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Gold and Black Illustrated is celebrating 30 years of publishing. Over the next few weeks, we will look at each publishing year, recalling the moments that took place in that particular year.

Note: Captions describing each cover are not available on mobile platforms.

From the perspective of 14 years later, there are three things that stand out to me about this year.

First, starting early in the athletic year I recall the Orlando Sentinel's bold, if not crazy, prediction that Purdue's football squad would finish 11-0 and ranked No. 1. That type of ranking has only happened one other time, in Leroy Keyes' senior season of 1968 when he donned the cover of Sports Illustrated.

The logic, I guess, from the Sentinel was that Purdue had a schedule that was conducive to winning. After all, Michigan and Ohio State weren't on it. And the year before, Purdue had risen to No. 5 nationally before a four-game losing streak caused it all to come crashing down. The Sentinel wrote the Boilermakers were "loaded": and in some ways Purdue was with future NFL players like Ray Edwards, Bernard Pollard and Anthony Spencer on defense. But that defense ended up being a big part of the problem, as injuries hit and the Boilermakers fell apart during a six-game losing streak.

On offense, quarterback Brandon Kirsch didn't work out as the starter. The brash Kirsch was a lightning rod among the fan base, and that weighed heavily throughout the season before he gave way to redshirt freshman Curtis Painter. A few months later, Kirsch was gone from the program, choosing to leave before trying to win his job back for his senior year.

It was a new experience for Purdue fans under Coach Joe Tiller. For the first time in eight years, the Boilermakers didn't make it to the postseason. Simply put, it was just a bad year.

In men's basketball, first-year coach Matt Painter made a key strategic decision that reaped huge rewards later. In Game 2 of the young season, senior Carl Landry scored 35 points in a blowout win over South Alabama, but Landry still wasn't 100 percent as he was returning from a knee surgery. Landry appeared in a couple more games, including a 40-point loss in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge at Florida State, and he and Painter decided to shut it down for the year. Classmate David Teague was already lost for the season with a knee injury. Landry's decision to redshirt played huge dividends in the Boilermakers' run to the NCAA Tournament a year later.

Painter knew how to push Landry's buttons, and it was on ongoing process for the young coach to convince Landry that he could be better than he was. Painter ended up being right, as Landry's multi-year NBA career can attest.

The third enduring memory of 2005-06 was women's basketball coach Kristy Curry's departure for Texas Tech. I recall it being the first time we used flight tracking software to determine a coaches whereabouts during a search. I will never forget the look on Curry's face when she had media greeting her at the Purdue airport when she was about to accept the job with Texas Tech. I think she thought it was all going to be done in secret, but it was far from that.

Coaching searches have become much more clandestine since. But in the moment, this one was fun for me and staffer Kyle Charters to watch unfold on the computer screen.

In truth, it was not much of a secret that Curry was done with Purdue, as she was ready to move back to the South with her young family. Things had grown uneasy for her, in part, by the NCAA investigation of her assistant: Katrina Merriweather. Yet, Curry won nearly 78 percent of her games, got Purdue to the 2001 NCAA title game and brought in talent that hasn't been seen in the women's program since.

I have sandwiched my two top picks in here. The above women's cover, and Tom Campbell's image, caught my eye then and catches it now. Whether it was the UCLA blue uniforms that I fell in love with as a kid watching John Wooden's dynasty teams, I don't know. But there was something about that image that stays with me today. That, and Aya Traore was a heckuva defender on one of the best defensive teams in Purdue women's basketball history.

The cover below also told a story as we were able to get Purdue's walking wounded together for a photo shoot in early February. The foursome of Nate Minnoy, Teague, Landry and Gordon Watt, all sidelined with knee injuries, hammed it up for the picture. And while Minnoy and Watt would never play again for the Boilermakers, Teague and Landry would be in part responsible for Purdue's resurgence a year later.

It's hard to win a fan base over with a 9-19 record. But that is what Coach Painter's team did in his first season at the helm. The injuries have been documented above, but the fact that Painter's first crew played with a passion and effort level of a team making a title run, and not a trip to the Big Ten's basement, set the standard for the program for years to come.

I remember the crowds in Mackey Arena actually getting bigger as the season wore on. Purdue basketball fans know good hoops when they see it, and they appreciated the effort. And Purdue's last win of the season, on Feb. 11 no less, was a concrete example that progress was being made. A 84-70 triumph over No. 22 Michigan was also proof that effort, at least on occasion, could deliver an out-manned team on occasion. That, and lights out shooting by freshman Marcus Green, who puzzled the Wolverines with 23 points off the bench.

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