More: Purdue caps 'storybook' season with bowl victory | Bentley finishes career with MVP; notebook | Sindelar surges despite torn ACL | Senior receivers shine | Complete bowl game coverage
They didn’t want to leave.
Well after the trophy presentation late Wednesday night Santa Clara, Calif., the one that was the reward for Purdue’s 38-35 victory over Arizona in the Foster Farms Bowl, the one that validated a resurgent season, the kind that seemed so out of reach just a year ago, Purdue players lingered on the field at Levi’s Stadium.
They posed for pictures with the hefty trophy — quarterback Elijah Sindelar said later he figured it weighed 40 pounds. They laughed and hugged teammates and sought out coaches to say thank you. They found family and friends in the stands and delivered more hugs and snapped more pictures.
Eventually, they made their way to a tunnel and followed the roped-off pathway to a locker room in the bowels of the flashy new stadium. There was more celebration there, too, many of the guys refusing to take off the new gear they’d just been given on the field: Those bright white hats that said, “Champions” boldly across the front and bore the Foster Farms Bowl logo on the side.
And, eventually, six guys made their way into the adjacent press conference and started reflecting. About what had happened in a wild, come-from-behind victory. But they also were asked to look ahead, to what this winning season could mean to a program that hadn’t had one since 2011.
“I don’t know the last winning season we had at Purdue, but just to get the winning season, it shows what we can do in the years to come. Turn the program around,” said sophomore linebacker Markus Bailey, one of the team’s most talented players and a likely captain next season. “This was such a crucial game for us to get. I know it’s going to give us a lot of momentum going forward in the offseason. Having that win gives us confidence going into the offseason, so we can work harder in spring ball and everything.
"We want to do better than what we did this year next year. So it’s just to build on top of this season.”
To a man, all the returning players who spoke exuded a confident vibe.
How could there not be? Even if there are significant questions looming for 2018 — Who’s the quarterback? Will Purdue’s defense be able to replace all those defensive starters? — there was enough progress shown, on and off the field, in 2017 for those to not matter.
At least right now.
Sindelar, the offensive MVP of the game, actually said to the crowd after the game on the field that Purdue would be back to a bowl game next season and win that one, too.
“It’s huge. It sets the tone for the next year,” Sindelar, a sophomore, said to reporters later. “We’re in good spirits. We’re going to be excited to go in spring ball instead of kind of moping around because we lost. We won. We have a winning record. I couldn’t be more excited.”
D.J. Knox, who likely will be a captain next season as a senior, bought into first-year coach Jeff Brohm’s one-game season approach all year but then especially latched onto the coach’s message leading into the bowl game: That, essentially, everything Purdue had accomplished up to that point in the season meant nothing.
And that the bowl game, in one way or another, could almost define Purdue’s season.
“There’s a big difference between 6-7 and 7-6. People are always going to remember your last performance. This is the kind of note we wanted to end on so we could use this as a stepping stone and build more onto this and take this program where we want to go with it,” said Knox, who rushed for 101 yards in the bowl game. “So 7-6, I’ll take it. Especially bowl champions, building onto next year, I’m ready to go.”
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