Editor,
On the evening of Monday, April 8, the basketball season for the Purdue Boilermakers came to an end.
At some point that evening, in a quiet neighborhood in Summerfield, North Carolina, our son-in-law, a 1993 graduate of Purdue, realized that the basketball gods were not going to be kind to his team.
My introduction to basketball came in the fourth grade. I grew up in Burlington, North Carolina in the heart of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Sadly today, that conference, like the Big Ten bears no resemblance to their founding formation.
Unfortunately, money, lots of money has changed college basketball. That lure of money has altered the reasoning of players too.
Name, Image, and Likeness, the Transfer Portal, along with one and done players has eroded any concept of loyalty to the schools and teams where a player committed to play.
In his book, My Losing Season, Pat Conroy wrote: “There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss. Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies. Loss hurts and bleeds and aches.”
After being upset in the first round of the 2023 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the Purdue Boilermakers could have chosen not to learn from that humiliating loss.
Yes, it would have been nice to win the national championship by defeating Connecticut on Monday night.
Yet, I believe the 2024 season was a triumph—a redemption, with valuable lessons learned for life about backbone, dedication, and resilience.
“Boiler up!” Purdue.
Author’s note: Back on April 9, 2024, the above letter was e-mailed to the editor of the Journal and Courier newspaper in Lafayette, Indiana. I was hopeful that the paper might run the letter, but as of today’s date, I’m reasonably sure the paper didn’t publish it. Truth be told, I wrote the letter with our son-in-law in mind as he is a 1993 graduate of Purdue. Thanks, Bill Pike
might be baloney 