The Best I Played With: A Purdue player's perspective, Chris Clopton

Player perspective series: Joe Holland

"Catching Up" series ($): Akin Ayodele | Bernard Pollard

Draft ticker: Picks 1-20

GoldandBlack.com staff is making its decisions about Purdue's best players since 1997 with a 20-year player draft that'll run through July.

In conjunction with the draft, we also will check in with former Boilermakers to get their perspectives on the best players they played with during their careers. They offered up behind-the-scenes looks at intense work ethics, how players got the most out of their teammates and even reflected on funny stories during their days together.

Next up, defensive back Chris Clopton, who started on Purdue's last Rose Bowl team, as told to Stacy Clardie:

"There’s a lot of great guys you played with, those who kind of leave a mark. Obviously, Drew (Brees), which for me, I would say, Drew was a good player, but I would say more than anything one of the things I’ve always respected is, even off the field, he never faked it. He was genuine. You could tell with guys, sooner or later, your true character would come out. But he was just always very genuine. He would have fun. He was a fun guy to be around. He wasn’t a stiff or anything like that. (laughs) We would trash talk, and I picked him off a few times in practice and I would make sure I rubbed it in. I’m sure a play later he would get us back and throw a touchdown. But we would always trash talk with each other in practice. But that was fun.

"One guy who just had such a presence with the team is Rosey (Colvin). I’ve told this story a little bit, but every camp we always did what we called the rookie show. I’m 148 pounds coming in. I just didn’t want to do the rookie show. I remember Rosevelt saying, ‘Those who don’t perform will get performed on.’ I’m like, ‘All right.’ All my guys, my freshmen, are like, ‘We’ve got your back. They’re not going to do anything.’ They literally waited, oh gosh, probably a couple weeks and at that time, the locker room, the old metal lockers were kind of in rows and my locker was at the very end, so there was no way out or anything. I’m changing one day, and Rosey and the entire defensive line, offensive line, come in and Rosey looks at me (and says), ‘Those who don’t perform will get performed on.’ At that moment, none of my guys are around. So they decided to take the saran wrap — that they used to put the ice on guys — and they saran wrap me all the way up, carried me, like up in the air, and put me into a cold ice tub we had. I had to laugh. It’s all fun. But I was just like, ‘I thought I escaped that.’ But he always had something funny to say. He always trash-talked. It added to the positive energy. It wasn’t to the point it was a detriment. Him and Chukky Okobi would always fight each other. When we had these huge team brawls or fights (in practice), at the end of the day, in the locker room, we love each other. But the personality and the character.

"For me, I would say one of the neat things that we’ve had, you’ve had your Akin Ayodeles who came in, we’re still close today. We had a team that when we first started that no one believed in. Kind of look at this team (current) right here and they won’t get the time of day. Everyone is probably saying, ‘You think we can win a game?’ For us, we were able to come together and we fed off each other, that positive energy. We really felt like we were over-performing probably what we should have. I’ll be honest, I’ve been blessed, but you’re playing Big Ten football, 148 pounds. Yeah, I may have been fast, but there’s a lot of other guys just as fast as me, twice my size. I look back and I’m like, ‘Man, what the heck was I thinking going out there?’ Fearless and having fun. But a lot of that, too, was me being comfortable around the guys I played with because I knew someone had my back — and literally had to. (laughs)

"Stu (Schweigert) was raw (as a freshman). I remember when Stu first came in, we did certain things to freshman at the time, which was all fun. He took it. He adapted very well to our culture, to the team. He was a fun guy. For me, everything he did was probably an extreme, on and off. But I would say, in looking at him, he probably that freshman year wasn’t as disciplined but his talent and his passion for the game, that compensated for that and really helped him to be very successful and help us at a young age. My senior year, you had Stu, you had all the linebackers, Landon (Johnson), Gilbert Gardner, (Niko) Koutouvides, we had all those young guys. We won a Big Ten championship and went to a Rose Bowl with a lot of young guys who played.

"That offensive line were characters. (Matt) Light, Mr. Personality. Chukky Okobi, one of the things I loved about Chukky, Chukky never smiled. He always was a grump. I would do it just because I knew it’d make him mad — we’re doing two-a-days or something, (and I'd say) ‘Chukky, man, smile!’ ‘Ain’t nothing to smile about.’ We were in Ross-Ade practicing, and Rosey said something to Chukky that, I think, offended him. Next thing you know, you see Chukky doing a ninja kick — both feet in the air — drop-kicks Rosey. Rosey goes flying. He’s like, ‘What?! Did you literally just drop kick me?’ Tiller, in his little fashion, didn’t yell or anything. He just (said), ‘Chukky,’ and pointed. We knew what that meant — get out of practice."

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