Joe Tiller took his Boilermakers on a trip to Pasadena, California, several years before they eventually made the Rose Bowl. More on that foundational moment:
Editor's note: This story is the third in a series related to Purdue's 2000 football season.
It's Sept. 13, 2025, a date several members of Purdue football's 2000 Big Ten championship team had eagerly awaited for weeks.
The Boilermakers are hosting USC and, for a bunch of guys who last suited up for the Boilermakers more than two decades earlier, this is a full circle moment.
The two programs hadn't played since the 1998 season opener in Los Angeles.
Purdue lost that game 27 years ago, but what many who were there remember is the day after. Coach Joe Tiller had a planned field trip the players weren't looped in about.
"This was way out of the norm for coach Tiller. He was football, strictly business," safety Ben Smith said. "For him to, one, not make us fly back after the game and, two, take us to the Rose Bowl, we had no idea where we were going.
"We show up there and there’s the neon lights. He gave us the old coach fire up talk and said, 'Guys, I want you to go out there and feel the grass, look in the stands. I want you to go in the press box and walk around this place and envision before you’re done playing here, playing in the Rose Bowl.'"
Two years later, Tiller's Boilermakers finished in a three-way tie for the Big Ten title and were the league's representative to play Washington in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 2001.
Survey Purdue's roster during that time period and you'll get various answers on the program-shifting moment that resulted in that Rose Bowl trip. For some, it's that game at USC. Others say Purdue's upset of No. 4 Kansas State in the 1998 Alamo Bowl.
The most popular choice?
Tiller's second game as Boilermaker coach on Sept. 13, 1997. The roster was a blend of Jim Colletto recruits, who'd been a part of a 3-8 team the season before, and the Big Ten's lowest-rated recruiting class.
"I was in coach Tiller’s first class. So prior to us getting there, they were nothing," safety Tim Upshur said. "And I'll never forget our first game we played my freshman year was Toledo.
"And we lost."
To outsiders, it was same old Purdue. Tiller's postgame message was a sign these Boilermakers were anything but.
"We've got some work to do," he told the team.
Tiller also said the team Purdue would beat Notre Dame the following game. Whether he believed it or not is irrelevant. The players believed that Tiller believed. And then they believed.
Purdue beat Notre Dame for the first time since 1985 in Tiller's second game as head coach on Sept. 13, 1997, seven days after losing his first to Toledo.
"It goes back to that cultural shift," offensive lineman Chukky Okobi said. "You go back to '96 and we can’t beat anybody and all the sudden we beat Notre Dame in '97. What else can we do? That kind of became the mindset going forward. If we can beat this team, there’s no reason we can’t beat every team."
West Lafayette was abuzz over its football program for the first time in years.
"The first game I ever dressed for was '97 against Notre Dame and that was the infamous (game). We win and they throw the goal post in the Wabash (River)," punter Scott Kurz said. "We enjoyed the energy our fans brought. It caught a lot of teams off guard and it was a real special memory for all of us."
Notre Dame was the first of six consecutive wins in what became a 9-3 season, capped by beating Oklahoma State in the Alamo Bowl.
Between 1997-99, Purdue, which hadn't posted a winning record since 1984 previously, went a combined 25-12.
"That's where the great deal of pride I have in this institution today is because I felt like I was a part of turning the tide and changing the narrative of what Purdue football is, what it was and would it could be," said former cornerback Lamar Conard, who was Purdue's running backs coach until a few weeks ago, and whose last season playing was 1999.
All that did was up the ante for that 2000 season, when Tiller's first Purdue recruits would be seniors.
"I remember our recruiting class coming in 1997, we were the last-place ranked recruiting class (in the Big Ten) coming in," quarterback Drew Brees said in an interview with Journal & Courier in 2015. "But we made a commitment to one another that by the time we left Purdue, we were going to be Big Ten champs and we were going to the Rose Bowl. That’s exactly what we had the chance to do."
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue football trip to Rose Bowl helped them envision Rose Bowl berth
Category: General Sports
