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Come Fan with UsWednesday, August 5, 2026

Gene Keady spent $600 per week on his terrible combover

That’s a lot of money for a bad haircut.

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Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports
Ricky O'Donnell
Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.

Gene Keady is known for two things: coaching Purdue basketball for 25 years and sporting a horrible combover. Indy Star columnist Gregg Doyel caught up with Keady for a story on Tuesday focusing on the latter, and the ridiculous cost it required to maintain it.

That objectively bad hair cut Gene Keady was rocking? That thing cost him $600 a month.

Keady knew his hair needed work – what, you think a man can just roll out of bed and look like that? – so he brought in his personal hairdresser twice a week during the season to tidy it up. She came with extensions. She came with hair dye. She came with cream.

She left each time with $300.

You read that right. Gene Keady paid $600 a week to have his hair look like that.

The column also reveals that Keady ditched the haircut a little over a year ago. When he did, his scalp revealed a form of skin cancer that has since been treated. That’s right, that combover could have killed Keady. Thank goodness this ends as a funny story and not a sad one.

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