recruiting

It was a very quiet day overall for Purdue football when it came to national signing day. We were involved in no hat dances, no ESPNU press conference, or no raids from a state to the north at the last minute. That's the way I like it. To me, if you're enough of a prima donna that you need ESPN at your press conference showing you signing a letter you're not going to amount to much because you're already used to being coddled. with them, you can find a Nike Coupon.

We don't do it that way at Purdue, and we never have. Give me an actual quarterback that wants to prove himself for every Jimmy Powlus out there.

According to Rivals.com we have the No. 34 class in the nation, which is good enough for fourth in the Big Ten between Ohio State, Michigan, and Nebraska. This is skewed somewhat by sheer numbers, as a small class of 12 at Wisconsin is theoretically behind our large class of 24. Still, this is great improvement over being 12^th in the Big Ten last year (when we got dinged with the smaller class), 8^th in 2010, 12^th in 2009, and 10^th in 2008. these numbers do factor in Nebraska as a full Big Ten member.

As much as people rip on coach Hope, and some of it is warranted, it is hard to compete in a conference like the Big Ten when we're not even at the middle of recruiting. Yes, that point may sound like a contradiction to my hatred of the ESPNU prima donnas, but recruiting is really a balance of finding solid talent that still wants to prove itself.

At least on paper, this class looks like it has that talent. Every single player on the returning roster (except for Robert Marve) comes from a class that was not rated highly at all. It can be argued that it is a stretch that they are even competing at the same level of some of these higher talented squads. As we see every time Ohio State ventures to West Lafayette, however, talent can be a huge boost, but it doesn't automatically mean wins.

This class was solidly Purdue throughout the day. The only loss of a verbal was Dion Witty, who was a possible academic casualty and ended up at Memphis (motto: Spectare Calipari Meyer Saban Pitino Tibi Subveniet = We'll have someone take the SAT for you, courtesy of Boiled Sports). Witty was a 5'11" 175 pound defensive back. His loss was at a position where we have a lot of depth, so it is not a grave loss.

Instead, we replaced him with a surprise commitment of Joey Warburg, who was an Illinois verbal and had visited Arkansas, but literally came out of nowhere to sign with Purdue. Warburg is a 6'5" 255 pound road grader of an offensive lineman from Louisville Trinity High. Since long-snaper Jesse Schmitt hails from that school he gets the assist for landing Warburg.