Purdue's most recent conference win came against the Indiana Hoosiers.
Since then, IU has made the College Football Playoff in 2024 and will be doing so again this season. Purdue is still its most recent non-Ohio State B1G setback. That afternoon in West Lafayette closed the completely unnecessary Tom Allen era in Bloomington.
The whole world has changed since then, most notably the moment IU's shot callers finally decided that always being the conference's biggest loser was a conscious choice. Hopefully we'll be talking about the Buckeyes playing the Hoosiers four weeks from now.
If that pairing materializes, it would be the conference's biggest game since the Game of the Century almost two decades ago. But today we gotta talk about IU's basketball school cousin, the most recent non-OSU B1G team to beat the Hoosiers. They've been a w f u l.
PURDUE descended into hell just as quickly as INDIANA flew out of it.
And yet, Purdue has appeared in a B1G championship game - the football one - more recently than noted football school Ohio State. The Boilermakers played in Indy back in 2022, one week after Michigan showed up in Columbus extremely prepared.
They came up short, but thanks to besting every other team in the rancid container of cottage cheese hidden in the back of your fridge known as the B1G West (RIP) Purdue played in Indy. The Boilers have won only three conference games since, including that most-recent one against the Hoosiers to close out 2023 where they put up 35 points.
Purdue has scored 35 just once against any FBS opponent since then, while IU given up more than 35 to just Ohio State. No one else has figured out how to score on IU. The Buckeyes' opponent this weekend descended into hell just as quickly as Indiana flew out of it.
Saturday's will be played on grass, a surface the Buckeyes haven't played on since New Year's Day. If they win out, it will be the next time too. Choo Choooooo time to get Situational.
OPENER | THE PROBLEMS YOU WANT
Bo Jackson runs past Penn State cornerback AJ Harris (4) during the game at Ohio Stadium on Saturday. © Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Eleven FBS head coaches have been fired in-season at the time of this column's publication.
That number does not include the incredibly hot seats beneath Michigan State's Jonathan Smith, Maryland Mike Locksley, Florida State's Mike Novell, Wisconsin's Luke Fickell, Kentucky's Mark Stoops, Akron's Joe Moorhead, Boston College's Bill O'Brien, Middle Tennessee's Derek Mason or several others I don't have the energy to look up at the moment.
We're seeing an unusually high number of interim situations entering November. The reason this is concerning for fans of a defending national champion that's been flame-throwing everything in its path is that filling 19ish head coach vacancies will create a chaotic vortex of dominoes just as the postseason none of those programs are participating in gets underway.
There's a zero percent chance Ohio State's staff won't be offered to participate in said vortex.
These are The Problems You Want for your favorite team. Winning so demonstrably and racking up weekly adulation for the type of boring stability and prowess other universities desire. They want someone who has the experience participating in exactly what they don't have. Transition timing in a sport that operates at terminal velocity for like 47 weeks of the year ranges from Bad to Absolutely Terrible.
The Problems You Want are welded to the achievement of every program aspiration.
Anyone who currently punches in at the Woody taking a promotion to another program - but staying in Columbus throughout the playoff to finish what they started - will be managing a family move, new hire orientation, program building and the other complexities that come with vocational changes, right when everything Ohio State has been building toward is reaching a crescendo.
Tom Herman pulled it off 10 years ago after accepting the head coaching job at Houston while the Buckeyes were preparing for Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, so it's not impossible. It's just not ideal, and since college football has decided to conduct all of its climactic activities at the same time, it never will be.
The reward for making the CFP is having to manage Signing Day as well as the new Transfer Portal window while trying to win a national title. That window opens the morning after the Rose Bowl and closes the Friday before the final game of the season.
It's hard to predict what happens with the staff Ryan Day assembled for the 2025 season, but one guarantee is that everyone should get a merit increase, several will receive retention bonuses and promotions - and hopefully most of those will be paid out by their current employer and settled before Christmas.
Even if Ohio State successfully keeps its staff engaged and intact for the balance of the 2025 postseason, those opportunities will be the biggest opponent that doesn't show up on a CFP bracket.
Sounds terrible, until you remember what Penn State, LSU, Florida, Auburn, Arkansas and other programs who had grander plans for December will be doing instead of playing in as many postseason games as possible. The Problems You Want are welded to the achievement of every program aspiration.
Ohio State has played eight games thus far, which means it's halfway through a 16-game journey. Purdue, UCLA, Rutgers, Michigan, possibly Indiana and then three more formidable opponents, including possibly Indiana Again remain. We've only reached midseason, and there are 11 coaching vacancies.
Agents are actively assembling candidates. Distraction is underway. We just can't see it yet.
INTERMISSION
The Solo
Last year in an attempt to exorcise the demons of Michigan claiming a national title* songs exclusively from 1997 were sacrificed in this space. This strategy worked marvelously, so this year's theme will be Songs From Any Year Except 1997 or 2023.
Saw the Grateful Dead for the first time at Buckeye Lake on June 11, 1993. Some guy name Sting opened for them and he was pretty good - sounded suspiciously like the guy from The Police. I still have two strong memories from that afternoon.
One was the sight of Deadheads all doing the Deadhead dance, which is basically human marionettes being guided by an invisible master in the sky who is in the midst of a grand mal seizure. The second was the Styrofoam bowl of spaghetti marinara that I bought in the parking lot from a mysterious kerchiefed lady who smelled like patchouli.
Didn't check her food service credentials as hunger pangs clouded my scrutiny. That pasta opened a portal into a world I had never seen before or since. Casey Jones features an electric guitar solo. Let's answer our two questions.
Is the musician in the video actually playing electric guitar?
It's immortal Dead frontman and co-founder Jerry Garcia, who passed away 30 years ago. Singing next to him is Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, who passed away Sunday. VERDICT: yes, conclusive
does this electric guitar solo slap?
Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones you better watch your speed achieves Rock Song BINGO in the first verse: Rhyme scheme, drug reference, appreciation for velocity, homage to fast vehicles and finally, double-entendre (cocaine + watch your speed, for the entendre deficient). This is Usain Bolt-level quickness for checking every box.
As for Jerry, his solos were effortless, elegant improvisation which made hypnotic sense like a language you're hearing for the first time but still somehow understand fluently. You don't need to consume a flimsy bowl of psychedelic carbs to appreciate that kind of talent. VERDICT: Slaps.
The Bourbon
There is a bourbon for every situation. Sometimes the spirits and the events overlap, which means that where bourbon is concerned there can be more than one worthy choice.
Casey Jones Total Eclipse #4. Cocaine sold separately.
Friends, today we're achieving rare Intermission-bourbon congruence with Casey Jones. Too lazy to look it up but I think this is a Situational first.
In Purdue's case, driving their train high on cocaine is an apt descriptor for when a football program signs ~60 of its players out of the transfer portal. Barry Odom arrived in West Lafayette, saw what Curt Cignetti was doing in Bloomington and decided to boil the ocean for talent.
Which means this is what being a Purdue football fan sounded like to open the 2025 season. It's what they still sound like currently. Some programs have The Brotherhood; others are basically a youth hostile for gigantic teenagers.
Total Eclipse is a four-grainer on its fourth mashbill, going 75/10/10/5 with yellow dent corn (the most common corn you drive by in the Midwest), wheat, rye and barley. As this unmysterious mash suggests, it provides a hard sweet hit with very little burn.
Fortune cookies on the nose, caramel and marshmallows on the palate and a warm - but not hot - floral finish to round it out. Since this retails at just under $50 we can put it in the middle class category - but wow Total Eclipse was way better than it had any right to be.
This was Odom's intent with turning over nearly all that he inherited when he came to town during the offseason. Going full-Casey Jones can take you in any direction, but quickly. Trouble ahead, opp-onent in red - take my advice you'll be better off dead.
CLOSER | SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS
Malik Hartford and Sonny Styles react during the game against the Wisconsin Badgers at Camp Randall Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025 in Madison, Wisconsin.
On another timeline, Jeremiah Smith might have helped Miami avoid losing at SMU last Saturday.
He could have been the target Carson Beck needed to send the 35,000 fans in attendance home unhappy instead of spilling onto the field in jubilation. Would JJ still be JJ if he wasn't playing for Brian Hartline? JJ answered that when he signed with Ohio State for less money than Miami was offering.
The Canes don't get outbid for players anymore. They also don't win bowl games - Miami has a Russell Athletic Bowl trophy from 2016 and nothing else to show for any postseason glory since 2008. It's a broken program. There's a lot of that going around.
Wisconsin is performing in a way not seen since Don Morton was its head coach. Morton was so bad he left football and ended up working at Microsoft. Barry Alvarez replaced him, which initiated a 30-year run of mediocre tyranny, occupying a Wisconsin slot in the B1G hierarchy.
Purdue hasn't enjoyed a full decade of Big Ten relevance since Jack Mollenkopf passed away in 1969. Losing comes in semicenturies.
Does this mean Luke Fickell is going to end up out of football? It's more likely he'll be replacing Chris Ash as Marcus Freeman's defensive coordinator, or reuniting in New England with his old college buddy he brought into coaching himself back in 2011.
Penn State was the pick to win the conference at B1G Media Days. Three months later, Terry Smith was leading the program on an interim basis. The Nittany Lions were one drive away from facing Ohio State in last season's national championship game. Now their verbal commitments are attending Penn State road games as guests of their opponents.
The Buckeyes face Purdue on Saturday in a game that could make their season and elevate Barry Odom's trajectory as the latest coach to try and create something resembling a Wisconsin Tier for one of the conference's most disposable programs. The Boilermakers' best win this season was last week's five-point loss in Ann Arbor.
Their second-best win was a 27-24 loss at the gun to Rutgers two weeks ago. Ohio State visits at a dangerous time, especially considering the Buckeyes' macabre history in West Lafayette.
Losing comes in plays, drives, quarters, halves, Saturdays and seasons. For the Canes, it's been decades. Wisconsin, since the pandemic. Indiana, until last season it's the only thing they knew how to do consistently.
Purdue, hey they've been to Indy more recently than Ohio State - but they haven't enjoyed a full decade of Big Ten relevance since Jack Mollenkopf passed away in 1969. Losing comes in semicenturies.
Following Purdue is coachless UCLA, somehow the worst destination in the Power Four despite having perfect everything on the outside. Then Rutgers, losers in its last four of five games with a defense created in a lab for Smith and Julian Sayin to elevate their respective Heisman candidacies.
And then, the defending ReliaQuest Bowl champs. A revenge game, six years in the making. The threat of losing never sleeps - never in Ann Arbor, and not in West Lafayette.
Thanks for getting Situational today. Go Bucks. Beat Purdue.
