“And wouldn’t you know it. On Resurrection Sunday, the Purdue Boilermakers have turned the doubters into believers. Believe this! For the first time since 1980, Purdue is headed back to the Final Four.”
Rob Blackman calls it his favorite broadcasting moment, that April 1, 2024, afternoon when the Purdue men’s basketball team ended the school’s 44-year absence from the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four.
Amid his sixth full-time season as the play-by-play voice of the Boilermakers on the Purdue Global Radio Network, Blackman has been asked frequently if he prepared those remarks in the final moments of Purdue’s 72-66 victory against Tennessee in Detroit.
“I did not prepare that word for word,” Blackman says. “I did however jot down a few notes in my hotel room the night before just in case Purdue did win. I wanted to tie it into the fact it was Easter Sunday. In my mind I had rehearsed a few different scenarios that I could somehow tie into Easter Sunday, and luckily for me it came out damn near perfect.”
Blackman and his broadcasting partner, Bobby Riddell, had different emotional reactions to the victory. Turning doubters into believers felt satisfying to Blackman, a member of the broadcasting team since 2004.
“The team had just fallen flat on its face the year before in the NCAA Tournament,” Blackman says, referring to the loss to No. 16 seed Farleigh Dickenson in the first round. “You had all these expectations and all these doubters out there ready to say ‘Ha ha, we told you so. You can’t win in the tournament.’ So many people were ready to say that.”
Riddell had played for Purdue Coach Matt Painter from 2005 to 2009 as a walk-on guard from Harrison High School.
“As someone who bleeds Gold and Black, it was such a surreal moment to witness Purdue go to the Final Four and be on the broadcast for it,” Riddell says. “Rob Blackman just totally knocked it out of the park with his closing of Purdue going to the Final Four. I made a rookie mistake even though I wasn’t a rookie. I was so nervous and wanted Purdue to win I could never get myself to say ‘if Purdue wins …’ I thought, ‘Is there something cool I should say on the broadcast?’ Rob had that awesome close and he came to me. I was like, ‘Oh, I should talk now and say something great.’ Off the top of my head, I rattled off something excited. It was a dream come true moment.”
TAKING OVER FOR A LEGEND
Blackman and Riddell are in their sixth season together. Blackman took over play-by-play duties from Larry Clisby when the long-time announcer’s health declined. Clisby passed away Feb. 27, 2021, following a nearly three-year battle with Stage 4 lung and metastatic brain cancer.
Growing up in Monticello, Indiana, Blackman idolized Clisby. “To me, he was an icon in broadcasting,” Blackman says. “I was born in 1970. Back then, as you know, it was antenna television. You had very few options, but Channel 18 was an option. I can remember ‘Cliz’ doing the sports anchoring on Channel 18. Then you add on top of that he’s the voice of the Boilermakers, so anything related to Purdue or Lafayette sports he had some kind of connection. He’s a childhood hero of mine, and the next thing you know I’m working alongside the guy, thinking to myself, ‘How did this happen?’
“His passion was so contagious. Some would argue over the top at times, and that’s a fair criticism. But look, there was never any doubt about where the Cliz stood on his thoughts about Purdue basketball. I think that’s endeared him so much to the fans.”
Clisby called 1,189 Purdue basketball games that spanned much of the careers of Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame coach Gene Keady and Painter. Keady taught Clisby a lesson that he passed along to Blackman.
“You can’t fool the fans,” Blackman says. “Look, if we’re playing poorly or badly – we being Purdue – then you need to let the fans know. Just as when we’re playing well, playing at a high level, you need to let the fans know. You can’t fool Purdue basketball fans. They’re too smart. Granted, these last handful of years there haven’t been too many bad nights for Purdue.”
Since Blackman and Riddell teamed up for the 2020-21 season, Purdue has won nearly 77 percent of its games (134-41) with two Big Ten regular season championships, a Big Ten Tournament title and a national runner-up finish in 2024.
That run of success included another memorable moment for Blackman. On Dec. 6, 2021, Purdue earned its first No. 1 ranking in The Associated Press poll.
“I will remember that day for the rest of my life,” Blackman says. “We had a Matt Painter coaches radio show that night, and we were doing it in the Union at Walk-Ons. He comes in about five minutes before the show begins and gets a standing ovation. What a great show that was that night.”
PAYING IT FORWARD
Just as Clisby mentored Blackman, Blackman has paid it forward to Riddell. After graduating from Purdue, Riddell was working for Heman Lawson Hawks in West Lafayette. The firm handled tax returns for Painter and other members of his staff.
“Because of my connection with Purdue basketball, my boss at the time who had been overseeing those accounts allowed me to take the lead,” says Riddell, who had no radio or media experience prior to joining the Purdue Global Radio Network. “That probably helped keep me fresh on their minds compared to any other former player.”
When Blackman ascended to the play-by-play role, it was “right place, right time” for Riddell.
“Coach Painter, Elliot Bloom (director of basketball operations) and some of those guys thought highly enough of me to give me an opportunity,” he says. “It couldn’t have worked out any better for me starting out in this industry to have a guy like Rob who literally had my job alongside Larry Clisby all those years. It was great to have someone like Rob who I could ask for feedback and constructive criticism.”
Blackman also had good timing in getting his foot in the door with Purdue. After graduating from North White High School in 1989, Blackman played four years of football at the University of Evansville. There, he got the bug to be a sportscaster.
“Evansville had a campus radio station at the time – they no longer do – so they allowed the students to also broadcast some of the college’s different sporting events,” Blackman says.
After graduation, Blackman began his career calling high school and junior college games in Mount Carmel, Illinois. A move to Nashville, Tennessee, followed to announce football and basketball games for Tennessee State and Lipscomb. Blackman and his wife returned to Indiana in 2001.
“I was calling Arena League football games on the radio, which isn’t that glamorous, but I needed something,” he recalls. “I did a lot of high school stuff and started cold calling every college and university in the state of Indiana hoping to catch a break.”
The person who picked up the phone at Purdue was a college classmate of Blackman’s. While no fulltime position was available, Blackman accepted the role of fill-in announcer.
“Luckily a full-time position opened up and somehow, some way a guy who grew up watching Larry Clisby on TV, figuring he was the coolest guy ever, was now working alongside him,” Blackman says.
learning the dance
Riddell says being a radio color analyst isn’t as easy as it sounds to the casual listener.
“It’s kind of a dance between the two broadcasters to make sure you’re not talking over each other,” Riddell says. “You have limited windows to get your point across. Rob would do a good job of giving me
those windows. The more reps we’ve had together, the more comfortable we’ve gotten with each other. I feel our personalities jibe together and we can joke with each other.”
The breaking-in period for Riddell was complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Blackman and Riddell called home games from an upper concourse position in Mackey Arena. Neither traveled with the Boilermakers, and they were forced to call games while watching television monitors inside a small room in Mackey.
“That was quite a challenge because you do not have the ambience of the crowd to feed off of, whether good or bad,” Blackman says. “The other part that we found was when the games are on the road, you are always at the mercy of the home team in how well they were going to film the game. Some schools you had five or six different camera angles, and you really felt you could call the game pretty accurately. Other schools might have two camera angles and maybe neither of the two showed you the score and time on the clock.”
There was one other challenge calling a game remotely.
“We would follow the games live on the laptop on the scoreboard tracker,” Blackman says. “Often the video was behind the score so you might see the score change (on the laptop) and someone’s at the free throw line getting ready to shoot. So you know they’re about to make the free throw.”
GREAT PLAYERS, GREAT COACH
Noting the outstanding players to come through Purdue during his tenure on the radio network – Zach Edey, Braden Smith and Jaden Ivey came quickly to his mind – Riddell admits he’s been spoiled.
“It’s probably my great vibes I have around the team,” Riddell says. “They feed off my presence apparently.
“All kidding aside, Coach Painter is in his coaching prime I’d say. I’ve been really lucky to get my radio career started with such a great team. It gives us a lot of fun things to talk about.”
Blackman hopes for more excitement with this year’s team, which began the 2025-26 season ranked atop the Associated Press preseason poll for the first time. Perhaps a moment might eclipse that Easter Sunday in 2024.
“Hopefully, that will move into second place one of these days,” Blackman says. ★
