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I'm getting ready to post an off-season project of mine in which I'll break the 90 years of AP Polls into six 15-year segments and we can discuss each (1936-1950, 1951-1965 . . . 2011-2025).  In process of that I noticed that Purdue was a fringe top-25 program for basically the first 45 years of the AP Poll.  Specifically:
From 1936-1980:

• Purdue was 19th nationally with 155 AP Appearances.  That is out of 525 polls so it works out to 29.52% which is to say that Purdue was ranked in almost 1/3 of the polls from 1936-1980.  
• Purdue was 22nd nationally with 79 AP Top-10 Appearances.  That is out of the same 525 polls so it works out to 15.05% which is to say that Purdue was ranked in the top-10 in almost one out of six polls from 1936-1980.  
• Purdue was 28th nationally with 26 AP Top-5 Appearances.  That is out of the same 525 polls so it works out to 4.95% which is to say that Purdue was ranked in to top-5 in almost one out of 20 polls from 1936-1980.  

Since 1980 Purdue's performance is hot garbage outside of the Tiller era.  

From 1981-1995 Purdue only appeared in one of 245 AP Polls.  Specifically, they started 1984 4-1 including a win over Notre Dame in Indianapolis and a home win over #2 Ohio State on October 6.  That catapulted the Boilermakers all the way to #14 whereupon they promptly got blown out at home by Iowa which dropped them to "received votes" but then they lost at Illinois the next week and didn't appear in the AP Poll again until Joe Tiller arrived in 1997.  

From 1995-2010:

• Purdue was 30th nationally with 80 AP Appearances.  That is out of 251 polls so it works out to 31.87% or nearly 1/3.  
• Purdue was 52nd nationally with 4 AP Top-10 Appearances.  That is 1.59% or something like one of every 64.  
• Purdue was 49th nationally with one AP Top-5 Appearance.  Specifically, they started out 5-0 including back-to-back wins at Notre Dame on October 2 and at Penn State on October 9.  As it turned out that sounds a lot more impressive than it actually was.  Notre Dame finished .500 and Penn State wishes they had finished .500.  Purdue was ranked #5 in the October 10, 2004 Poll then promptly lost four straight to Wisconsin, Michigan, Northwestern, and Iowa with the losses dropping them to 12th, 17th, out, and no votes respectively.  Purdue hasn't been in the top-10 since.  

From 2011-2025 Purdue only appeared in one out of 246 AP Polls.  Specifically, they started 3-2 including a road win over #2 Iowa on October 16.  That got them the #25 ranking in the October 17 poll but they got blown out at home by Wisconsin the next week and that was that.  


So what happened in 1980 and I do mean specifically 1980?  Purdue was ranked in 9/15 polls in 1978 and in all 15 polls in 1979 (as high as #5) then 6/16 in 1980 and then only once until Joe Tiller showed up.  

Mark Herrmann was a really damn good college quarterback.

OSU also went 15-1 in 1979 and 1980, and Purdue didn't play them

Honestly, I reject the premise...

Purdue has been a mess since 1969 when Mollenkopf retired. You bring up 1980, but the two interim coaches between Mollenkopf and Jim Young went 13-18 for three years and then 18-25-1 for four. So between 1970 and 1976 the team sucked.

And to be even more  honest, outside of Mollenkopf they weren't very good between WWII and him taking over in 1956. Stu Holcomb who coached from 1947 to 1955 had a 0.457 winning percentage.

It's about coaching. When the team has had really good coaching, they've been a little dangerous. When they haven't, they've been a patsy. Post WWII, those coaches are Mollenkopf, Young, Tiller, and Brohm. Everyone else has been a failure.

Yeah it is coaching but there is, I think, a certain institutional baseline that you work off of.  In the new portal/NIL era it is all about NIL money but I'm talking before that.  We've talked about this before with reference to both football and basketball coaches.  If I were an AD, I'd look at my school's history and that would be my baseline.  Worse than that, fire the coach because the average hire will be an improvement.  Better than that, keep the coach even if you *THINK* that another guy *MIGHT* get you to the proverbial next level because while he might, the average hire will be worse than the guy you have now.  

Purdue had ups-and-downs like every team but from 1936-1980 the average of those ups-and-downs was decent.  They were never a top tier program but I think that @ManHawk made a good point here:

So Purdue and other Big Ten schools that were considered 2nd tier in the late 70's got leaped frogged in the Big Ten pecking order.

From 1936-1980 I think that Purdue was what he called "2nd tier".  They weren't at Ohio State's level but then nobody really was.  Minnesota was great in the first few years of the poll but collapsed and never recovered post-WWII.  Michigan was great immediately after the war but then fell off for the better part of two decades before storming back starting in 1969.  For those 45 years, Purdue was generally in the group right behind that.  

For another basis of comparison, from 1936-1980 Purdue went 228-179-23 which is 0.55698 and 44th in the Nation.  Here is how that stacks up in the League:

• #4 Ohio State .73666
• #7 Michigan .70615
• #17 Michigan State .63529 (this is all of 1936-1980 even though they were in until the 50s)
• #44 Purdue .55698
• #48 Minnesota .55023
• #90 Wisconsin .46977
• #104 Illinois .43271
• #109 Iowa .40588
• #110 Indiana .39211
• #111 Northwestern .38615

That isn't great but it is definitely second tier especially when you consider that Minnesota's percentage is propped up by being great early but then they fell off.  

By comparison, in the last 43 years (1981-2023 - I used 1981-2023 because Stassen doesn't have 2024-2025 entered):

• #1 Ohio State .78463
• #6 Michigan .71951
• #10 Penn State .70377 (this is all of 1981-2023 even though they weren't in until 1993)
• #23 Iowa .62712
• #27 Wisconsin .61936
• #35 Michigan State .55202
• #70 Minnesota .46471
• #76 Illinois .44170
• #81 Purdue .43294
• #84 Northwestern .42338
• #88 Indiana .38978

I only included teams that joined at least 20 years ago.  Even ignoring PSU, Purdue fell from 4th among the traditional 10 to 8th.  That is a big drop basically from second tier to doormat.  

Yes, Purdue had periods of being a doormat prior to 1980 but they always recovered and they maintained an average of "decent".  After 1980 they had a period of being 'decent' but that was it.  There is an argument for Brohm's tenure as you mentioned but he was only there six years and one of those was the goofy COVID season so it is hard to get a solid read on that.  There were two 6-6 years (finished 7-6 then 6-7 based on bowl result) then two sub .500 years, then two 8-4 years that finished 9-4 (won bowl) and 8-6 (lost B1GCG, lost bowl).  

Since this thread suddenly appeared, I guess I'll post it here:  I heard somewheres that Purdue is now the only P4 program in a rivalry (IU-PU, I guess) that doesn't have a NC in either football nor basketball.  Or among rivalries that either program has one in either sport, idk.  It's a sort of convoluted factoid, but messed up if true.

Why would you expect Purdue to have done better?

That is an interesting question.  You likely recall that we've had a few discussions of the concept of a "College Football Reset" where we wind the clock back to 1869, throw a few minor tweaks in and see how things go if we do it all over again.  From that view yeah, I wouldn't expect Purdue to be very good for the structural reasons that you laid out.  FWIW, the school that I would expect to be MUCH better than they actually have been is Illinois.  They are in a populous state (more than either Michigan or Ohio) and they at least should be the 'biggest game in town' because Chicago hasn't been competitive since the very early days of the league and Northwestern has mostly sucked.  I've always kinda figured that Ohio State would have gotten it right eventually because they have major structural advantages.  

That said, Purdue *DID* do better for a time and I was just looking around for reasons that they couldn't keep it going.