Commentary: The Thoughts

The Boiling Point: “The Thoughts” is a new feature offering one writer’s opinion on a variety of topics, most of which are Purdue related.

Welcome to “The Thoughts,” a new Wednesday feature at TheBoilingPoints.com which will offer my thoughts on a variety of Purdue and college sports subjects in around a paragraph per topic. Much like most crappy sitcoms, this feature’s future is forever in doubt, so we’ll see if it’s still here next week. As always, your comments are always welcome and I’d love to hear your thoughts on anything included, or even something I didn’t cover. Anyway, without further adieu, “The Thoughts”:

• Saturday’s game at Rice still isn’t sitting well with me, to say the least, however my desire to see Danny Hope on the next bicycle out of town was tamed a bit after a discussion I had Monday night with a starting senior football player. I’ve always heard about the players’ love for Hope, but this was the first time I’d actually heard it first hand. I was talking to this player (a friend of a friend) about the game and Hope when he started talking about how he would run through a wall for Hope, then he took it back and said he would “die” for Hope. Now, no matter how much the players love him, winning is what is important, but this made me decide I could wait until the end of the season to see him canned instead of wanting it to happen now.
• Speaking of firing Purdue’s fearless leader, someone asked me the other day how many games he’d have to win this season for me to want his contract to be extended. After some thought, I’ve decided there is absolutely no result, even an 11-1 finish, that would make me support that decision. I know most of you will disagree with this, but the fact is his game management skills are horrendous and he has no desire to look at his mistakes and improve on them. I’ve seen him blame negative things on everything from other coaches to players, but the man never steps up and admits he’s at fault. That is the main reason I don’t like him, not his lack of wins.
• Speaking of midseason firings, Twitter is currently abuzz that Memphis’ defensive coordinator was fired today after allowing 59 and 47 points to Mississippi State and Arkansas State, respectively, in each of their first two games. You know you’re a Purdue fan when… you look at those scores and say, “Well, at least they improved from week one to week two.”
• On a Non-Danny Hope-related tangent, ESPN has a great piece on how Notre Dame sucks today. It includes what may be one of my favorite lines ever to appear online:

"“At the risk of being serious for a moment, is there any other entity in American society that has existed solely on reputation longer than Notre Dame football?”"

•  One final note, speaking of Notre Dame, the annual trash talking from Notre Dame fans to Purdue alumni/students has begun to appear on my Facebook news feed. Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than when people who went to IPFW start throwing the “we” around when talking about how Notre Dame will beat Purdue. I’m not very optimistic about the game this year, but at least Purdue doesn’t have to wait for October to get its first win, right?

Reminder: TheBoilingPoints.com’s third podcast of the season will be streaming live tomorrow at 3 p.m. (EST). The call in number to talk is at (626) 213-5634. The half-hour podcast will be available to download shortly after it is recorded for those that can’t tune in at 3 p.m.