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 day over the next 10 weeks. Boilermakers who were on the Purdue roster between 1997-2017 are eligible for selection. The draft order is Alan Karpick, Stacy Clardie, Kyle Charters and Brian Neubert.
Clardie has the second pick of the third round, No. 10 overall, and takes ...
Draft ticker: No. 1 | No. 2 | No. 3 | No. 4 | No. 5 | No. 6 | No. 7 | No. 8 | No. 9
This may be a bit unexpected.
I already had the best safety in the draft and already had picked two defensive guys, while one could argue there are important offensive linemen (Hardwick, Butler) to be selected right now. Or even the first linebacker of our draft.
Instead, I decided to switch it up and scoop up one of Purdue's hardest-hitting safeties, Bernard Pollard, to give me a potent safety combo. (Stuart Schweigert was my second pick.) Maybe Alan and Kyle have QBs who will throw it around, but I've got a couple dudes back there who can ball-hawk and put fear into the receivers who run over the middle.
Pollard's brash personality mirrored his play on the field. Pollard was going to pop guys, didn’t care if it was right or not, and he was not going to be sorry about it. He was going to yap in a player's face, rip into every piece of an opponent's game he could, hoping to unhinge and break players mentally.
If that didn’t work, he did plenty of breaking physically. He was aptly nicknamed “bone crusher.”
Pollard, simply, was a presence in Purdue's secondary for the three years he was on campus, moving into the starting lineup in the second game as a true freshman and not leaving it until he bailed for the NFL after his junior season.
The production was there, too: Pollard led the team in tackles with in 2004 (96) and 2005 (92). He also was a special teams wonder, blocking five kicks in his career.
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