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he has the technical side of football down cold. We all know that recruiting is a huge part of any success that a modern team is going to have, and I���ll just say this, if I was a parent or somehow involved with a young man with extraordinary talent, and (Hazell) came around, I would warm to him very quickly.��� Gold and Black: What do you tell guys when things don���t go well, and what do you see in a coach like Matt Painter who has enjoyed great success but is experiencing a tough year? Daniels: ���It is a clich��, Tom Campbell Daniels has been a long-time fan of what Drew Brees (far right) has not only meant but there are walks of life to Purdue but to the sports world. And the new president admitted he was instantly where a bad night may impressed by football coach Darrell Hazell (middle) while spending time with him have years of effects. If you at the Heart of Dallas Bowl on New Year���s Day. make the wrong decision in business, you may ruin course and I���m proud of that. We have chosen to have serious academic standards and to hold play- the whole enterprise. One thing about sports is that ers to standards of conduct and academics after they the clich�� is true, one loss is just one loss. I wasn���t get here. The whole world knows if you don���t do that, happy to see (losing to Indiana at home), but we life is easier. But I���m proud to be associated with a watched A.J. Hammons score 30 points and run the university that���s trying to do this the hard way. I just floor. I���ll defer to more knowledgeable people, but I have to believe that there are lots of athletes and thought he was showing people that he was a multidimensional player. Well, a lot of folks that I read say families out there who will respond to that. ���You can look around and see programs that if you���re going to build a team and you have a chance are threading that needle ��� Stanford, Notre Dame to build around a center like that (you would). ���Look, we���ve been starting three freshmen and again in football, Duke in basketball. It���s always been easier to some extent in basketball because numeri- sophomores; let���s show a little patience. I���m excited cally you don���t need as many first-rate players. Foot- about the future. I think it���s fair to say that IU is a ball as it���s played today, with so much specialization, good team and they have played really well. I���d like to see the team (that) wouldn���t have been beaten by a takes big numbers, so obviously the task is harder. ���Coach (Darrell) Hazell strikes me as exactly large margin when they played us in Mackey. ���Here���s the way I choose to see it: the Big Ten the kind of guy who can do it, who can reach that truly gifted athlete on both levels and convince a is brutal this year. We���re coming along in the right young man they���ll get the best of both worlds at a phase. I think Coach Painter is building a team that is going to be better next year, and probably better place like Purdue.��� Gold and Black: You���re in a business where the year after that, and our turn is going to come. ���I met a passionate alum of Minnesota, and we you need to size people up quickly and effectivewere talking at the beginning of the season about ly. What makes Hazell the guy? Daniels: ���I do think I have some intuition for how rough the Big Ten looked. And he said, Minnesopeople, and my impression for him was overwhelm- ta is convinced they have the best team they���ve had ingly positive having not spent a lot of time with him in 15 years, and they think they���ll finish fifth if things yet but spending a fair amount of time on New Year���s go right. I mean, that���s how tough the league is.��� Gold and Black: Your mission as president Day in Dallas (at the bowl game). Just the composure and the character of the guy, you get the sense is the student experience. How should the nonof someone who is very secure and not someone who student-athletes view college athletics as part of has any need to throw his weight around to make a their experience at Purdue? Daniels: ���It���s a really important question. Stupoint. He definitely is the sort of person that I can imagine young men being motivated by. He just ex- dent-athletes comprise maybe two percent of the undergraduate student body. There are substantially udes character. That���s my one-day take. ���He obviously knows his stuff, too. I was just more students involved in the bands department watching him make notes, I noticed which plays than all the sports teams put together. I think athhe made the most notes on, and I don���t doubt that letics brings an invaluable element and dimensions GBIprint.com GoldandBlack.com to the student experience. There���s the excitement. There���s the commonality it gives people. It doesn���t matter what major you are in or what state you are from or what your personal background is, it���s something we can all talk about and be excited about. And I think that has always been important, but never more important than today when we���ve got the most diverse student body we���ve ever had. So you hope that excitement about our sports teams become a unifying factor on a campus that could use it because there are a lot of things here that tend to draw people into their own, more narrow worlds of either academic activity or social network.��� Gold and Black: You said in your open letter back in early January that athletics are out of control in a national perspective. How do you view where Purdue is in that spectrum and also addressing the topic in this world of money and athletics? Daniels: ���I have said before that I think Purdue has kept its balance and its perspective better than many schools have. I have said that I think there are three principles that we have to observe, and I believe that Purdue is observing them. They include a program paying for itself, and the Big Ten Network is a big part of that. I think you have to be constantly watchful. As intensely as we want our teams to win and be successful, it just cannot be at the expense of principle, with regard to either conduct or academics coming first or requiring subsidy from the families that are paying tuition for the students to come here.��� Gold and Black: What���s your style in terms of managing athletics and managing athletic director Morgan Burke? Daniels: ���It will evolve, but my ���going-in��� attitude is trying to do what we just discussed. Explain what our expectations should be, where the boundaries should be, but then, I have no business telling Morgan how to do it. I think he knows that I like and respect him, and as long as we are living up to the expectations that I think Purdue should hold itself to, it���s his job to deliver victories and a sound business outcome over there and I���m not going to micromanage that in any way. ���Another thing I���d say is I���ll be the biggest fan of Purdue athletics, but it is not my biggest job, it is Morgan���s job. My biggest jobs are elsewhere.��� Gold and Black:. Do you believe that successful athletics can truly recruit students to this university? Daniels: ���I have no reason to doubt that successful athletics is, at least at the margin, beneficial to recruiting students. Although Purdue���s admissions goals right now are less about total numbers than about quality. And we don���t anticipate a lot of growth, so in some ways it might not be as important. Still Butler got a surge of applications (after two Final Four appearances), and they were not as well known as Purdue going in. ���So probably at the margin, but I don���t know if that���s its biggest impact. It clearly is of greatest interest to our alums, and I want to have as involved and supportive of an alumni base as we can. And there Gold & Black IllustrateD ��� volume 23, issue 4 ������ 35