Purdue has been running this search quietly since Mike Bobinski announced back in June he was retiring at the end of the year after a decade running the department. Now it sounds like the school might have found its answer, and it's not the name a lot of Boilermaker fans expected.
Tommy McClelland isn't a splashy hire in the sense of a big-name TV analyst or a coach-turned-executive, but he's exactly the kind of steady, experienced operator a school going through a football and basketball reset would want. According to Thamel, McClelland brings 18 years as a sitting athletic director, which is a resume most candidates in this cycle simply can't match.
That track record includes stops at McNeese from 2008-13 and Louisiana Tech from 2013-20, followed by nearly 4 years as the deputy AD at Vanderbilt, where he specifically served as the football sport administrator. That Vanderbilt connection matters here — Purdue's football program has been searching for stability, and having someone who's already been in the room managing an SEC football operation is the kind of experience the Boilermakers are clearly banking on.
McClelland has been the AD at Rice for nearly three years, hiring Scott Abell in football and Rob Lanier in basketball. He’s also been the athletic director at McNeese (2008-13) and Louisiana Tech (2013-20) before taking the deputy job at Vanderbilt.
McClelland has only been at Rice for close to 3 years, where his biggest moves were hiring Scott Abell to run the football program and Rob Lanier to lead basketball. Leaving a place he just started rebuilding for a Big Ten job says a lot about how attractive Purdue's opening actually is, even with Bobinski's big shoes to fill.
Purdue brought in search firm DHR Global to run this process, with interim president Mitch Daniels and the Board of Trustees overseeing things directly. There's also been chatter about deputy AD Ken Halpin as an internal option, but if Thamel's report holds, McClelland is about to leapfrog the in-house candidate for the job. Expect an official announcement soon given the report says this gets wrapped up this week.