, I don’t see two other teams right this minute of value that would be worth the effort that are even geographically contiguous to us, unless our friends up the street (Notre Dame) here ever decide to get into a conference. I don’t know if that will ever happen or not. That would be one, but I don’t know who the partner would be. I don’t see any momentum right now for it to get bigger, but the whole world is in a state of "who knows what’s next” with all the state legislature and Congressional involvement (in college athletics). . It’s very much a moving target and an enigma right now.
Karpick: With the image and likeness issues as it pertains to the student-athlete, Is that what’s next? Everything is geared more and more towards the student-athlete experience, not only because of the money that may be involved someday, but what do you think is the next frontier, from a strategic standpoint?
Bobinski: I think what’s missing right now from the conversation is how much has been done. We’ve all turned in that direction. I know since I’ve been here at Purdue, we’ve accelerated the pace of what we do in support of, from a nutrition perspective, from an academic support perspective, from a physical academic support service area, the sports psychologist, the mental health, and all of those things.
Yet, all of that message has not reached the general public. It’s certainly not reached those in government who are throwing stones (at college athletics) every day. There is a lack of recognition, I think, of what it’s really like these days and how much it has grown (with respect to the student-athlete experience) in quality and depth and support.
But that will continue, and I don’t think we’ll go backwards on that. We’ll find ways to try to advance that. We already have a medical insurance policy beyond someone’s opportunity here in college. We take care of them for a couple of years after. Could that potentially expand? I could see government folks saying, 'that ought to be for 10 years, not two years.' That could come. Lifetime education opportunities, which again, we pretty much have today, but people don’t recognize or understand that. There’s a massive information gap that exists that won’t solve the entire problem, but it will soften some of the extreme views that exist right now in congress and in state government. They just don’t quite get what is already happening, particularly in programs at the Power Five. There have been massive investments in support of all of our athletes.
Dienhart: We’re seeing the south end zone scoreboard coming down to be replaced by the 2020 season. Now, all eyes are on the Ross-Ade renovation. How is your timeline with respect to fundraising and all that goes with it progressing?
Bobinski: The first one (Ross-Ade renovation) depends a lot on the last two (fundraising and coordinating all the details). From a planning perspective, the architects Populous have completed a schematic design, which means they’ve come up with a bunch of concept drawings and a little bit more in depth than that sounds. They delivered that to us two weeks ago. That set of drawings and concepts has now been turned over to what’s called an Owners Technical Representative, which is a major construction firm that will do cost estimating exercise on those drawings and a potential phasing sequencing and constructibility.
We have wonderful ideas, but can we do it? I can draw some things up, but a construction person will tell you they can’t do that. Optimistically, that exercise will happen over the next two months. They number will come back and be one that will cause the blood to drain out of my body (laughing), so we’ll have to deal with that. Then we will probably adjust our thinking scope and figure about ways to engineer it or adjust our plan into what we think will be achievable from a fundraising perspective. That’s a spring time time frame: Here’s what we think we can do, and here’s how much it’s going to cost.
In the meantime, we are having conversations with folks to help support us at a significant level to help this thing go along. The first one to come to fruition was the Rohrman Family with the biggest gift we’ve ever gotten at Purdue Athletics. It’s purely philanthropic. It’s a gift, and there is no business deal to it and one that we are incredible grateful for. It is a great first domino to fall. We have to have things happen at that scale if we are going to raise the funds to get things to happen.
That (fundraIsing process) is underway and will continue to be underway until we get it done. Until we get it done, we won’t have a full project. Can we potentially do this in phases? That’s certainly a possibility. It’ll be up to the construction folks to tell us how we might phase that and how we might break it up into chunks that doesn’t drive up costs dramatically or cause disruption in a season. There is lots of ground to cover.
When you do a renovation that is as significant as this and in a stadium that is as old as ours, it’s a complicated puzzle. It’s not an easy thing. We’re not adding an addition to the back of a house. It’s an integration and a change and lots of things were trying to accomplish. I like the concepts. I think we have lots of forward-looking concepts that were developing. It’s moving along. It’s an exciting project. I think everyone that sits in the meetings is really excited and really energized. We have a food and beverage consultant, we have a graphics consultant, we have a WIFI consultant. We have all sorts of experts involved in this. We’re trying to touch every potential (base) to improve the Ross Ade experience.
I’m extremely hopeful that we will get it all done, but it’s going to take a little time. It’s not a snap your fingers thing. People see it as a change for us to have our field named, for sure, but it is very much standard operating procedure around the country. Look at our campus. Every building has a name. That’s how you get things done. Some people choose to be anonymous, but some people want the recognition. And those that do, they’ve made an investment at a significant level, and they deserve that recognition. It’ll be incumbent upon us to provide those opportunities.
Karpick: Matt (Painter) has had an interesting start to his season. He has a puzzle to solve. What are you seeing out of that so far?
Bobinski: Last year, when things got tight, late shot clock, end of game situations, you had two guys that were more than willing to step forward and say, “I got it,”, with (Ryan) Cline and Carsen (Edwards). And both were capable, and both did it at different times. That is yet to emerge in our current group, and I think that’s something we’ll work hard to evolve. And maybe it’s not a person. Maybe is a system or an approach to how we handle late situations that guys will find a way to be comfortable with an execute. That’s clearly a change from the dynamic from last year to this year. We have a lot of talented players. I think it’s a matter of them finding their way.
I think it was great against Ohio to see Nojel (Eastern) really be aggressive. I saw him in the training room the next day and told him how fun it was to watch him. It was like he had been set free, and the weight had been lifted. He was attacking and really impactful. And he’s more than capable of being that guy, and that’s what we need from him. And it’s not just from him, by no means am I putting this all on Nojel. It’s no secret Aaron Wheeler is struggling (for consistency) right now to find his spot or niche and his shots not going down as he would like. But he’s too talented of a player for that to be a situation all year long. I have to believe that he’s ultimately going to find a rhythm and contribute.
It’s going to be an evolution for sure. The league is going to be really interesting. Even the teams that are traditionally the lower rung in the league, there are no easy outs.
Dienhart: Moving forward on the Jeff Brohm era. It has to have exceeded your expectations up to this point. Talk about the evolution since you hired him?
Bobinski: I think from a recruiting perspective, there’s no question that they’ve delivered results that’s going to benefit us for the long haul. There is a layering of talent upon talent upon talent. Now it’s incumbent upon them to grow that, and I think all of that is happening at a high level. The other thing it takes me back to is, when you take over a program that isn’t one of the traditional powerhouses in and around college football and not at its peak, it was conceivably at one of its lower points, that the rebuild and the effort it takes to get it to a place of consistent success is significant. It is not a straight-line exercise. You don’t just go up and to the right. It’s going to be a little bit of an up and a down. This year was a down, and it happened for a lot of reasons.
If Alabama makes a bad hire, and they have a couple years of struggle, you make the right hire and it’s really easy to just dust that thing off and you’re rolling again at a high level. That’s not our reality. That’s not how were situated. When I hired Jeff, I told him that I wanted to do something here that we had never done. I want us to get to a level we’ve never been at, and I want to sustain that. And that takes effort and consistency and perseverance and living through those tough moments.
This year, was it fun for the coaching staff or for us? No, but it was part of that process. And what happened this year will pay dividends to us in the years ahead. If things stay together and these players develop how I think they’ll develop, given the experience they had last year and the talent they had, we have a chance to make a significant step from last year to this year on the field.
The piece that I can’t go without saying is how grateful we are to the way our fans stuck with us this year. It was beyond awesome. Our players noticed it, our coaches noticed it, we noticed it. It was spectacular, and I can’t thank them enough for understanding, sticking with those young guys and showing up. And students, fan, alumni, they all kept coming. And that will be part of the solution. The payoff is going to come for that all, and we appreciate that.
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