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On one of his first days on the job, Mike Bobinski saw his first football game as Purdue's athletic director.

Or at least, he saw some of that game, as he was ushered from place to place throughout the afternoon.

What Bobinski could not have missed was a Ross-Ade Stadium crowd that went down as one of the smallest in program history. Purdue announced an attendance figure of 32,074. That's announced attendance, and there is a difference between announced attendance and actual attendance.

"Some of it is you've had several years now of less-than-optimal results," Bobinski said during a Wednesday press conference. "That's a fact and there's a carry-over effect from that you can't deny. It's reality and I'm not going to sugar-coat that in any way. It is what it is.

"That being said, what I did see on Saturday, everything was really, really good, great. It being a holiday weekend and given the circumstances, I didn't think it was awful. I thought the things we did from a game-presentation perspective were all really solid. We just need more critical mass, more folks to be part of that. All the elements are in place. The great thing will be when the parking lots are full again before the game, you've got all that energy and the student section is even bigger than it was on Saturday. As I looked at it on Saturday, I was envisioning (that)."

Based on the recent past, it would not appear to be an overnight fix, underscoring Bobinski's foremost challenge as he takes the reins of Purdue's athletic department: Getting football righted.

It's Bobinski's job now to support Darrell Hazell's program while also taking a critical eye to every aspect of it. Eventually, a decision will have to be made off that assessment.

"There's lots of facets to that, no one single metric other than the obvious one everyone can check every day - the won-loss record," Bobinski said of his evaluation process. "That's the one everyone can have an opinion about, and that's certainly part of it, winning.

"At the end of the day, this is a performance-based industry and there's a reason we keep score. Winning and losing will certainly have something to do with it, but beyond that, it's my job these next several months to really understand where our football program is, where we're situated, what the opportunity for growth and success is as we look out in the years ahead. That takes lots of forms."

Including recruiting.

"Recruiting is sort of the beginning and end of success for coaches. It's where you get it done," Bobinski said, speaking generally and not specifically about football. "It's not that you have to have a recruiting report card that earns national acclaim, but you have to have a recruiting report card that plays well for your program and provides you the tools and raw materials you need to field a successful team. That's clearly part of every coaching evaluation. If you can't recruit and get the right people into your program, you're going to have a hard time being successful."

Given Purdue's standing — 6-30 in Years 1-3 under Hazell, with a heavy toll taken on attendance and fan engagement in all its forms — there's been a negative tone around the program for some time.

Bobinski said he learned long ago to tune such things out.

"For me, it's about focusing on our positives, on our strengths, our advantages and the opportunities we have ahead of us," he said. "To that end, those are the folks that are going to get us where we need to go. At the end of the day, you build things with positive energy and enthusiasm. You don't build things with folks who think, 'I can't, we can't, we never will because ...' I just have very little time and patience for that. It's just not productive thinking and doesn't help you build anything.

"I'm not going to be disrespectful. I'll listen to anybody. But at the end of the day, I'm going to attach myself to the people who believe we can and are willing to join arms and get us moving in the right direction as opposed to the ones who go the other way. It's human nature. That's the way I'm wired. Misery loves company, but it's not going to have company with this guy. It's going to have to look elsewhere for that company."

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