Gold and Black @ 30: Year 8--1997-98

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

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 was a beautiful, warm September day, and I recall standing on the photo deck of the old Ross-Ade Stadium, looking over a capacity crowd as Purdue was about to take on Notre Dame.

I had a business to run, and I was hoping Purdue fans wouldn't abandon their football program as had been done under its last three coaches (Burtnett, Akers and Colletto). But if the experts were right, and Notre Dame delivered a three-touchdown victory that afternoon as predicted, then most certainly this we going to be another long year in West Lafayette.

But, as any Purdue fan knows, it was what happened on that day that changes the entire fortunes of Boilermaker football for most of the next dozen years. Yes, Purdue beat Notre Dame 28-17, but it was the way Coach Joe Tiller's team delivered the knockout blow that made it truly memorable.

I recall standing on the field waiting to go to the post-game press conference in the game's closing minutes, wondering if Purdue could actually close out the upset. It was leading 21-17 and facing a third-and-four-ish situation near midfield.

Certainly Tiller would play it safe and run the ball and it would be up to the defense to finish the job. But when I looked up, much to my surprise, I saw quarterback Billy Dicken dropping back to pass. Not only was he throwing, but his receiver was true freshman Vinny Sutherland. The Irish hadn't been able to defend the play, the bubble screen, for much of the afternoon. And when Sutherland caught Dicken's pass and turned the corner racing down the sidelines to within a couple yards of the goal line, it confirmed something I had thought the first time I met Tiller. Something was different.

Tiller not only had the "Look of a Winner," as the above cover caption reads, he had the ability to bring a "playing to win" attitude to Purdue football.

So much has been written about the '97 season. Fans recall the miracle win over Michigan State when the Boilermakers overcame a 21-10 MSU lead in the game's final 133 seconds to win 22-21. As Tiller said about the '97 season, "every week was like Christmas," and that was true.

And Purdue's best bowl trip to date? It is hard to argue against the 1997 Alamo Bowl not being the best. Sure, it is hard to beat a trip to Pasadena, but 13 years of pent-up energy was released in San Antonio that year in a city that is perfectly suited for a mid-level bowl. The fans are all together, and I recall the Purdue faithful in full celebration mode before and after this one.

To this day, I hear more fans talk about the '97 and '98 Alamo Bowls than any other postseason football experience. When there are little to no expectations, and there is a big surprise waiting at the end, nothing is better. That holds true in sports and in life.

The 1997 football season will forever be special because of that. Experiences like those are the ones you never forget, and have sustained legions of Purdue fans ever since.

Despite no regular-season championships for the three teams we covered most, it was still one of the best athletic seasons across the board in our three decades of Gold and Black.

A shining example was the Purdue men's team win at Michigan State on the Spartans senior day. Tom Izzo had already won a share of his first conference title and decided to hoist the banner before the game. It may have been just the incentive the Boilermakers needed, as Purdue went on to win 99-96 in one of the best college basket games I can ever remember watching. The Boilermakers answered every punch Izzo's team could deliver and in the end, Brad Miller was phenomenal with 30 points and 12 rebounds in the overtime win.

Thanks to the work of Tom Campbell, who was in his first year of joining us as our photographer, we had several covers that season that captured the raw emotion of the game. The joy on the late Gary McQuay's face as he is hugged by Miller was captured above. I put up Campbell's work capturing great action (especially football) with anyone in the business, and he made his mark in the first year with us. Even in defeats at Toledo and Iowa in football, his images of quarterback Billy Dicken captured the emotion of the moment and preserved it perfectly.

One of the joys of my early years at Gold and Black was editing color negatives with Campbell, after I had the duty of running the film to the local Walgreen's for processing. It wasn't a fast process, but it was always fun and interesting to see what he had captured from the event. Much like Tiller's first season at Purdue, every edit was a bit of Christmas as it was revealed what images we would have at our disposal to tell the story for that issue.

The power of football and how much fun it is for the fan base when a program turns it around will never grow old.

The 1997 football season was the first of two turnaround seasons we have enjoyed in our three decades at Gold and Black. The other, to a lesser extent, was in 2017 when coach Jeff Brohm returned winning and excitement to Ross-Ade Stadium.

Maybe it is because basketball is a relative constant and consistent success story at Purdue, but when the football boat gets turned around and headed in a positive direction, there is nothing quite like it. Tiller becoming an instant hero is much like what Brohm experienced in '17, though Tiller's first team was a notch better than the '17 squad.

Yet, both years provided a galvanizing effect for the sports teams and the entire university. The former provided the impetus for the first major Ross-Ade renovation that took place in 2002-03. Purdue officials hope the '17 season, with a not-so-little assist from Rondale Moore and Tyler Trent in 2018, will hopefully produce the energy behind another major renovation at Ross-Ade. The circumstances we all find ourselves in these day will almost assuredly delay the project, but the basis for passion and enthusiasm is there like it was in the late 1990s.

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