With a coaching hire appearing imminent I asked the staff what they were looking for in a head football coach. Here’s the question: What are the qualities you’re looking for in the next Purdue football head coach? Do you have a personal favorite candidate?

Ledman:

I don’t have a favorite candidate because I look at every coaching hire the same way Tom Fornelli does, it’s a great hire, I have no idea if it will work out. So often when these things play out we as fans think oh they have to hire X or surely the program will sink further. It’s never quite so simple.

What I want is a coach is a passionate and knowledgeable guy. I know that’s generic but let me explain. Look at Purdue’s two most successful coaches currently employed. That would be Matt Painter and Dave Shondell. What do these two guys have in common? They aren’t flashy. They aren’t going to grab the spotlight and make anything about them. They are just two guys who are incredibly knowledgeable about their sport and who are thoughtful and learn from their history. You can see the way a guy like Matt Painter changed his coaching style throughout his time at Purdue. You can see Shondell’s improvement as a coach and a recruiter throughout his time as well.

It’s easy to say that we want a winner who plays a great offense and can bring 30 solid players with him but that’s no guarantee of success. In fact, there’s really no guarantee of success regardless of what hiring formula you use.

Ryan:

Pretty simple: former head coach, offensive mindset, proven success for multiple seasons.

These signs point me in the direction of Tyson Helton from Western Kentucky. Purdue has already had success pulling from the Hilltopper coaching pool so why not try and make lightning strike twice. Helton nearly got the Purdue job over Ryan Walters so the desire is clearly there. Obviously, there is a giant list of options but at the moment, Helton is at the top of mine. Be sure to check out the Conference USA Championship game this Friday to see Helton and his Hilltoppers in action.

Jed:

Purdue is a uniquely challenging job for a host of different reasons but it is a job with a massive amount of potential. That being said, there are some things a candidate has to have when you look at what has made the program successful. Here is what I am looking for:

1: A head coach who calls an offense that is his, not his OC’s: This prevents an issue if there is success and a bigger program comes calling for that coordinator. You need to make sure the offensive scheme doesn’t up and walk away with them.

2: A head coach who has built successful assistant coaches: You want a coach who is secure in themselves enough to make sure they are ensuring their assistant coaches are growing and advancing. It’s something Matt Painter has really shown to be successful with because good coaches are going to want to be assistants under that kind of head coach.

3: A head coach who has shown growth and success at his previous jobs: Finding a guy who has been successful means he knows what it takes to succeed. That’s something the last staff didn’t have and it showed in how far they were from expectations to reality this season.

4: Strong Public Relations: This is important in the new era of NIL. Fans are going to have to donate to NIL to help the coach out and the more he can make connections in the Boilermaker community, the more people are going to be willing to throw money into the collective. Hazel may have been an awful coach, but he was out in the community from the start doing just that. I saw him at the county middle school championship game to speak to both teams back in his first year.

These things are really important and the guy that fits a lot of the criteria is Western Kentucky’s Tyson Helton. He’s been at WKU for 6 seasons and has made a bowl game each of those years and has won less than 8 games in a season just once. His overall career mark is 48-30 and is known to be a developer of quarterbacks.

Sometimes the easiest decisions are the most obvious and that can make them some of the most difficult. Bobinski had the right intuition on Helton two seasons ago and for some reason allowed Tiffani Grimes to convince him otherwise (if rumors are true on that). He doesn’t need to allow that again.