New Purdue athletic director Tommy McClelland fired a salvo at his in-state rival during his introductory news conference that missed its mark by about 100 miles.
“We are here to win championships,” McClelland said in his opening statement Thursday morning. “If you don’t want to win championships, go to Indiana.”
The distance in miles from Bloomington, the home of the defending College Football Playoff champion Hoosiers, to Purdue’s home in West Lafayette barely reaches triple digits. With football everyone’s mind in early August, a shot like that is more of a misfire than one drawing blood.
When it comes to the Indiana-Purdue football rivalry, the Hoosiers have outscored the Boilermakers — who have lost 18 straight Big Ten contests — 122-3 over the last two seasons. You can almost feel the wincing in the Purdue football complex. With a charged-up Curt Cignetti at the helm at Indiana, the score might be 122-3 this November.
Naturally, McClelland wasn’t serious … or was he?
“Our new athletics director knows there is a passion-fueled rivalry between our two schools, and his comment was obviously made in jest,” senior associate athletic director Patrick Crawford said in a statement. “We look forward to continually spirited competition with the Hoosiers.”
Eye-popping remarks are not unusual in the state with the motto Crossroads of America. Not even three years ago, Cignetti was introduced during a men’s basketball game and said something so outrageous that everyone thought he was crazy.
“Purdue sucks …,” Cignetti shouted to the Hoosier faithful in December 2023, “but so does Michigan and Ohio State.”
Indiana athletics did not respond to a request seeking comment on McClelland’s moment, but a zinger did emerge from the ranks of the IU faculty. Galen Clavio, professor of sports media and director of the National Sports Journalism Center at IU, did not pass up the opportunity to respond.
“Famously, Curt Cignetti said, ‘I win, Google me,’” Clavio said. “It turns out Tommy McClelland may need to try using Google — he might find out that Indiana has won 26 team championships and Purdue has won three. Indiana has as many national championships in men’s cross country as Purdue has across their entire athletic department’s history.
It’s easy to forget that Purdue football had won five of six against Indiana by that point, and the Hoosiers were 9-27 overall and 3-24 the previous three seasons. Indiana was the nation’s losingest college football program in history and hadn’t beaten Ohio State since 1988 and Michigan just once since 1987. Cignetti, of course, has beaten all of them on his way to a 27-2 overall mark the last two seasons.
Now if McClelland’s words were directed toward men’s basketball (which was the most popular sport on both campuses until maybe last fall), that’s a different story. Under Matt Painter, the Boilermakers have advanced to the Sweet 16 seven times, reached the Elite 8 twice and the NCAA title game once over the last 10 years. Indiana, which is on its fourth men’s basketball coach over the last decade, has two NCAA appearances and failed to make the second weekend both times. In Big Ten play, Purdue is 139-56 over that span. The Hoosiers are 90-105.
McClelland, a Louisiana native, worked as Vanderbilt’s deputy athletic director from 2020 to 2023 and had served as Rice’s athletic director the last three years. Those experiences at high-achieving academic powerhouses that have struggled in athletics have given him a perspective he hopes to maintain at Purdue.
“Most of the places that I’ve been, for whatever reason, maybe there’s a chip on their shoulder,” McClelland told The Athletic on Thursday. “I want to do that (at Purdue).”
Purdue has a loyal fan base for all of its sports. Mackey Arena boasts one of college basketball’s best home environments, and despite a 2-10 season last fall, the football program’s average attendance was 56,581, which is 92 percent capacity. That gives McClelland hope that the Boilers can provide the resources and support to turn around its football program, which was a Big Ten championship game participant in 2022.
His Indiana comments are guaranteed to create social media fodder for McClelland, who replaces the retiring Mike Bobinski. But it’s no less of a whirlwind few days for the 44-year-old, who is just the sixth Purdue athletic director since 1942. All of his predecessors have spent at least a decade in West Lafayette, and three were there at least 22 years. Purdue generated the third-lowest revenue among the Big Ten’s 16 public schools in fiscal year 2025, and financial growth is essential for the Boilermakers to compete in football and potentially live up to his bold first-day statement.
“I need to better understand where we are,” McClelland told The Athletic. “Wherever we are, we have to grow that. Whether we are living in this above-cap world or whether or not the cap is raised, in either scenario, more revenue streams is a must. And so, there are no bad ideas. There is no rock that cannot be overturned. We have to look at everything.
“The goal is to continue to grow a football program, to come alongside Coach (Barry Odom) and give him the resources and support in order for him to compete at the highest level for Big Ten championships, to get to bowl games, to begin to build this program back.”
— Ira Gorawara and Joe Rexrode contributed to this story.
