Story doesn’t end for IU football yet

Even Hollywood’s award-winning writers could not have scripted a better ending to Purdue coach Joe Tiller’s career.

For a guy who has spent 12 seasons pouring his heart and soul into a seesawing program, it was fitting his finale was a drubbing of IU.

The 2008 Old Oaken Bucket game was so pain-free Saturday it was over in the first quarter. Somehow, some way, the Boilermakers scored on every offensive drive until late in the fourth as if they were trouncing on a peewee team.

“Can it be any better than this? Not at all,” Tiller said among a media herd following his team’s 62-10 colossal victory against the Hoosiers. “I could not have scripted it any better. What a way to finish a season and career.”

The story might have ended on a high note for Purdue’s winningest coach in school history.

But every good conclusion prompts some opened-ended questions centered on the challenger’s future – what happens next to the IU football team? How do they restore success?

This program, first and foremost, needs continuity. IU cannot fire a coach every two to three years and expect to compete for a bowl.

Many fans wrongfully assume a new coach must log a winning record in his first few years. Not so. Realize this: Even the Big Ten’s greatest collegiate football coaches, such as Barry Alvarez, Lloyd Carr and Joe Paterno, needed time to build upon a foundation.

And look what they’ve accomplished.

A school that gravitates to success has an identity, a standard in place. The Hoosiers have been indefinable since the Cam Cameron era, largely due to instable leadership.

And for that reason, IU coach Bill Lynch should be here to stay. If incoming Director of Athletics Fred Glass was to clean house within the football program, a new search would bring even more upheaval to his already heavy workload. Not to mention, verbal recruits might opt for elsewhere, and the program will consequently suffer.

Whether you buy into Lynch’s system or not, his players keep reiterating he’s not the problem.

“I love Coach Lynch. We love our coaches,” sophomore Tyler Replogle said emphatically after the loss. “We’re going to have a better future than everyone thinks.”

The Hoosiers unquestionably have more above-average athletes than they’ve had in recent years, including the Anthony Thompson era when they had one great athlete and a bunch of other parts. The key now is to convert all those athletes, and the incoming recruits, into a cohesive, winning football team.

2008’s squad never came together.

It’s clear some players gave it their all every down. Others appeared at times clueless between the sidelines. So many times, the Hoosiers could have capitalized on mistakes, and yet so many times they were the ones making them. It didn’t matter how many precious opportunities went to shreds.

I think I speak for the vast majority of diehards when I say to the team, stop with the “We’re going to keep battling” slogans and unforgivable excuses for the team’s sloppy second half. Injuries definitely have affected this season. But it’s unfair to solely attribute injuries to a team’s regression.

Maybe there’s an incoming writer who can restructure the program’s future.

But right now, the script does not read award-winning.