GoldandBlack.com's 20-year Purdue player draft: Pick No. 1
To help commemorate the 20-year anniversary of Purdue's magical turnaround 1997 season, GoldandBlack.com's staff will break up the rosters and select the best players to wear a Boilermaker uniform since Coach Joe Tiller's first season on the sidelines.
GoldandBlack.com's 20-year Purdue player draft will have 100 players chosen — two picks each weekday over the next 10 weeks. Boilermakers who were on Purdue rosters between 1997-2017 are eligible for selection. The draft order is Alan Karpick, Stacy Clardie, Kyle Charters and Brian Neubert.
And with the first selection, Alan picks:
Friday was my lucky day.
When Kyle pulled my name out first, thus giving me the first selection in what will certainly be a memorable draft, I had maybe the easiest job ever. There may never be an easier top pick to make.
After all, the best teams start with the best at the quarterback position, and Drew Brees was absolutely the best, maybe in Big Ten history, behind center. Brees is confident, coachable, fearless and maybe the most accurate quarterback in football history. If he is not the most accurate, he is on the short list. All of those attributes make him the guy that any team, anywhere, would like as its leader, let alone on my mythical team put together with the best Boilermaker players over the past two decades.
Heck, if there was a way to lay odds on the teams that my colleagues and I will put together over the next 44 days, I like my chances, right now, because I have Brees.
On this make-believe squad, I have Brees' best attribute and the best quality for a team leader at my back ... Brees hates to lose. And if you watched him as a Boilermaker, there were several examples of Brees willing his team to victory. He led Purdue to fourth-quarter victories in nearly a quarter of his 37 starts at Purdue. He personified the term "refuse to lose."
All it takes is a trip to YouTube and you can find what made Brees so good at Purdue. He played fast, he played with purpose. He waited his turn, not starting until his sophomore season, but when he got his chance he wasted little time. He led Purdue on a touchdown drive on his first possession as a start in the famed Coliseum against USC, and his last game as a Boilermaker was just up the road in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl, the promised land for everyone who has ever played Big Ten football.
In between, Brees took Purdue fans on a ride that it has spent the 16-plus years since his graduation trying to repeat. Maybe it can't be done, as there will likely never be another Drew Brees.
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