Hello, everyone. Today is Wednesday of Purdue (and Indiana) preview week here at Off Tackle Republic, but we have yet to mention either program. I’m honestly not sure whether we still have an Indiana writer - perhaps AlmaOtter can tell us.
There are other Purdue writers around, but frankly I’ve been around the longest out of those of us currently active. If you followed us here last year or have experienced previous preview years over at our last Off Tackle site, you may have been wondering why I haven’t been spamming your feed here with the nitty-gritty details of Purdue football or trying to distract you from football by talking about college basketball. There’s a reason for that, but I’ll get to that later in the article. First, allow me to introduce myself to any new members of our community and explain just how it is that I began writing about Purdue sports in the first place.
I am a sports fanatic and a proud graduate of Purdue University. My journey to the OffTackle community started after my father pointed me in the direction of the GoldandBlackIllustrated forums as a place to talk Purdue sports. A few months later, I followed a link left by one of the HammerandRails folks spamming the Rivals free basketball board to their SBNation site, and eventually I found myself in this community where the Purdue fans were able to talk sports without being surrounded by overly optimistic supporters.
I have spent what are probably unhealthy amounts of time watching, discussing, and writing about sports. In fairness, I get it honestly. Because my dad didn't just point me towards that Purdue Rivals forum back in 2008. As I suspect is true for many of us, I was made into the sports fanatic I am today by my dad. My sports story starts with him.
My dad was born in 1957 and from his early childhood was a huge fan of sports. A lifelong fan of the Cincinnati Reds, he watched the final game at Crosley Field, the opener at Riverfront Stadium, and experienced the Reds winning three World Series championships. When the Reds won it all in 1990, my dad wanted to take 10-month old me downtown to Fountain Square to celebrate, but was ultimately talked out of doing so.
When the Bengals opened shop in Cincinnati for the 1968 season, my dad became hooked on football. His favorite color from that year on was orange. Although the Bengals have yet to win it all (and have had more than their fair share of losing), dad was a season ticket holder for more than a few years in the 80s and 90s. Although Joe Montana later broke his heart in Super XXIII, dad was making snow angels in the backyard to celebrate when the Bengals took a 13-6 lead in the 3rd quarter. Just in case I've been too subtle about dad's love of sports - one of his proposed names for me in December 1989 was "Boomer" after then Bengals QB Boomer Esiason.
It wasn’t just the Reds and Bengals that my dad loved though. Sports were always on when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s. The ESPN logo probably should have burned itself into our television. Any sport was worth watching: hockey, golf, NASCAR, tennis, the Indy 500, horse racing, and even roller derby were all watched and enjoyed. When my dad proposed to my mom in the 80s, he did so at a Red Wings game at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. Sports were always an integral part of the biggest moments of his life.
One sport we didn’t watch a ton of growing up was college football. Part of that was that us kids were often busy with fall sports on Saturdays and part of that was that dad simply didn’t have a team. He was a graduate of Xavier University. Xavier is a school without a football team and being heated rivals with crosstown University of Cincinnati in basketball meant they weren't a likely candidate for dad's football support. The other two obvious candidates for a Catholic Ohioan were completely out of the question. Ohio State and Notre Dame were always dad's two least favorite programs, fanbases, and universities (a bias that I have definitely inherited).
Something changed in the fall of 2008. Dad finally got a college football team to root for when I stepped on campus at Purdue University. From that moment on, he’s been on the same Purdue football journey as the rest of us, regularly sending me “Boiler Up” texts before games and usually calling to commiserate after one of Purdue’s many losses. During my junior year, we attended the road game at Notre Dame together. Purdue may have lost - and we both hated the stadium and had our dislike of the Notre Dame fanbase entrenched - but it was another sports bonding moment between father and son. Over the following few years, we took advantage of the $5 Stubhub tickets in the late Danny Hope era and entire Darrell Hazell era to watch Purdue lose in person to all of the giant Big Ten programs Penn State, Ohio State, wisconsin, Nebraska, and Michigan. It was important to dad to experience all of the big teams in person at least once. But despite the down years of Purdue football, dad has honestly probably made more of an effort to watch some of the recent bad Purdue football games than me – at least until Purdue was down 40 in the 2nd quarter. Even the Bengals couldn’t prepare him for that.
At this point of the article – you may be wondering two things: 1) what is the point of this article? 2) aren’t you the basketball guy around these parts? Allow me to answer the second question first but rest assured I'll be answering the first soon enough.
For all my dad’s love of the Reds, Bengals, NHL, golf, tennis, and college football – his true sports passion was basketball. Dad was a high school basketball star in the 1974 and 1975 Cincinnati Public Schools League. His dislike of current UCLA basketball head coach Mick Cronin dates to this time as Mick’s father was coaching at one of their rival Cincinnati Public Schools (Woodward) at that time. Dad received some D2 basketball scholarship offers but chose to try and walk-on at Xavier University. In the end, that didn’t work out (being forced to play center in high-school at 6'3" honestly didn't do the best job of developing him as a small forward for college, even if it gave his high-school team the best chance of winning) but he was still a rabid supporter of Xavier basketball. From the mid-1990s until only a few years ago, the family had two season tickets for Xavier men’s basketball. During this time, I attended many games and learned the finer points of college basketball while watching several stars come through: the coaching great John Chaney with Temple, St. Joe’s Jameer Nelson, Creighton’s Kyle Korver, and of course national champions Villanova and UConn.
It wasn’t just his Xavier Musketeers that were important in basketball though. Dad coached 30 different seasons of youth basketball over the years. Included in those seasons were of course my sisters, me, and even a grandson – but also a number of complete strangers. Almost all basketball was special. The NBA probably would have been included in that – but the NBA left Cincinnati behind in the 70s and I don’t think dad ever really forgave them. However, when people debate whether the greatest basketball player of all time is Jordan, Kobe, or Lebron – dad would always mention Oscar Robertson (a longtime Cincinnati Royal).
For him and his family, March Madness is a holiday and I’ve lost count of how many conversations the two of us have had about basketball over the years. Dad just loved the game and passed the joy of it to me.
Now for the part of this article I wish I wasn’t writing. The reason there’s been a lack of Purdue football preview content from me this week.
I entered this past weekend with pretty limited plans. I was going to call dad on Saturday to have our weekly chat about the fantasy baseball team we’ve managed together for 25 years. I might have taken the youngest nephew to a minor league baseball game to start his sports education. And I probably would have spent some time writing about the upcoming Purdue football season for this site.
Plans went out the window on Saturday morning when I received a call from my older sister. I answered – a little confused because my older sister doesn’t usually call me much on weekend mornings. It was actually my brother in law's voice on the phone. He told me that EMS was taking my dad to the hospital, it was bad, and I needed to head that way. Dad had collapsed in his home that morning and never regained consciousness. He died before I arrived at the hospital.
Around the age of 7 – I swore off Cincinnati professional teams. The Reds and Bengals were awful in the 90s and it's tough for a kid to root for teams with little hope. I became a Patriots fan because of Drew Bledsoe and a Cubs fan because of Sammy Sosa, Wrigley Field, and WGN. Despite his own love for the Bengals and Reds, my dad never tried to talk me out of these choices. Instead, he bought me merchandise and would take me to games when they came into town. My teams became the teams he rooted for alongside his own. I suspect had I attended Notre Dame or Ohio State, he would have even found a way to root for their football programs.
I’ve lost track of the number of football, baseball, basketball, hockey games we attended together, but know it is well into triple digits. Despite his limited mobility the past few years, we managed to attend a Reds game last summer for dad to see the Yankees for the first time in his life. The Yankees were one of the last few MLB teams he hadn't seen in person (and the last one that had existed in his childhood). I didn't know it at the time, but our final sporting event together came at a Blue Jackets game this past season. Dad got to see his first live hockey overtime and first live shootout and had a wonderful evening. Dad would want me to tell everyone that the game was against the Canadiens - one of the NHL's Original Six - and that we saw some truly incredible goalkeeping by Columbus that night. I remember thinking to myself at the time how happy I was to get to spend that evening with him at a game because I wasn't sure how many more we would have. How I wish there could have been a few more.
We had tentative plans to attend the Xavier/Dayton & UC/Ohio State basketball exhibition double header this October as that's being played just a few miles from his house. And although dad hadn't been to Ross-Ade for about a decade at this point, he was planning another trip this fall to see his eldest grandson play in the All-American Marching Band. He was so proud of all of his grandchildren.
With my dad’s passing, I have lost a close friend and my biggest supporter. There will be no more pre-game texts or post-game calls with him to talk about Purdue football or Purdue basketball or even just about life in general. The Opening Weekend of March Madness will be particularly tough this upcoming season as we have always spent that together – taking time off work to celebrate the sport we both loved and to enjoy the games.
We shared the same sense of humor. Both of us care deeply about our family and have enjoyed spending time with them including introducing them sports. Although I think dad would have preferred if I had gotten married by now (and provided grandchild #6 and #7), life hasn’t progressed to that step for me yet, if it ever will. We argued plenty over the past decade – as two stubborn, opinionated people will do when they believe they are always right - but sports always brought us back together. My dad taught me many things including almost everything I know about the games of basketball, baseball, hockey, and football. He was my coach and my fellow fan. It is perhaps only now that I actually recognize that he wanted my teams to win just so I would be happy. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is. I will miss him every day but perhaps just a bit more on Purdue game days.
To everyone reading this, enjoy this upcoming college sports season. Celebrate the wins with your family and friends. Comfort each other about the losses. Above all, just enjoy sharing the moments together. You never know when the last time you get to sit down and watch a game with them will be.
