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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 27, ISSUE 3 34 need to be established here: Culture and identity. Were those topics of conversation in the interview process? Bobinski: "Definitely. You've always heard me say from the day I got here, the fact that we've really lost an identity. If you ask people earlier this year, 'How would you describe Purdue football?' I think you'd get a rela- tively blank stare. 'I'm not really sure what they're about.' Well, I think you're going to know what we're about here pretty quickly once Jeff's program takes hold. I talked about it and Jeff expressed how important it is for guys, from a recruiting perspective, to connect to something. We're going to play aggressively on both sides of the ball. We're going to put pressure on the defensive side and of- fensively we're going to play to win. We're not going to be conservative. We're going to push the envelope and be as creative, innovative and as leading-edge as we possibly can be. That's one of the things I like about him, he talked a lot about it, 'I've visited School X, School Y, Professional Team Z and sat there and talked with them and tried to understand, why are you doing this, how are you doing this, what works and what doesn't?' He takes the best of all of it and create what he wants to do. I think that's smart. I've seen other people be very successful with that approach. But, yes, we talked a lot about identity. "Then, culture, what Jeff is going to want and what we talked about is, honestly, just having everything we do have a higher level of expecta- tion. I think we, for some period of time for whatever reason — and I'm not blaming anybody or any- thing — but we didn't demand enough. We didn't expect enough. We didn't hold people accountable enough. For complete commit- ment, complete effort, complete buy-in to what's going on. That will change. That's not a threat. That's not a bad thing. It will ul- timately be a good thing because when people are fully committed to something and they enjoy the process, again, that's when perfor- mance and investment goes way up and the results typically follow that. I think all of that is going to take care of itself. But the identity piece is something we're going to get that solved very quickly. You're already hearing people talk about, just from the hiring perspective, what Purdue football might look like going forward and I think people will be able to clearly identity who we are and what we're about very soon." Gold and Black: Anything surprise you about him in the interview process? Bobinski: "I'm surprised Jeff wasn't a head coach sooner, actually. I never really asked him that. He didn't grow up wanting to be a coach. He did not have a burning desire to be a coach. It was something that he sort of fell into and once he got into it, he said, 'I like this. I'm pretty good at this.' Then he went about it very systematically. He didn't rush to hunt that job, just like he wasn't hunting a job at this point. That's not who he is. I guess I was surprised at just how grounded, both feet on the floor, do it in a very systematic, thoughtful way that he is. Not that I would have expected other- wise, but I was stuck to the extent that he was that guy. He's just really, really solid in terms of his approach and demeanor." Gold and Black: In the press conference you said it was an interesting process getting feedback from the candidates. What did you learn about the ex- pectation of where you needed to be in terms of a financial commitment? Did you have an idea of where it was? Bobinski: "I don't think I was surprised by anything I heard from anybody during the process. What I had been asked to do by the president, by the board, was to outline what I thought the or- ganizational commitment need- ed to be going into it. So I had done that, and I didn't do that in a vacuum. I did that with the benefit of some information and analyzed other places and see- ing what was and what wasn't and where we might have defi- ciencies and gaps, how we were When I say "good," you say "neighbor." P097313.1 State Farm, Home Office, Bloomington, IL Call me for your insurance needs and see how it feels to be on a #1 team. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. ® CALL ME TODAY. Now that's teamwork. Trent B Johnson, Agent 249 E State Street West Lafayette, IN 47906 Bus: 765-743-9595 trentismyagent.com