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.
Neubert has Pick No. 24 ...
Draft ticker: Picks No. 1-23
I'm building my fake team on talent and speed, and Kory Sheets was teeming with both.
I vividly remember back in the day when Joe Tiller and his staff used to hold their Boiler Bowl scrimmages on Sunday nights during the season for the redshirting players to go full-contact against one another.
There was one night where Sheets was so unbelievable that the energy pouring through the entire team was almost tangible and even the most mild-mannered of coaches walked off the practice field that night with their eyeballs bulging out of their sockets.
Sheets was that talented.
Did he go on to have the most consistent career at Purdue? He did not.
But the talent was never the question. He was sprinter fast and video-game elusive but also big and surprisingly physical for a player with those characteristics.
Ask notoriously slow and plodding Oregon ...
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And he could catch, pairing the 3,300-plus yards he ran for in his day with 800-plus more over more than a hundred career receptions.
His 1,100-yard, 16-touchdown rushing season as a senior in 2008 was better than OK and he actually won games for Purdue that year, including that overtime scare against Central Michigan in Ross-Ade Stadium. Next time Purdue re-does the turf in the stadium, it's going to have to pick that one Chippewa dude out of the dirt. I think he's still laying there, left behind on Sheets' 46-yard walk-off TD run in OT.
Anyway, once again, I'm drafting raw talent, trying to take guys whose physical gifts set them apart as opposed to those who were productive more because of the system they existed in.
I'm also obviously trying to assemble the all-post-game interview team and in pairing Sheets with Rosevelt Colvin and Dorien Bryant, I'm off to a solid start.
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