Steve Krah

Roundtable



Ben Paolillo is a self-described member of the “old school.”

The Elkhart native and long-time Purdue University employee (first as a track coach and now as senior director in charge of the school’s 65 alumni clubs) harkens back to a simpler time.

“I’m from that era when a sport was a sport,” says Paolillo, an all-state cross country runner for Central High School in the late 1970s. “I come from sports where the money hasn’t affected it too much. It’s a shame what is going on with (major college) football and basketball. The money has gotten so big and that has caused a lot of corruption.”

The Great Divide is getting wider and wider.

“They are paying coaches $4 million and $5 million a year,” says Paolillo. “I’m not sure how it can continue to sustain itself. There’s only so many schools that can compete at a high level.

“The haves and have-nots are only getting farther and farther behind. The only thing that is keeping them close is the conference affiliations (and required revenue sharing),” he continued

Paolillo sees a day when 20 or 30 of the bigger schools will break away from the pack and serve more like minor league teams and that will leave the others to rein things in and do things more like they did them in the old days.

One of Paolillo’s recent days was spent in Chicago at “Big Ten at the White Sox Night” at U.S. Cellular Field. As a thank you for helping the Chicagoland Purdue alumni group — there are about 45,000 alums in the region — sell the most tickets, the lifelong Sox fan was given the honor of throwing out a first pitch. He now has a signed baseball and photo with his catcher that night, left-handed fireball pitcher Chris Sale.

Paolillo travels around the country in support of Purdue alumni functions — sporting and otherwise. He has brought Danny Hope (football), Matt Painter (men’s basketball), Sharon Versyp (women’s basketball) and Dave Shondell (volleyball) to Elkhart County as a part of a coaches caravan.

One of the perks of the job is to have a high profile at major events such as the Big Ten basketball tournaments.

As a member of the Big Ten, Purdue has ties to Penn State.

Paolillo has opinions about the controversy surrounding Joe Paterno, Dave Sandusky and cover-up of wrongdoing in State College, Pa.

“I hope Penn State is a wake-up call to the university presidents about making the tough calls for college athletics,” says Paolillo. “(The presidents) are the ones who have the authority to make those changes.”

Paolillo ran at Central High for Marshall Sellers and credits him for the long-distance training that got him to the University of Wyoming — one of his collegiate highlights was clocking an 8:51 in the steeplechase at historic Hayward Field at the University of Oregon — and later the coaching position at Purdue.

“I know his methods were a little controversial,” says Paolillo. “But he was an inspiration. There is so much I learned from him.”

Paolillo has two track highlights from the recently-completed London Olympics.

He was mesmerized while watching Kenya’s David Rudisha lower the 800-meter world record to 1:40.91.

“It takes real talent to run two 400s of about 50 seconds back-to-back,” says Paolillo.

The former long-hauler was also impressed by American Galen Rupp. The Oregon athlete took a silver medal in the 10,000 meters, the first U.S. runner to do so since 1964.