Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

That's from over 2 months ago and tOSU played OHIO that week,soTLDW
Just Win Baby

One thing I'll point out about 2004... That Purdue team was LEGIT. We had a hell of a defense, and the offense was positively humming. You can say we beat a Notre Dame team that didn't turn out to be that good, but we didn't just beat them. We utterly humiliated them, in South Bend.

During the Wisconsin game, I believe on the very play that produced "the fumble", Kyle Orton suffered a hip pointer. I believe he ended up suffering another on the opposite hip the next week. So for that four-game stretch of four close losses, he was playing hurt with one or two hip pointer injuries. And as you point out, three of those four losses were to teams that finished with 9 or 10 wins.

So don't sleep on that 2004 team. That team may have been better than the 2000 team that went to the Rose Bowl.

That 2004 game is hard to evaluate even with hindsight.  Sometimes a game looks like an upset at the time but then looking back it doesn't.  In this case it is just two teams in weird situations.  If you evaluate it as Purdue at full strength against Ohio State's first half of 2004 team then it isn't an upset at all, the better team (by a wide margin) simply won the game.  However, if you look at Ohio State's second half of 2004 team and compare them to Purdue with a gimpy Kyle Orton then I think it is fair to call it an upset because the Ohio State team that beat the league champions by 16, and beat IU, PSU, MSU, and OkSU should probably have beaten gimpy-Orton Purdue.  

I guess I'll call the two teams something like about even with the caveat that it depends on which 2004 Purdue and which 2004 tOSU show up because it could be anything from Purdue being a much better team to Ohio State being a much better team.  My point being that those two teams were a lot more up-and-down than normal.  

You raise an interesting point about 2004 Purdue possibly being better than 2000 Purdue.  At first glance that sounds borderline insane because 2000 Purdue is a legend as Purdue's only RoseBowl team in many decades while 2004 Pudue went to an also-ran Sun Bowl but I see what you mean.  That 2004 team was oh-so-close to being so much more.  Here are the final standings from 2004 with Purdue's result against each:

• 7-1 / 9-3 Michigan, Lost by 2 at home
• 7-1 / 10-2 Iowa, Lost by 2 on the road
• 6-2 / 9-3 Wisconsin, Lost by 3 at home
• 5-3 / 6-6 Northwestern, Lost by 3 on the road
• 4-4 / 8-4 Ohio State, Won by 7 at home
• 4-4 / 7-5 Purdue, n/a
• 4-4 / 5-7 Michigan State, DNP
• 3-5 / 7-5 Minnesota, DNP
• 2-6 / 4-7 Penn State, Won by 7 on the road
• 1-7 / 3-8 Illinois, Won by 8 on the road
• 1-7 / 3-8 Indiana, Won by 39 at home

It is odd that with the exception of Indiana, every league game for Purdue was a one-score game.  

Imagine this clusterf*$k:
Change one play each in the PU/M and PU/IA games such that Purdue wins both.  Now first place is a 4-way tie between:

• 6-2 Iowa beat UW, lost to PU and M, 1-2
• 6-2 Michigan beat IA, lost to PU, didn't play UW, 1-1
• 6-2 Wisconsin beat PU but lost to IA and didn't play M, 1-1
• 6-2 Purdue beat IA and M but lost to UW, 2-1

I *THINK* that based on the tiebreakers in effect at that time Purdue would have gone to the Rose Bowl based on their 2-1 H2H2H record.  

FWIW, I think by the time Purdue faced OSU, Orton wasn't "gimpy-Orton" any longer. I think the Purdue team that OSU faced was closer to "full strength" than the Purdue team Michigan, or certainly Northwestern, faced

That suggests that we shouldn't be surprised that Purdue won, but . . .

By the time OSU faced Purdue, OSU wasn't the first-half of 2004 team that barely survived Marshall, barely survived NCST, lost to Northwestern, lost at home by two scores to Wisconsin, and got blown off the field in Kinnick.  

The Purdue/Ohio State game occurred only one week before Ohio State faced Big11Ten Champion (they clinched BEFORE playing tOSU) Michigan.  Michigan came into Ohio Stadium at 9-1 and #7 in the country and left at 9-2 and about to be #13.  

That suggests that we shouldn't be surprised that Purdue won, but . . .

By the time OSU faced Purdue, OSU wasn't the first-half of 2004 team that barely survived Marshall, barely survived NCST, lost to Northwestern, lost at home by two scores to Wisconsin, and got blown off the field in Kinnick. 

The Purdue/Ohio State game occurred only one week before Ohio State faced Big11Ten Champion (they clinched BEFORE playing tOSU) Michigan.  Michigan came into Ohio Stadium at 9-1 and #7 in the country and left at 9-2 and about to be #13. 

Everyone in the world is surprised when Purdue beats OSU. Doesn't matter when. Even 2000. Even 2011.

It was still an upset IMHO.

I'm just saying that I supplied the context about Orton's injuries, but that does NOT mean that Ohio State was facing some battered and beaten Purdue team that rolled out their QB on crutches. 

I think that Purdue team was at or near full strength. They were still at a talent deficit at basically every position group on the field though. 

So it was an upset, but perhaps not as LARGE of an upset as might have been suggested considering Purdue was only 5-4 at the time and on a 4-game losing streak. 

I didn't see a thread for this yet, if there already is one please merge. 

The series history is odd.  It is fairly lopsided with the Buckeyes owning a 42-15-2 advantage including 14-9 in West Lafayette but it isn't as lopsided as you would expect given Purdue's and Ohio State's overall performances. 

Purdue has five wins this century, all five in West Lafayette.  That may not sound like a lot but it is a winning record for the Boilermakers against Ohio State in West Lafayette (5-4) and Purdue owns as many wins over Ohio State since 2000 as Penn State, more than any team not named Michigan.  FWIW, wins over Ohio State since 2000:

• 7 Michigan, 7-17 (but only four if you don't count games in which Michigan was cheating their asses off so Purdue still has as many legitimate wins over Ohio State this century as any other team)
• 5 Purdue
• 5 Penn State
• 4 Wisconsin
• 3 Clemson
• 3 Michigan State
• 2 each:  USC, USCe, Illinois, UF, Texas, Iowa, Oregon

The Buckeyes may be favored by more than four TD's but I'm hardly the only Ohio State fan who will never be confident of a win over Purdue unless the Buckeyes are actually up by four TD's in the fourth quarter . . . with the ball. 

A look back at Purdue's five most recent wins over Ohio State:

October 20, 2018, #2 Ohio State (7-0/3-0) at nr Purdue (3-3/2-1):
The 2-1 league record is a bit misleading.  Purdue lost to a decent Northwestern and beat cellar-dwellers UNL and IL.  The Boilermakers even lost OOC at home to a Directional Michigan but when Ohio State came to town they suddenly looked like NC contenders.  Purdue won 49-20 and finished 6-7.  This was Ohio State's only loss of the 2018 season. 

November 12, 2011, nr Ohio State (6-3/3-2) at nr Purdue (4-5/1-3):
I actually attended this one.  Thank you for hosting @jhetfield99 , we enjoyed our visit even if we didn't like the outcome of the game.  It was a strange game.  Late in the game Ohio State was down 20-14 and scored what should have been the game-winning TD but they doinked the XP off the upright and lost in OT.  As bad as 2011 was for Ohio State and coach Fickell, there was actually a brief moment during this game when Ohio State controlled their own destiny to the B1GCG.  This was during the Legends/Leaders (aka Where is Wisconsin and Why is Wisconsin Here) era and the Buckeyes had managed to knock off Wisconsin on a miraculous play so when Penn State lost to Nebraska on the same day, the Buckeyes had H2H over Wisconsin and a chance to take out PSU so they were the team to beat in the Why is Wisconsin Here Division.  That didn't last long. 

I noted above that Ohio State was unranked coming into this game and while that is technically accurate it somewhat understates the surprise at the time.  Ohio State was unranked but they were second among ORV and they came into this game off of three straight wins including the aforementioned upset of Wisconsin.  It looked possible that Fickell was getting the ship righted and things appeared to be looking up but this game ended up being the first of four straight losses to close the season at 6-7.  Conversely, Purdue won three of their last four to finish 7-6. 

October 17, 2009, #7 Ohio State (5-1/3-0) at nr Purdue (1-5/0-2):
This was a weird Purdue team.  They were a lot better than their 1-5/0-2 record would suggest but just snakebit.  They'd lost in Eugene to a very good Oregon team by just two points, lost to N. Illinois by a TD, lost to a decent Notre Dame team by a FG, and lost to a pretty good Northwestern team by six.  That is four one-score losses and after beating Ohio State the Boilermakers finished strong, winning four of their last six to finish 5-7 for the year.  The Buckeyes were pretty much as advertised.  After inexplicably losing 26-18 in West Lafayette they won their last six straight to finish 11-2/7-1 with Big11Ten and Rose Bowl Championships and #5 in the final AP Poll. 

November 13, 2004, nr (but receiving votes, #29) Ohio State (6-3/3-3) at nr Purdue (5-4/1-4):
This was certainly an unusual season for the Boilermakers.  They were ranked #24 in the preseason poll and climbed all the way up to #5 at 5-0/2-0 but it turned out that the wins weren't as impressive as they sounded.  The five wins included Notre Dame and Penn State which sounds great but those teams finished the season 6-6 and 4-7 respectively.  Then Purdue lost four straight by a combined total of just 10 points:

• 20-17 to a Wisconsin team that finished 9-3 and #17
• 16-14 to a Michigan team that won the Big11Ten and finished 9-3 and #14
• 13-10 to a Northwestern team that finished .500
• 23-21 at Kinnick to an Iowa team that finished 10-2 and #8 with a Big11Ten co-championship and a NYD Bowl win over LSU.

Bottom line, Purdue wasn't as good as the early wins sounded but they also weren't as bad as four-straight losses sounds.  After beating Ohio State they annihilated the Hoosiers then lost the Sun Bowl to ASU. 

Ohio State's team in 2004 was a bit weird as well.  They started out atrocious.  They went 3-0 OOC but the wins were far from impressive and then they opened league play with three straight losses (by 6 at Northwestern, by 11 vs Wisconsin [this is still Wisconsin's most recent win in Columbus], and by 26 at Kinnick).  At that point the Buckeyes looked listless and awful but they won five of their last six including a 16 point win over Big11Ten Champion Michigan and a nice bowl win.  With the lone exception of the Purdue game, the second half of Ohio State's 2004 season looked a lot like the 2005-2010 Ohio State teams that dominated the league and won the league title every year. 

October 28, 2000, #12 Ohio State (6-1/3-1) at #16 Purdue (6-2/4-1):
This was a rare occasion in that both teams were ranked for the game.  Purdue's loses were not terrible.  They lost in South Bend by two points to a very good Notre Dame team and in State College by two points to a mess of a Penn State team.  Ohio State crushed the PSU team that beat Purdue but Purdue crushed the Minnesota team that beat Ohio State.  Purdue had a week off after Ohio State and they must have spent it celebrating how great they were because the week after that they got drilled in East Lansing by a mediocre Spartan team.  Oddly, the Spartans were the next opponent for both teams after this game as Ohio State beat them in Columbus during Purdue's week off. 

After the MSU loss, Purdue rebounded to pulverize the Hoosiers and snuck into the Rose Bowl on tiebreakers whereupon they lost to the Huskies.  This loss and the earlier one to Minnesota in Glenn Mason's audition for the HC spot at his alma-mater were a big part of the end of John Cooper's tenure in Columbus. 


After losing to Purdue the Buckeyes beat bad MSU and IL teams then took John Cooper's 10th (and last) loss to Michigan and got crushed in the Outback Bowl by USCe. 

Some real good memories there.  Unfortunately it ain't happening tomorrow, lol 55-10 OSU.

Unless Day feels like approaching it like Dan Lanning in their 30-0 win last year and the 2nd half is like a running clock.