Purdue Boilermakers is the official intercollegiate athletic team representing Purdue University. Purdue is a public university in West Lafayette, Indiana (United States of America). It was founded in 1869 after a local businessman called John Purdue who donated land and money to establish a college of science, technology, and agriculture. Purdue has been ranked as among the best public universities in the US by large institutional rankings. It is especially recognized by the engineering program. 

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The main campus, located in West Lafayette, offers more than 200 majors for undergraduates, and over 70 masters and doctoral programs. Purdue enrolls the largest student body of any university campus in Indiana, and is the nineth largest foreign student population of any university in the US. Also, it is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among “R1:Doctoral Universities” (very high research activity).

Academics is one of the qualities that Patrick Crawford highlights from Purdue. He is the current Associate Athletics Director for Purdue Strategic Communications. Crawford previously worked in the same position for the Universities of Louisiana, Rutgers and Arkansas.

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Purdue has 18 intercollegiate sports teams. The first team that ever existed was the Purdue Football team. It happened in 1887 when the student athletic association voted to have one. At the moment only two members of the team had ever seen a football game before. The team paid for its own uniforms, the coach’s salary, and transportation. They neither counted with an existent field. The first and only game of that season was against Butler University in which Purdue was defeated. Next season there wasn’t a team. 

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Four years later, on October 24 of 1891, the Purdue football team played its season opener against Wabash College, Indiana. Through the game Purdue was accused of multiple underhanded tactics. Finally, Purdue won in a 40 minute game 44-0. The Crawfordsville newspaper reported that Wabash had been “snowed completely under by the burly boiler makers from Purdue”. Consequently, Purdue embraced the nickname and since then all the intercollegiate teams, and alumni has been known as Boilermakers.

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“Purdue women’s volleyball and women’s basketball were the only female sports until the late 1990s. That is very unique at the Big Ten Conference level, to not have women soccer and softball until the late 90s. We were the last Big Ten college to add soccer, and one of the last to add softball,” explains Ben Turner, associate strategic communications director of Purdue Baseball and Swimming & Diving.

Turner joined Purdue strategic communications office in 2010, he helped to install Base and SD accounts for Purdue teams, when Twitter started to become universal. Also, Facebook and Instagram accounts the following years. Turner worked from 2003, when he started in the industry, until 2010 at Eastern Illinois University sports information office. 

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The concern about professional sports interfering with university athletics made Purdue with other Midwestern universities form an athletic conference that regulates intercollegiate sports. In 1896, the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives was born, later known as Western Conference. During the twentieth century it became the Big Ten Conference.

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