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Gold and Black Illustrated, Vol 27, Digital 3

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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 27, ISSUE 3 14 BY STACY CLARDIE SClardie@GoldandBlack.com A cursory look at Jeff Brohm's football career as a player and a coach seems chock-full of high moments. The list is long on accomplishments: Mr. Football, Player of the Decade in Kentucky in the 1980s, bowl MVP at Louisville, professional quarter- back, highly productive offensive assistant coach with a reputation as a molder of quarterbacks and as a mastermind offensive innovator and coordinator. But there has been struggle. Oscar Brohm has been there through it all. He watched his middle son get tackled into a brick wall and shat- ter an index finger in Jeff's final regular-season game on Thanksgiving at Louisville in 1993. He heard doctors tell Jeff there would be no way he'd be ready to play in the bowl game, a month later. Not with surgery that required a steel plate and pins to repair the injury. Not with Jeff kind of needing to be able to use that finger … on his throwing hand. Oscar saw how that injury affected Jeff's future, likely preventing Jeff from being drafted after that season. Oscar heard about Jeff getting cut from an NFL team — more than once, considering Jeff played for a total of six teams in seven years. Oscar watched as tryouts were nearly non-existent by the time Jeff reached 30 and how difficult it was for Jeff to accept. Jeff wasn't ready to be done playing, but with that, Oscar saw the shift to coaching out of near necessity. Oscar watched as the first team Jeff had reins of as head coach in 2014 stumbled to a 3-5 start. "He's had to meet a lot of challenges," Oscar Brohm said. "He's been real successful, but there's been times when it didn't always go right and he just kept plugging away and just kept at it. He kept moving for- ward. I think he's pretty good if he has some failure. "Everything hasn't been always immediately suc- cessful. He's had to work for a lot of different things to get where he is." After that mangled finger? Jeff Brohm may not have gripped the ball the same, but he still did enough to lead his team to a victory over Michigan State in the Liberty Bowl. And won MVP of the game. After going undrafted? Brohm chose San Diego on a free agent deal and beat out Trent Green for a roster Brohm eager to rebuild program Tom Campbell During his introductory press conference on Dec. 5, Jeff Brohm promised to "find a way to outwork every other head coach in America." That's been a key piece to how he's had success, first as a player and then as a coach. It'll be imperative at Purdue, which is looking to reestablish its program. New Era

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