5 potential job opportunities for P.J. Fleck
By John Buhler
2. Purdue Boilermakers
This one might be the most probable place that Fleck would land. He wouldn’t have to relocate terribly far from Kalamazoo, Michigan to West Lafayette, Indiana to lead the lowly Purdue Boilermakers in 2017.
Purdue has a new athletic director in Mike Bobinski. Bobinski used to run the show at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, but abruptly left because of the institute’s lukewarm commitment to athletics. He could try to bring Yellow Jackets head coach Paul Johnson with him to Purdue, or he may just be sick of the triple option.
Fleck has a strong recruiter base in the Midwest. He played at Northern Illinois and has coached at Western Michigan the last few years. Purdue is actually a pretty good job for an up-and-coming head coach in the Big Ten. It’s a very low entry point, playing in the inferior Big Ten West. Purdue is a public school that clearly wants to be better on the gridiron going forward.
Not every coach on the hot seat this season is going to get axed. Purdue doesn’t have the appeal of an LSU, but there is a chance that Fleck could make the Boilermakers look like McIntyre’s Buffaloes in a few years. One has to believe that Fleck would be a finalist for the vacant Purdue job. However, there is one job that is better than Purdue that Fleck could nab in 2017…