Today, GoldandBlack.com continues a new weekly feature. We're calling it the Weekly Word.
Why? Because it has words, it's posted weekly and we're just that unimaginative. (Actual feedback from Week 1: Definitely like the content, but a new name would be useful.)
Anyway, here are some random thoughts for the week, most of which will be Purdue-related.
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Laying it all out: So, if you're a Purdue partisan pushed to your breaking point by this weekend's news about Louisville firing Bobby Petrino and all it's long been suspected to mean for the Boilermaker football program, you probably scraped a layer of enamel off your teeth with every "right now" Jeff Brohm uttered in his responses to questions about the vacancy at his alma mater.
And you were probably right to.
There's a language coaches speak in situations like this, and Purdue's coach seemed fluent in it about 24 hours after Louisville fired Petrino and set out on the most overtly targeted of overtly targeted searches.
We all know that when coaches say "right now" in this context, what they are doing is crystalizing the moment, so they can then usher it right on by. It's coachspeak's great Battle of the Tenses.
Jeff Brohm has not yet been offered the Louisville job by anyone wearing a shirt with a little red birdie on it, I can say for certain. But he has basically been offered the job through media, through common sense and through birthright.
Of course Louisville wants Brohm. I for one appreciate Cardinal A.D. Vince Tyra's sincerity in not pretending like the first name on his list isn't bolded.
Louisville — the city, the people, the university, the football program, all of it — means a great deal to Jeff Brohm, always has, always will.
It is home, and home's tractor beam can be a powerful one.
But not an unbreakable one.
I've covered a lot of coaching searches now and because of it, my back is strong from having pushed around a good deal of manure in my day.
I know that things are rarely as simple as they would appear.
My guess is that the presumption on the part of many that this is an open-and-shut deal is, at best, premature.
In situations like this, I've found it best to talk things out, to take what you think to be true, bounce it off other people, out loud, let it sink in and try to figure out what's real.
So, let's talk this out.
Jeff Brohm sounded very open to Louisville on Monday by not sounding dismissive of it. He said he's averse to discussing speculation. That is consistent with how he's handled things in the past, one such instance resulting in him leaving Western Kentucky for Purdue and the second such instance resulting in him not leaving Purdue for Tennessee.
Point is, his stance on Monday was not inconsistent with his general way with these things.
Second, there's this to consider. Last time Brohm was pursued, Purdue was the big winner, as he'll tell you now. He's said many times now that the Tennessee debacle helped Purdue in recruiting. People assume this sort of thing kills recruiting. But there are those who will tell you there is no such thing as bad publicity, and the zeal with which Brohm has described the recruiting bump Tennessee gave Purdue gives the look of a man happy to let stuff like this linger, then harness the power of that publicity when the time comes.
Third, let's talk about timing. It is everything in life, as they say, whoever they may actually be.
There's no doubt in my mind that Jeff Brohm came up in the football coaching ranks with an eye on Louisville as a "destination." No doubt in my mind.
And it still may be, for all we know. Only he can answer that question, and on Monday, he didn't.
Now, the moment is here, but the moment is complicated.
At present, Louisville's roster is sub-optimal, shall we say, by every account. That hasn't stopped Brohm from winning before, and probably wouldn't again. But he's earned the right through the good work he's done to pick the right situation at the right time, and you have to wonder about that. Brohm follows Louisville with interest, coached against it last year and recruits against it. He knows what's there. He knows what he can get there, too, but in the short term, he knows the deal, and it's not the prettiest of pictures.
Beyond the roster, Louisville's in a state of, shall we say, tumult, paying off as many fired people as it's paying those employed, it seems, and playing out the string during a season in which rock bottom came faster than ever could have been imagined.
Again, the financial situation is what it is. While I'm certain Purdue can probably find a few more dollars here and there, if need be, can the Cardinal athletic department say the same, after paying Petrino $14 mil to go away, on top of whatever they're paying Tom Jurich to go away, on top of what they'll have to pay Rick Pitino to go away, once he probably beats them in court? Oh, yeah, lawyers. They're paying them, too.
Now, I will say this: Taking apparent financial reality into account around a school with access to the sort of horse-and-booze funding sources Louisville probably has access to, in conjunction with the very thirst to win that defines that place, is probably bad logic.
But it does bear mentioning.
Lastly, and this is important: Jeff Brohm has a good job right now, a job that by every account is professionally satisfying for him at this stage of his career. He has absolute support, Caesars Palace for a facility, a solid contract, a coach-friendly A.D. and a fanbase that wouldn't turn on him if he wore candy-striped pants on the sideline.
If Purdue loses Brohm, it will not be because of Purdue, but because of Louisville, and the silver lining will be that now Purdue is an attractive enough job for it to go out and get somebody else really good.
That's not the outcome anyone at Purdue wants, but one that must be considered.
I don't know if Jeff Brohm is going to leave or not. I do know Louisville is rooted in the very fabric of his being, but I also know he's 47 years old with the majority of his career out in front of him, and one of the hottest coaching commodities in football right now. Does one need to make a lateral-type move at age 47 for one's destination-type job? If he takes it, is that it, the job he retires from in 25 years?
It all depends on what's most important to the man himself, but timing has to be viewed as a key piece in this.
Asked Monday what drives him as a coach, he gave a long answer that can be boiled down to one word: "Winning."
He's too good a coach to not do that wherever he goes.
Purdue just hopes it's right where he is.
So, we have talked things out.
I don't know what Jeff Brohm is going to do. Jeff Brohm may not know what Jeff Brohm is going to do.
We'll see, but there would seem to be enough indicators here to show that this is not as cut-and-dried as some may believe, or want to believe.
A couple other points to make: I believe Jeff Brohm to be a pretty honest sort of dude. I also know when you hold a job where the lots in life of literally dozens of people (and families) are tied to you, that's a hard thing, and it's simply impossible to make an omelette without cracking a bunch of eggs.
You can't be completely transparent. You just can't.
Brohm has seemed to do the very best he can to not overtly lie to people.
That being said, it was barely 48 hours prior to Petrino's firing at Louisville that Milton Wright committed to Purdue. That would be four-star recruit Milton Wright of Louisville, the very epicenter of the Brohm-to-Louisville earthquake.
He committed to Purdue anyway, perhaps with a pretty decent idea that this weekend's events were about to go down.
Something Brohm is telling these recruits is putting their minds at ease, and based on what I know (or think I know) about Jeff Brohm, I don't think he's going to lie to their faces. Now, I don't know what he's telling them, how riddled with qualifiers and loopholes it could be, but I do know that Purdue's recruiting has taken another upswing since the Brohm-to-Louisville maelstrom began in earnest after the Ohio State game.
No one's backed out. No one, best I can tell, has been scared off.
Recruits respond very well to Brohm. He's an outstanding recruiter that way. They trust him, and when he tells them something, they buy in. It's the reason Western Kentucky's whole recruiting class and half its roster, I think, wanted to follow him to Purdue.
Fans want things squashed publicly for the sake of recruiting — but really probably for their own peace of mind, truth be told — but the only recruiting messaging that truly matters in situations like this is handled man to man, not through Twitter communique.
There has been lots of scorching buzz from the Louisville end of this about "done deals" and agreements already being in place, things to that effect. It's nonsense. If there's such information being distributed by anyone who'd know, it's a safe bet it's a leverage play or all-out shakedown attempt.
Trust me when I tell you that there are reporters in Louisville who are going to be right about this when the time comes, and they're not the ones with Sharpies in hand.
One of those reporters is Rick Bozich. Believe what he writes on this.
Quoting his story from last night: "And Brohm might turn the job down. Several U of L insiders told me Sunday that they doubt Brohm will come."
Now, ask yourself why Louisville "insiders" would sew doubt on this other than to head off the sort of insurrection that can come from a fanbase with its hopes up. It was about 13 months ago now that Tennessee fans got a coach un-hired after they found out his name wasn't Jon Gruden.
• Let's talk about timing again and examine Louisville's: If there's a coach you want who you think you can get, one thing you do not do is anything that might jack with his present situation.
Obviously, the point of no return on Bobby Petrino had come, but by making this move now instead of eating two more weeks of Petrino, Louisville put Brohm in a tough spot. If he was the canned hunt some have made this out to be, Louisville would have been much more likely to wait 'til December, to let Purdue's coach slip out the door quietly, no? Instead, this hangs over Purdue the next few weeks, opens the Boilermakers up to distractions and opens Louisville up to the prospect of their guy getting scared off.
That in itself, it would seem, debunks the notion that this is a straight line southward.
When schools make in-season moves, they do so to get the former coach off the premises ASAP but also to start a search before the market floods. You don't clear the decks like that if you intend to pursue — and get — any one guy.
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