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 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 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”:

• Everybody is talking about Tom Crean’s recruiting “accident” violation with Gary Harris on Oct. 6. As you’ve probably heard by now, the recruiting period ended October 5, with it switching to a evaluation period on the 6. Tom Crean, the coach at Indiana whose program is already on probation, went to Harris’ high school to talk with him the morning of October 6 (a clear violation). Crean then headed back to IU to host a media “camp” in the afternoon. Within an hour of the contact, IU realized its “error” and self-reported the violation to its compliance office

• Hear Crean talk about it on the Dan Dakich show today here: <p>This browser does not show iframe content.</p>
• Does anybody else not buy a word of this excuse? They got confused on the dates? C’mon, give me a break. If they truly thought October 6 was the end of the Fall contact period, why would they schedule a media camp for that afternoon, when you have to assume they’d plan on making a final push with all of their recruits? Also, why was Crean the only one out recruiting if they all thought they could on the 6th? Wouldn’t all three coaches that are allowed to be recruiting be out recruiting? Also, how convenient is it that they noticed their error within an hour of Crean making the contact?
• Most media organizations are playing this off as a minor violation; a no harm, no foul type situation. I doubt Purdue, Michigan State and Kentucky’s coaches feel like that.
• One final thought on this: Crean is a lot like a peacock; he makes his presence known when he is at places. If he’s at a bar, you know it. If he’s at a high school game, you know it. He’s loud and he’s proud. So if he didn’t know he was committing a recruiting violation Oct. 6, why did he suddenly decide to go low-key with his visit that day? Fishy.

Regarding football, Hope once again spoke this week about how he insists on having a two-quarterback system because Purdue has “started five quarterbacks in 13 games.” How long are we going to have to listen to Hope talk about last season’s injuries like they’re still haunting us today? I know, if Hope only played Terbush this season and he went down this week Hope would catch a TON of flack, but at some point you have to stop living like a Notre Dame/IU fan (living in the past) and take this season for what it is – that is, this isn’t last season where everyone is hurt.

I was real impressed by Purdue’s performance Saturday and I enjoyed nearly every minute of it. There were a ton of positives coming out of the game. That said, I worry about this being another SEMO-like game, which makes me have reservations about thinking this team is finally going to compete with real teams this season. Hopefully they’ll prove something this weekend against a struggling Penn State team.