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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 28, ISSUE 3 20 Bobinski Happy, But Not Satisfied M ike Bobinski was relaxed, affable and talk- ative during a mid-December appearance on "Gold and Black LIVE." Why wouldn't he be, considering the progress of Pur- due's athletic department under the second-year athlet- ic director? The recent highlight of that growth was the football program's turnaround season, winning seven games af- ter managing only nine in the four previous seasons. Before the Boilermakers headed to Santa Clara, Calif., to play Arizona in the Foster Farms Bowl, Bobinski chat- ted for 40 minutes about football and much more. Here are excerpts: Gold and Black: Heading into the season, did you think Purdue was capable of being a bowl team? Bobinski: "I really didn't go there at first. As we got into the season, everything was so new. New system, new everything. Lots of new faces and guys who maybe had not been proven or guys who were being asked to play in a new way with new expectations. So I was prob- ably looking for granular change and improvement as opposed to saying, 'Well, where is this going to lead us?' As we got into it, we had looked at the schedule before- hand and thought where our wins and losses would be. Then you start to think about it, and that clearly hap- pened at some point in time. Clearly, I am thrilled and so happy for our players and staff, for making this thing happen. In particular, for our seniors. For them to have been through three years of not feeling very successful and not having that good feeling about your experience, for them to have this chance now is a really positive thing." Gold and Black: Which games did you circle? Bobinski: "Some of the games (I thought we would win before the season) we didn't end up winning. What a fool's game it is to try to predict the season ahead of time. Every season is different, and every game is dif- ferent. That's why you play." Gold and Black: In your experience, how has this bowl run paid dividends? Bobinski: "I think the biggest dividend is an exten- sion from what happened over the course of this year. The profile of Purdue football — I have described it in a variety of different ways, none of them very clever. One of them is that we were in our Rip Van Winkle period where we were asleep for some time and we had kind of fallen off the radar in lots of ways, and that changed during the season. I think making it to a bowl game al- Progress of football makes many things possible By Gold and Black staff Charles Jischke Mike Bobinski has resonated with the Boil- ermaker fanbase, due in no small part to the resurgent football program.