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Gold and Black Illustrated, Vol 27, Digital 3

Gold and Black is a multi-platform media company that covers Purdue athletics like no one else.

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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 27, ISSUE 3 32 the first family of football. So I thought that was pretty good. "Then as I got to understand a little bit more about who he is, the way his teams play, sort of his unique skill and ability as an offensive mind and hon- estly beyond that, as I've gotten to know him through the pro- cess, the way he works for his defensive side of the ball, the improvement they've made on defense through his interac- tion and engagement with that and sort of the unique way he's gone about that, saying, 'I'm an offensive guy. Here's what I don't like. Here's what makes me antsy or anxious or uncom- fortable, which is what I would encourage us to try to do. Do exactly what I don't want to see if I'm taking a snap or trying to run an offense.' But as I saw all that, I said, 'A lot of that just really seems to fit our place, our situation, our circumstance really well.' "All that was prior to my actually getting to see him and know him, I started to think that way. It doesn't mean he was the only (candidate) — we kept a very appropriately broad cast of folks in play here for a period of time. But once I met him, I said, you know, all that football stuff and other stuff is still there and that all counts and it's still very positive, but then I met him and saw this genuine personality (it was impressive). He's not a flashy person by any stretch of the imagination. He's just hard working, get to it, stay on it. And, eventually, if you keep doing it, you think really good things are going to happen. "I felt like he had the makeup to fit into this univer- sity, this community and this part of the world pretty seamlessly. That's when I really started to get extremely interested, saying, 'Wow, this guy brings a lot of quali- ties I might have hoped for.' Plus, he's a really intelligent guy. He's a guy who is always trying to figure out a way to have an advantage or an edge and all those kind of things. I just liked all of that. "Then the fact the guy has won 75 percent of his games as a head coach didn't hurt. That's in there somewhere (laughs). He won a bunch. There was lots to like there. Once I put that all in the grinder there and out the bottom came this is a guy that I feel like is someone I feel very serious about. We kept him really sort of in that high- ly interested — from our perspective — category right from the time I first had a chance to visit with him." Gold and Black: How many interactions were you able to have with him before that pivotal last Sun- day? Bobinski: "Just once in person. Then the rest were over the phone. Because our approach throughout this whole thing was we wanted to be as respectful (to the candidates and their schools) while keeping our interest at heart because we were about finding the right solution for Purdue football, but I didn't want to be disruptive. I didn't want to be in the way of the people coaching their teams, finishing their seasons, treating their current roster and team the right way, which is what we tried to do with our team. I wanted to have people experience us the same way where we're not saying, 'Hey, you've got to drop everything and pay attention to us. We want to sort of fit into their world.' When I left Jeff after that very first conversation, his question was, 'Well, what happens next?' I said, 'What happens next is you go coach your team, finish the season, hit it out of the park and then things will happen as they happen, but I don't think it's Tom Campbell Bobinski wants to establish a culture within the department of passionate, creative peo- ple who won't settle.

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