Game Preview: Purdue
Lukewarm Start
The Boilermakers' offense
has questions to answer in its
first season under Darrell Hazell
S
In his two years as a head coach at Kent State,
Hazell transformed a losing program into an 11-3
team.
photo courtesy purdue media relations
By Dan Murphy
aturday night's prime-time game
between Notre Dame and Michigan — the penultimate meeting of these two storied football
schools for the foreseeable future — is
a chance for both programs to show
that maybe they do still make 'em like
they used to.
For the first time since 2006, the
longtime rivals both started the regular season in the Associated Press top
25 this fall. They were led there by
coaching staffs just now settling into
their new homes with matching philosophies, winning games in a modern-day smash-mouth manner true to
their Midwestern roots. The ghosts of
Bo Schembechler and Frank Leahy are
starting to smile again.
Michigan is returning to a path from
which it first veered under new head
coach Rich Rodriguez in 2008. Rodriguez tried to squeeze the squarepegged Michigan personnel into the
round hole of his fast-paced spreadoption offense. His plan was to teach
the new system to the players he had
while recruiting others that were a better fit. By the time he had the players
