Purdue wins Old Oaken Bucket behind young stars while IU has same old Tom Allen problem
The last time we saw the Old Oaken Bucket, it was disappearing among a crowd of Purdue football players Saturday at Ross-Ade Stadium, where the Boilermakers rallied to beat IU 35-31 in a game that will send each program spinning off in different directions.
Purdue (4-8), which won the Bucket for the fifth time in six years, heads toward a brighter future.
This season was always going to have growing pains under first-year coach Ryan Walters with his peculiar, nameless defense and a Texas transfer at quarterback named Hudson Card. This game saw the best of both new features for the Boilermakers, the defense forcing three turnovers and holding IU to 369 yards while Card was accounting for 360 yards of total offense. The last 10 of his game-high 85 rushing yards came on the go-ahead touchdown with 2:39 left, a draw four plays after he made the throw of the game: a 44-yard deep ball to Deion Burks.
Credit where credit is due, Burks ran the route of the game. If this were basketball, you’d say Burks broke the ankles of the IU defensive back who will remain unnamed here, uncorking a double move that spun the IU defender to the turf. That allowed Burks to run free along the left sideline, where he made a diving catch.
Between Card, Burks, tight end George Burhenn — more on him in a minute — and a defense featuring probable Freshman All-American Dillon Thieneman at safety (more on him, too), the Boilers have some fancy pieces for the 2024 season.
As for IU, well, the mood is different. While Purdue football is spinning toward a better tomorrow, the Hoosiers have spun completely out of control these past three years, with records of 2-10, 4-8 and now 3-9 this season. The responsibility for that lies with coach Tom Allen, who lugs an unseemly 1-5 record against Purdue into an offseason that will see the end of his IU tenure if the school can come up with $20 million — or less; more on that in a minute! — to buy him out.
Is this the last time we’ve seen Tom Allen on IU's sideline?
Purdue insider Sam King: QB Hudson Card leads Purdue to comeback win over Indiana
IU insider Zach Osterman: After another loss to Purdue in Bucket game, what's next for IU?
Dillon Thieneman and George Burhenn are special
Seems like there’s been a Thieneman playing football for Purdue since someone dragged that moss-covered Oaken Bucket off old man Bruner’s farm in southern Indiana in 1925. The Thieneman guys that came before were fine players, but Dillon Thieneman is unique. He recorded his fifth interception in the first quarter to tie the school’s freshman record, and then because ties are going out of fashion, Thieneman picked up his sixth interception a few minutes later.
Thieneman doesn’t so much intercept passes as he chases them down, outrunning receivers and the football and anything else along the way. Before the season, when Walters was talking about the impact he expected from Burks — bear with me — he said Burks was one of the two fastest players on the team.
“Who’s the other guy?” I remember someone blurting. OK, it was me who blurted it. But seriously: Who else on this team can run with Deion Burks??!
“Dillon Thieneman,” Walters said of his true freshman safety from Westfield.
Thieneman led the Boilers with 106 tackles and those six interceptions, though the best pick of the day came from fellow Purdue DB Cam Allen, who was covering IU receiver Andison Coby when the ball hit Coby’s hands and Allen, as both players slid to the ground, stole it from him before going out of bounds.
Thieneman was one of three Purdue true freshmen, all from Central Indiana because that’s how we roll, who made a mark in their first Bucket game. Receiver Jaron Tibbs, a two-sport star at Cathedral — an excellent basketball player but, like former Purdue receiver David Bell of Warren Central, a possible pro in football — caught three passes for 27 yards.
And then there’s Burhenn, who picked a fine time for a breakout game. Before Saturday the 6-5, 220-pound Burhenn had been getting snaps mainly on special teams, because Purdue started this season deep at tight end. Attrition has taken a toll, and by the second quarter — when starter Garrett Miller suffered a serious-looking leg injury — he was the team’s top remaining tight end.
Burhenn caught the first five passes of his college career, gaining 74 yards and scoring a touchdown. On his first catch he broke a tackle for a 14-yard gain. On his second catch, which was the next play, he juked one IU defensive back and ran away from another for a 33-yard TD. Burhenn’s fast like that, a state champion 110-meter hurdler at Mt. Vernon at 215 pounds, but he’s not the family Superman; that would be his father, Brian Burhenn, a retired firefighter and selfless children’s advocate who is battling ALS.
Doyel in June: George Burhenn's dad a superhero before, after ALS diagnosis
Tom Allen, IU should agree on buyout
The Hoosiers showed off some nice pieces too. Redshirt freshman Brendan Sorsby has a strong arm and quick legs and will need them both to hold off Center Grove’s Tayven Jackson this offseason. Sorsby had 280 yards of total offense, including a team-high 54 yards rushing. Converted quarterback Donaven McCulley is looking more and more like a big-time college receiver in his second season at the position, and sophomore Jaylin Lucas returned a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown.
Lucas fielded the kick, it should be noted, at the very second the Purdue student section was finishing its unimpressive “IU sucks!” chant, and 12 seconds later was in the other end zone. As far as irony goes, that’s pretty good. No less an authority than Purdue basketball coach Matt Painter thinks the “IU sucks” is wrong, but go ahead, Purdue kids. Do you.
Doyel in 2019: Listen to Matt Painter and stop "IU sucks" chant
As for what IU does next, well, put it this way: The school needs to get rid of Tom Allen, the school almost surely knows it, but the school needs help. The most popular idea is for one of its sports-loving rich boosters, like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban or singer John Mellencamp, to write the $20 million check needed to buy out the last four years of Allen’s contract.
A more reasonable idea is for Allen to negotiate a smaller buyout. Allen (career record: 33-49) has been paid almost $15 million in the three years since that Covid-shortened season of 2020, when the Hoosiers went 6-2 and reached the Outback Bowl. In these past three years the Hoosiers have gone 9-27 and Allen has shown himself completely unequipped for this job when his quarterback is anyone but Michael Penix Jr.
Tom Allen on IU future: "That's out of my hands."
Doyel in October: IU can't afford to fire Tom Allen, but can't afford to keep him either
Tom Allen's record with Michael Penix Jr: 14-6
Without Penix: 19-43.
The right thing, for everyone, is for Allen to accept a smaller buyout than the $20.8 million he’s owed if he’s fired after Dec. 1, 2023. That number goes down to $7.95 million after Dec. 1, 2024. Enormous buyouts are the next sad step in the heartbreaking direction of college sports — the fools at Texas A&M paid Jimbo Fisher $75 million to go away — and while IU isn’t a football school, it does take itself seriously. And whether or not the Hoosiers can afford buying out Allen this year or next, what they can’t afford is another year like any of his past three.
Solution?
Allen, an Indiana native, can acknowledge what has happened here, that he rode the left arm of a 2023 Heisman candidate to that enormous contract extension after the 2020 season — Penix is at Washington now — and has won three Big Ten games (3) in the three years since. If IU can’t afford to get rid of him, well, it would be nice of Allen to negotiate a buyout all parties can live with.
Yeah, that’s a naïve and silly thing to suggest. But you’ve seen Allen running the sideline like he does. Sometimes naïve and silly works.
Sometimes it stops working.
IU and Allen could meet in the middle, agree to a $10 million buyout, and let someone else try to wrestle the Bucket from the bear grip of the Boilermakers.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue's Old Oaken Bucket win perhaps seals IU coach Tom Allen's fate
