Purdue football botched its schedule, failing into the matchup it needs Saturday

Purdue football coach Barry Odom found a gift from former coach Jeff Brohm waiting for him, a token which survived the two-year gap between their tenures.

OK, gift is not the correct word. Brohm liked to schedule up, and it’s the reason the Boilermakers keep playing one of the nation’s toughest schedules while being ill-prepared for the challenge. 

It’s also why Saturday’s game against Wake Forest already feels like a potential season-altering matchup. The Demon Deacons opened as 3.5-point betting favorites. Based on current sentiments, the Boilermakers would likely be double-digit underdogs against the majority of their remaining schedule.

A win Saturday greatly increases the chances of the final record reflecting tangible progress. 

It would also snap the longest active losing streak by a power conference program against Power 4 opponents, currently at 21 games. Oklahoma State, winless in the Big 12 the past two seasons, owns the next-longest drought at 19 games. No other program is in double digits. 

In the bigger picture, Saturday’s game also serves as a referendum on the Boilermakers’ scheduling philosophy – and the decision not to move or buy out this game.

No. 5 Notre Dame looms two weeks later as the other remaining non-Big Ten opponent. In betweem, Purdue travels to UCLA for an 11 p.m. Eastern kickoff. Playing multiple power conference foes self-inflicts a degree of difficulty to Odom’s fledgling turnaround effort. 

If you believe in Purdue’s ability to win four Big Ten games, Wake Forest might seem like an albatross, complicating the path to bowl eligibility. If you’re more skeptical, Saturday instead looks like a free roll – another chance to do the one thing this program must prove it can do again: Beat teams in its own weight class, or better.

Last week’s season-opening win over Indiana State made Odom 2-0 against FCS opponents. Purdue also beat mediocre MAC program Ball State last season. These are not the games Odom was hired to win, nor do they hold much currency in the quest for respect and talent on the open market.

Opinions on Saturday’s outcome could be similarly polarizing. Beat Wake Forest, which won nine games last season and opened by beating up on Akron, and the Boilers can say they are back on stable footing, ready to take on at least the bottom half of the Big Ten. A loss can be spun as self-flagellation, depriving oneself the opportunity for early momentum. 

What if both are true? Purdue never should have stacked its schedule like this, but it failed its way to the exact matchup it needs on Saturday. 

How far from the norm is Purdue football's non-conference schedule?

In January, former athletic director Mike Bobinski said Purdue and North Carolina might mutually move their 2027 and 2031 home-and-home series farther into the future. He said the 2027 game would be replaced with a non-power conference opponent. Neither school has announced a schedule change yet. 

Until that happens, this schedule setup remains the minority approach among power conference programs. (For the sake of the exercise below, Oregon State and Washington State are considered power 4 opponents.)

The ACC, Big 12 and SEC all mandate playing at least one power conference opponent in non-conference. However, Purdue and Colorado are the only power conference teams playing two this season outside the ACC, which has seven such teams.

Purdue and BYU are the non-ACC teams scheduled to play two P4s in 2026. The number jumps back to 10 in 2028, again including Purdue (at Wake Forest, home vs. Notre Dame). 

The ACC is the true outlier. It remains the only conference with any members scheduled to play three FBS non-conference opponents in the near future. That includes Brohm’s Louisville teams, which still regularly play two P4s in non-conference and will do the FBS triple-up in 2030. 

On the other extreme, hardly any P4 programs play no power conference opponents. For 2026, only Indiana, Nebraska, Penn State and USC took that route. (Again, the Big Ten does not yet mandate it.) Hard to blame a Boiler fan who sees the defending national champion playing down an entire tier or more and wonders why their team is still running this gauntlet. 

By far the most popular scheduling model involves one P4 opponent and at least one Group of Six opponent. For the 2026-28 seasons, 72% of the power conference schedules use that format. 

Purdue will use it, too, but not until 2029, when it plays Vanderbilt (P4), UConn (independent/honorary G6) and Indiana State (FCS). A road trip to TCU is the only current non-conference game scheduled for 2030. 

Purdue football needs chance of Wake Forest win more than better chance of easier win

Purdue should play Notre Dame. It does not matter that the series tilts so severely in the favor of the Fighting Irish. The rivalry creates a connection to the past. While Purdue success remains elusive, the wins typically signify which teams broke through to national relevance.

It’s the additional power conference foes on top of the Notre Dame series which make the schedule seem unnecessarily heavy. What seemed prudent at the time looks foolish years later when one’s competitive abilities have not caught up to your own calendar. 

Indiana began its current scheduling philosophy when it struggled to reach bowl eligibility against the uneven divisional setup of the Big Ten East. When it bought out its series with Virginia, coach Curt Cignetti said it was to mimic the scheduling approach in the SEC. (The SEC voted to move to a nine-game schedule about a month later.) 

Similarly, Purdue began scheduling these games when Brohm’s teams regularly made bowl trips out of the less-arduous Big Ten West. 

Assuming Wake Forest was not amenable to moving one or more of the games, Purdue would have needed to pay $1 million to cancel, per the contract language. (Indiana paid half that to cancel on Virginia.) Purdue also would have needed to pay an additional guarantee of at least a few hundred thousand dollars to whatever Group of Six school replaced the Demon Deacons. 

So what purchase, for lack of a better term, carries more value at this moment – a win against anyone, or a chance at a win against a program such as Wake Forest? Some may argue the confidence boost of an easier Week 2 win increases the chances of more wins later. How did that work last season? 

That team truly needed a softer start. A more incrementally assembled roster required more time to jell. That group came from all over the country to learn a new system and begin climbing back from rock-bottom. 

This team needs to show it has emerged from that hole. It needs a jolt of success notable outside its home state. It needs proof of concept for the next transfer portal class – and, quite frankly, for the best prospects on its own roster. 

It needs to show it can beat the Wake Forests of the world again. Any other victory Saturday would be a hollow one. 

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue football botched its schedule, failing into the matchup it needs Saturday