Tommy McClelland didn’t spend long pretending his shot at Indiana landed the way he wanted it to.
A day after the new Purdue athletic director made headlines with a line aimed at the Hoosiers, he owned up to the miss on Friday, first on “The Pat McAfee Show” and then again on the podcast “Query & Company” with Jake Query. The message was clear: he knew the joke had gone sideways almost as soon as it left his mouth.
“Every now and then you line it up on the first tee, and you’re really excited about that round, and I put it right into the water,” he said. “I gotta put it back, tee it right back up, and I got 18 more holes to play.”
The remark in question came during McClelland’s introductory news conference Thursday, when he opened by saying Purdue was “here to win championships” before adding the line, “If you don’t want to win championships, go to Indiana.” McClelland later called it an unscripted jab at the Hoosiers.
The reaction was immediate. The comment spread quickly across social media, and plenty of the blowback centered on a simple point: Indiana is the reigning national champion in football.
McClelland addressed that head-on Friday. “First of all, obviously I know they won the national championship. I was at the game with my youngest son,” McClelland said.
He used similar language earlier in the day on “Query & Company,” calling the line “off the script, off the cuff” and “a joke that didn’t land well.”
“The thing that bothers me more than anything is it becomes a distraction to what the focus is,” McClelland said.
The criticism wasn’t just about the timing of the jab, which came less than eight months after Indiana’s national title. It also came with the recent football results between the two schools hanging over it. Under Curt Cignetti, Indiana has outscored Purdue 122-3 over the last two seasons, while the Boilermakers are working to bounce back from a 2-10 campaign in 2025.
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