Hammer and Rails has really come into its own as an important Purdue blog; their recent commentary about hoops has been extensive and informative. My thanks to T-Mill for his Welcome Letter...

Welcome to West Lafayette. Please Clean Up After Yourselves.

Hi Guys, T-Mill here from the Purdue SBNation community, Hammer & Rails. I know you probably haven't given much thought to us Boilermakers over in the Leaders (or is it Legends? I really don't know or care) Division, but trust us, we're here. You likely won't be seeing us at Lucas Oil Stadium any time soon since we have that behemoth Ohio State in our way, but once every decade or so we might make a run. As far down as we look right now, it feels like decades for sure.

Anyway, we're going to be sharing a conference with you, so there are a few things you should know about us:

• For the love of God do not call us Purdon't or Purwho - Trust us when we say this, we have heard this one thousands of times and each person thinks it is original every time. It is not. You are not being clever when you use it. In fact, if you call us that we're probably going to link you in with Notre Dame fans, and no self-respecting college football fan wants that.
• We hate Iowa too - But mostly because Jim Delaney told us we do.
• We like football, but we're more of a basketball school - I think we're going to get along fine as you give us basketball and we trade off by giving you football. We're going to see you in basketball much sooner anyway. Just please, please be careful around Robbie Hummel's knee when we play you. Our fans can't take another incident. In fact, be careful around everyone's knees. For some reason West Lafayette, Indiana has become a nexus in the universe for weak ACLs.
• We think you'll like West Lafayette - Once you finally come for football you should find plenty of tickets. I respect your consecutive sellout streak, mostly because we haven't been within 10,000 seats of a sellout in some time. Trust me, you will find plenty of empty seats. For basketball you will get to play in our recently renovated Mackey Arena with top notch amenities. For baseball we are debuting the new Lambert Field next season as well.

  

So there you have it. I think you'll find we're pretty easy to get along with. No one really hates us in this conference except Indiana, and after finishing in last place each of the last three years in football and basketball, they don't have much room for hate (ed. note: Indiana actually finished 2nd to last during the 2009-2010 basketball season, but the point stands). We're looking forward to seeing you come to town.