GoldandBlack.com's 20-year Purdue player draft: Pick No. 73
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 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.
Karpick may raise some eyebrows with this one, but pick No. 73 is one that many won't forget.
Draft ticker: Nos. 1-72
It's hard to look past this guy.
Yes, his star at Purdue didn't last long, but Selwyn Lymon just might be the biggest recruiting coup for the Boilermakers in the past 20 years. While his Purdue career didn't live up to expectations, it had its moments with potential in full view ... especially on one stormy afternoon in South Bend.
For on that late September day in 2006, Lymon did something that hasn't been done before or since. He gained 238 receiving yards on just eight catches against the Irish. His reception yardage numbers haven't been topped against one of the nation's most fabled programs before or since.
His 238-yard, eight-catch game remains the standard bearer and is as big a breakout game as there has been in Purdue history. Heck, it remains the second-best effort (in yardage at least) in school annals, amazingly 63 yards shy of Chris Daniels' 301-yard effort against Michigan State in 1999. Lymon did catch 73 balls in two seasons, and his nearly 18 yards-per-catch average in 2006 was one of the better single-season totals of the last 20 years.
Here's what I like about Lymon: He had good size (6-foot-4, 210 pounds), and he is the right blend of speed and athleticism that I think he would work well with a quarterback like Drew Brees. But then again, who wouldn't?
Yes, he had off-field issues that shortened his career. But I have enough good citizens on my team that Lymon would fall in line. Again, with Brees at quarterback, who wouldn't?
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