Gold and Black @ 30: Year 21--2010-11

Related links: Year 1: 1990-91 | Year 2: 1991-92 | Year 3: 1992-93 | Year 4: 1993-94 | Year 5: 1994-95 | Year 6: 1995-96 | Year 7: 1996-97 | Year 8: 1997-98 | Year 9: 1998-99 | Year 10: 1999-00 | Year 11: 2000-01 | Year 12: 2001-02 | Year 13: 2002-03 | Year 14: 2003-04 | Year 15: 2004-05 | Year 16: 2005-06 | Year 17: 2006-07 | Year 18: 2007-08 | Year 19: 2008-09 | Year 20: 2009-10

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.

It might be a case of rinse and repeat from the year before.

I remember sitting in the Ross-Ade Stadium radio booth for the Purdue-Minnesota Homecoming game. It was a gorgeous day and the Boilermakers were taking care of business on the field.

The strange thing was no one was watching the football game. A couple of hours earlier in a Saturday morning practice at the Co-Rec (location made necessary due to the Mackey Arena renovation that was a year away from completion), Rob Hummel tore his ACL for the second time in less than eight months. I received a call that this had happened while I was making my way to the stadium from someone who had seen him in the training room tending to the calamity. I couldn't believe it.

It took a couple of hours, but before long, you could literally hear from our open window in our radio booth the buzz of people talking about it while the football game was going on. It was the first time I recall seeing in action the power of phone messaging technology. And it was right in front of me. Purdue easily won the football game, but it was as if no one cared. Hummel's injury cast a pall on the Ross-Ade crowd.

JaJuan Johnson and E'Twaun Moore made sure Purdue's basketball season didn't go in the tank. The duo was terrific all season, as Johnson became Purdue's first consensus All-American in 17 years. Moore, among other things, put on one of the best single-game performances in Purdue history with his 38-point effort in a 13-point home win over No. 2 Ohio State. His shooting spree just before halftime was Rick Mount-esque, as he hit from everywhere. But his acrobatic layups were also memorable. It was sweet retribution for a blowout loss a few weeks earlier in Columbus.

Yet, the Boilermakers ran out of gas in the NCAA Round of 32 in Chicago to upstart and eventual Final Four participant VCU. But the job Moore and Johnson did to make the 2010-11 season memorable was remarkable.

This was the cover that personified Danny Hope. He loved his job as football coach and it was hard not to buy into his optimism heading into each of the four seasons he was the head man at Purdue. Hope always seemed ready for a put-up-your-dukes street fight and there were times when his team responded to that mentality.

In 2010, senior Ryan Kerrigan was the star. He was Purdue's first unanimous All-American choice in 30 years and he played just as his coach wanted all of his players to -- all-out effort on every play. The problem was, among other things, the Boilermakers--especially after the Robert Marve injury in a home loss to Toledo--weren't good enough at quarterback. Purdue struggled to a 4-8 record which included six-straight losses to end the year, the first full-season sign that the air was leaving the balloon in the Hope Era.

Yes, the '10 Boilermakers had their moments. A road win over a ranked Northwestern team (coaches poll) and the above mentioned win over Minnesota showed some promise. Even late in the year, Purdue held a commanding lead at No. 11 Michigan State only to let it slip away late. An overtime loss to IU to end the season increased the misery index.

It was a tense few days.

Matt Painter's courtship with the Missouri job and the subsequent erroneous national reports that he was taking the gig with the Tigers put Purdue fans on edge.

I hope I live long enough to be able to ask the Purdue coach really what happened and for him to tell me the truth. I do believe Painter's agent Buddy Baker did a good job of maximizing his client's leverage in order to get some important concessions for Painter and the men's basketball program.

Painter has the unique ability to let things play out and do much while saying little. No matter what happened in the contract negotiations with Purdue and Missouri, the end result was Painter proclaiming at a press conference that he wanted to win a national championship ... and for Purdue fans at the time, it was a good thing it was at Purdue and not Missouri,.

It was one of those moments that you knew where you were when you heard the news that Painter was definitely staying in West Lafayette. I remember getting a call from editor Brian Neubert, who was as on top of the story as anyone, and him saying "he's not going."

It made my visit to a Lafayette nursing home to see my ailing mother, in the last months of her life, just a little better. She was still lucid enough at the time to know Painter's decision to sign a new contract with Purdue was a good thing. And the good things have been so for much of the last nine years.

It's funny, at least for me, how Purdue sports events have marked life's events. This one was one of those instances.

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