How Joe Tiller came from Wyoming to West Lafayette and changed Purdue football's fortunes
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Editor’s note: This story is a first in a series related to Purdue’s 2000 football season.
To those who lived it and produced it, an unforgettable season in Purdue football history traces back to the end of one of Joe Tiller‘s 6 a.m. spring practices.
Players had to finish practice with a series of 100-yard sprints inside Mollenkopf Athletic Center.
“This day, coach Tiller decided if anyone didn’t cross the line full speed, we had to run another one,” recalled Chris Clopton, a senior cornerback.
Tiller was often a genius in the way he could motivate players without direct yelling and screaming. He wanted to test the team’s mental and physical strength.
By the time the Boilermakers surpassed sprint No. 20, the prevailing emotion had shifted from frustration to encouragement. The team rallied together to root everyone across the line.
Depending who you ask, the total number sprints run that morning varies, but it was a lot.
Tiller, finally content, dismissed the team.
“To look across Mollenkopf and guys bodies are humped over and they’re dead, but they’re finding the will internally to go one more 100 because it wasn’t up to coach Tiller’s satisfaction, it gave us a lot of grit,” defensive captain Akin Ayodele said.
When Tiller arrived in West Lafayette, he used grueling workouts to thin out the roster of players who couldn’t endure them. In 2000, with a culture firmly established, these sacrifices were about something more.
They were about becoming Big Ten champions.
Whether the 2000 season can directly correlate to that moment, the truth is Purdue did break through that season and go to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 34 years.
When Tiller retired following the 2008 season, he amassed an 87-62 record and 10 bowl game appearances in 12 seasons. He has more wins than any coach in Purdue football history.
Tiller died Sept. 30, 2017. A street separating Ross-Ade Stadium from its north parking, previously named Victory Drive, was renamed Joe Tiller Drive on Sept. 19, 2015, ahead of Purdue honoring the 2000 Big Ten championship team at a 15-year reunion.
Today, the Boilermaker football team enters the stadium through Tiller Tunnel, dedicated on Sept. 30, 2023.
Joe Tiller’s takeover of Purdue football
Tiller’s 1996 Wyoming Cowboys waited to hear their destination during ESPN’s bowl selection show.
They were a top 25 team with 10 wins and two losses by a combined seven points, coming off a 28-25 loss to No. 5 BYU in the WAC Championship.
“One of my worst memories was that damn Lee Corso when they were doing the bowl picks show and Chris (Fowler) says, ‘Well, what about Wyoming? They’re 10-2,’ ” said Tiller’s wife, Arnette. “Lee said, ‘Nobody wants to watch Wyoming.’ “
Within weeks, Purdue football introduced Joe Tiller as its new football coach.
The style nobody supposedly cared to see at Wyoming confounded the Big Ten and captivated West Lafayette. People not only wanted to watch Purdue, the Boilermakers with their innovative spread offense and a Heisman hopeful quarterback became must-see TV.
In 2000, eight of Purdue’s 11 regular season games were nationally televised.
Basketball on grass comes to Boilermaker country
The old saying was football in the Big Ten was three yards and a cloud of dust.
Minnesota tried to buck that trend in the early 1990s without success. Then Purdue hired Tiller.
The Boilermakers went from 3-8 in 1996 and averaging 17.6 points to a 9-3 and averaging 33 points. Billy Dicken led the Big Ten in passing yards. Brian Alford was the conference leader in receiving yards and Purdue beat Oklahoma State in the Alamo Bowl for its first postseason victory since the 1980 Liberty Bowl.
“Our first season, I told Joe every week was like Christmas, because nobody expected us to do much,” Arnette Tiller said. “Joe’s first win was actually against Notre Dame. And they hadn’t beaten them in years. So anyway, that whole rest of that first season was just every week was like Christmas.”
The offense was termed basketball on grass.
“A lot of people that would probably give Joe Tiller the credit for, really, for bringing the spread offense to the Big 10,” said Greg Olson, Purdue’s quarterbacks coach from 1997-2000. “They didn’t think he could run it at Wyoming as cold as Wyoming, the weather was. He went there and ran it.”
The physical and psychological edge
Quarterback Drew Brees once referred to Joe Tiller as an amateur psychologist.
There’s no shortage of examples the support that statement.
Jason Loerzel, a signee of Tiller’s first recruiting class who became a starting linebacker, recalls one such instance, though he can’t remember exact details of year and opponent.
“One year, one game we were playing, we were playing outside, and it was supposed to be raining, and he made us not wear our cleats (to practice). We had to wear tennis shoes,” Loerzel said. “And when we warmed up inside, he had made us go outside in the mud and practice, and everyone was slipping and falling. Everybody’s like, ‘This is so stupid. Why are we doing this?’
“And you know, finally, at the end of practice, or in the middle of practice, when he called us up, and he’s like, ‘You know, it’s going to be sloppy on Saturday. The other team is also not going to be able to move. You have to shorten up your strides. Just things like that, where we’re young and stupid, and he was, he was, he was kind of one step ahead of us.”
Players from those Purdue teams describe Tiller’s practices as the most competitive they’ve seen. So much so that by the time game day came, those Saturdays sometimes seemed easy compared to the week leading up.
“The thing Joe did so well for the team was creating competition between the offense and defense,” former defensive lineman Craig Terrill said. “He kind of favored the offense, at least in all of our opinions on the defense, but he created an every single day competition to drive our want a little bit higher and our will to succeed.”
Again, Tiller being one step ahead.
“When high school coaches started coming to watch us practice and we were kind of like a darling if you will I guess, they were just stunned at how physical the practices were being a spread offense,” said Brock Spack, Tiller’s defensive coordinator for 14 seasons. “He made it that way because he knew for the defensive side of the football, it gave us every opportunity to be better.”
In those days before social media and all-access practices, there was scant evidence Purdue was preparing in ways other teams weren’t.
“He believed everything was between your ears,” former Purdue running back Montrell Lowe said. “We had physical practices because at the end of the day, we’re in the Big Ten. It’s going to be physical. There’s no games out there where you can take it easy, no matter what people think. Whether we’re the bigger team or smaller team, he never wanted us to be outphysicaled.”
Tiller assured the Boilermakers no team in the country was outworking them. If nobody was outworking Purdue, no team should beat Purdue. Players believed and bought into it all.
Tiller had a saying and anyone who played for him can recite it word for word.
Do what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it, the way it’s supposed to be done. And do it that way every time.
In 2000, that mantra brought Purdue a Big Ten championship with an offense ahead of its time, a defense of athletes converted from other positions and a head coach who knew how and when to pull strings.
“I was grateful we had a hard ass coach who was good at psychology,” former receiver Seth Morales said.
Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sking@jconline.com and follow him on X and Instagram @samueltking.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: What made Purdue football successful at turn of century? Joe Tiller
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