No Twitter, no Instagram, no Facebook, no SnapChat, no nothing.

Aidan O’Connell, Purdue’s rising star quarterback, isn’t on social media. You read that correctly. A twentysomething college student with no social media accounts does exist.

O’Connell is a unicorn.

“I've kind of thought about it,” said O’Connell, when asked if he may sign up and start Tweeting, Facebooking and TikToking. “I'm getting a lot of pressure from people, but I don't think it's gonna happen.”

Back in high school, O’Connell was posting smiley faces, praying hands and flexed biceps along with everyone else.

“I had it like from basically my whole high school career,” he said. “I just kind of made a decision when I came to college I didn't want to do that anymore. It was kind of taking away from me more than it was giving me.”

But now? O’Connell balks at scrolling through his phone to like the 84th selfie you've posted this week. And, no, he didn’t see that hilarious Snap of you with bunny ears. So, don’t ask.

When it came time for O’Connell to announce he was returning for a sixth season in 2022, he had to do so through the official Purdue football Twitter account. Because, well, you know ... he has no social media.

Amazing.

“At the beginning, it's a great way to stay connected with people and I don't doubt that,” said O’Connell. “It's a great way to talk to people you haven't talked to in a long time.

“But I think for me, it was taking more from me. It was taking time, energy, joy a lot of times from me that just didn't feel like I needed to do. So, I just kind of made the decision to let go of that and I'm kind of so far gone, I just can't really see myself getting back into it.”

But, surely, O’Connell will grab his girlfriend’s phone and scroll through her social media timelines to see what’s being said about himself, right?

“No,” he said. “No, I don't. I'll have people show me stuff, family and friends show me stuff. People are funny, people are clever. So, if someone sees something funny or a funny comment about me, then they'll show it to me. But I don't ever seek that stuff out.”

While O’Connell avoids all the negativity that social media often fuels, he also is missing out on the chance to build his brand. And, in this new-age of Name, Image and Likeness, building a brand means even more if an athlete wants to make some cash.

“That's kind of the problem we're running into right now,” fessed O’Connell. “I got to figure out some ways to maybe do commercials or stuff like that. Again, that's stuff I'll work on in the offseason. I'm not too worried about that right now.”

Some around O’Connell have told him he needs to re-consider his self-imposed social media ban for NIL reasons. After all, O’Connell is a rising star quarterback in the Big Ten who was consensus second-team All-Big Ten this season. And he’ll be one of the league’s most hyped signal-callers next season, looking to kick his profile up a notch with a win vs. Tennessee in the Music City Bowl to cap the 2021 season.

“Not a lot of people are doing that,” said O’Connell in reference to being off the social media grid. “So, I'm kind of the only one doing that. So, I definitely hear like, 'Why do you do that?' All that stuff.”

Several of O’Connell’s teammates have cut NIL deals. Former teammate George Karlaftis was one of the most active, shilling for supplements and a grill while doing TV ads for a Lafayette car dealer, among other endorsements. Several players are hawking t-shirts. Tyler Witt has opened a tattoo business.

O’Connell? Nada.

The cherubic O’Connell is a marketable commodity with earning power as the 2022 face of a Purdue program known as the “Cradle of Quarterbacks.” If there's one position on the Boilermaker football team that should be swimming in NIL deals, it's the quarterback.

The Long Grove, Ill., native is beyond likable, the ultimate kid nextdoor who delivered your newspaper and shoveled your driveway. O’Connell is the boy you’d want your daughter to date.

Not enough for you? O’Connell’s rise from faceless walk-on to BMOC is a script straight from Hollywood.

Bottom line: O’Connell has much positivity to sell on social media--along with a rags-to-riches-story--while so many other shameless self-promoters pedal negativity, hate, jealousy and oodles of vanity.

“I haven't had it in so long, it would be very, very weird for me to get it again,” said O’Connell. “So, people ask if it's like hard to stay away and at this point, it would be hard to restart all that.”

While he recently was paid to sign autographs at a Purdue sports memorabilia show in West Lafayette, O’Connell’s NIL deals have been non-existent.

“Hopefully soon," he said. "But, again, it's hard to focus on that stuff when you're preparing for a game. So, maybe in the offseason I'll dive into that a little bit more.”

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