WEST LAFAYETTE – On a campus where President Mitch Daniels has been reluctant to contribute to the big-money arms race in college sports, fresh Purdue University Athletic Director Mike Bobinski made it sound as if money would be no issue in the search for a new football coach.
“I don’t feel in any way we’ll be hamstrung,” Bobinski said Sunday, before redirecting the conversation from recruiting and paying a coach to what’s being done to get through this season after letting coach Darrell Hazell go with six games left on the Big Ten schedule.
If there’s any doubt about Bobinski’s assumptions going into a signature coaching hire just two months deep in his tenure in West Lafayette, take it from Mike Berghoff, chairman of the Purdue Board of Trustees.
“The way we’ve put it to Mike during the time we recruited and have reminded him along the way … is that his job is to tell us what’s required to win at championship levels, departmentwide, and make the case for it, and we will fund,” Berghoff said. “Don’t let funding stand in the way of that happening.”
What that might mean for the next coach’s salary or the demands to make a big-splash hire — Illinois’ trustees, for example, in September signed off on a six-year, $21 million contract, with up to $8 million in bonuses, for the high-profile hire of Lovie Smith — and whatever else is involved in reviving a limp Purdue football program, Berghoff wasn’t ready to say just yet. He said he wanted to give Bobinski the time and space to do what he was hired to do as Morgan Burke’s replacement.
But Berghoff said he could make it simple: “We’re prepared to do what’s required.”