Kenny Thompson

At the halfway point of the 2022 Big Ten Conference football season, it’s no surprise that Ohio State looks nearly invincible again and that Purdue is in contention to win its first West Division championship. It was expected by all but some in the national media that Nebraska would struggle and that former hometown hero…

How often has a college football team had former walkons drafted by the NFL in back-to-back seasons? The all-knowing Google didn’t have an answer for that question but it’s looking more and more likely that Purdue can make that unusual claim in the next few months. In his NFL Draft Watch column, The Athletic’s Dane…

With just a third of the college football season completed, the official start of the 2022-23 basketball season took place Tuesday inside Purdue’s Mackey Arena and Indiana’s Assembly Hall. The 125th college basketball season in West Lafayette is loaded with question marks, just like their 13 Big Ten Conference rivals. Thanks to a mass exodus…

My summer book reading list included Mark Montieth’s “Reborn: The Pacers and the return of pro basketball to Indianapolis.” Montieth recalls in great details the early struggles to make the Indiana Pacers the premier team in the American Basketball Association. One of the original Pacers, Ron Bonham, could be a chapter in a book of…

The inevitable came three weeks early for Scott Frost, who got a $15 million going away present from Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts on Sunday. Alberts decided not to wait for a reduced buyout of $7.5 million on Oct. 1 after the 45-42 debacle in Lincoln last Saturday. On a day of upsets in college…

The Joe Tiller era at Purdue produced 52 players who went on to the NFL for at least one season. With all Tiller alumni except for Colts offensive tackle Dennis Kelly now out of the league, Purdue’s NFL numbers have been declining for years. An indictment, possibly, of the recruiting efforts of Tiller’s successors Danny…

Just how dominant has Ohio State football been in Big Ten Conference play since 2000? The Buckeyes have won 11 league championships or an average of one title every other season. Perhaps just as sweet to Ohio State fans, the Buckeyes are 17-4 against that team from up north, also known as Michigan. Even with…

“This is Dawson from Kansas City,” the recognizable baritone voice began his phone message on a fall morning in 1999. I was writing a weekly series of feature stories on former Purdue football stars for the Lafayette Journal & Courier’s Football Saturday publication back then. It was Notre Dame week and who better to talk…

Matt Painter likes to talk about wanting his Purdue basketball teams to get old and stay old. That’s been easier said than done for his football counterpart. In fact, Jeff Brohm’s 2019 Boilermakers had nine scholarship seniors on the roster. Five of them (future Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Markus Bailey, starting quarterback Elijah Sindelar, defensive tackle…

It is almost a certainty that Drew Brees will be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame the first year he is eligible in 2026. However, there’s a chance he won’t be the third Purdue passing star to be enshrined at Canton, Ohio. Long before Len Dawson and Bob Griese started their paths toward…