In the spring, a Big Ten executive spoke to the Purdue athletic staff. After he had decried the O’Bannon decision — in which a federal judge ruled the N.C.A.A. was in violation of the antitrust laws — Shoop posed a question. Why should the N.C.A.A. care, he asked, if players make money on their own likeness? According to several people at the meeting, the Big Ten executive replied, “So you would be O.K. if a University of Texas student-athlete made $1 million signing autographs for an hour?”

“Well, yes, I would,” Shoop said. “But that’s not an answer to my question.” An agitated Burke interrupted the exchange, put his arm around the executive, and suggested that if the two of them wanted to continue the conversation, they do it elsewhere. (Schott, who was also there, says that Burke did not try to cut off the conversation.)

Then, a few months ago, Marcia Shoop tried to organize a forum that would have featured the Purdue Neurotrauma Group, which has done pathbreaking work on the effect of repeated subconcussive blows to the brain, and a documentary, “The Business of Amateurs,” by Bob DeMars, a former college defensive lineman. Burke told her that the athletic department would not be involved because of the film’s emphasis on players’ rights. He also made it clear to Shoop — and to the Purdue Neurotrauma Group, according to Tom Talavage, a scientist in the department — that the athletic department would not underwrite any of the costs of the event. (Schott did not respond to a direct question about Burke’s response to the proposed forum.)

And then came the Missouri football players’ strike.

On Nov. 9, Marcia Shoop wrote a blog post about the strike. Describing college athletes as an “unpaid labor force” in an “unjust situation,” she wrote that “I continue to pray” that “the players find their voice” and will someday be able to “enact change.”

Two days later, Stacy Clardie, who covers Purdue football for the website Gold and Black, part of the Rivals.com network, texted Marcia Shoop to tell her that she had heard from a source that John Shoop would be fired as soon as the season ended.

John Shoop confronted Hazell the next day. Hazell denied that he planned to fire him. A day later, with Purdue students staging an antiracism rally — and with the football team in Evanston, Ill., preparing for a game against Northwestern — the Boilermakers’ quarterbacks posted on Twitter a photograph of themselves in support of the rally. Shoop was in the picture. He was also the only member of the athletic department to sign a letter to Mitch Daniels, the Purdue president and former Indiana governor, saying that racism needed to be addressed on campus.