More: For Purdue football recruiting, it starts with the look

From an up-bringing in inner-city Chicago, to the deck of the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy and the shores of Middle Eastern countries during wartime, to assistant coaching positions at some of the smallest college football programs you'll find en route to key positions at some of its largest, it's been a unique path Eron Hodges has traveled that's taken him to one of the most important positions on Purdue's football coaching staff.

And, a funny beginning to that chapter of his story.

It was in April that Purdue's JaMarcus Shephard reached out to Hodges — then Ohio State's assistant director of player personnel — on Jeff Brohm's behalf, to express interest in him for Purdue's player personnel position, newly vacant following the springtime retirement of Don Dunn.

In response, Hodges made what in recruiting terms you might consider an unofficial visit, though a particularly understated one.

He showed up in West Lafayette the day of Purdue's spring game to hide in plain sight. He'd made it known he wasn't visiting intending to meet with anyone, but rather to simply watch. So he did, from the stands, dressed to blend in.

“When people know you’re watching, they put on faces, and then you don’t know who they truly are," Hodges said this summer, a few weeks after beginning in Purdue's player personnel role. "When you look like a regular Joe, they’re just themselves.”

Following Purdue's end-of-spring scrimmage that day, fans were invited into the program's indoor practice facility for autographs, providing ample cover for Hodges to roam.

He deviated into Purdue's brand-new weight room.

“The place I came from, everything’s guarded. You can’t get anywhere unless they know you or you’ve got a badge that says you’re staff," Hodges said of Ohio State. "I figured somebody would stop me, but I got into the weight room and said, ‘Oh my god, this weight room’s better than Ohio State’s.’ Looking around at all the technology, all of it, you think, ‘They mean business here. This is important to them.’

“Then I just said, ‘Let’s see how far I can go without somebody stopping me.’ I walk out, see the locker room and think, ‘Man, this locker room is beautiful,’ and then I go up the stairs and everything I saw was top notch, three levels of elite (facilities).

“I walked into the coaches' area and someone stopped me and asked if I needed help. I said, ‘I’m good, just looking around.’ I asked if he worked there and if he could give me a tour. He said he couldn’t because his wife was with him. He asked me who I was and I told him. It was Sean Pugh. He said, ‘Brady Brohm would be upset if anybody but him gave you the tour.’ So he calls Brady. And at the time, I don’t know who Brady is. I just know he was this young dude following me on Twitter."

Jeff Brohm's ubiquitous teenage son did in fact show up and provide that tour, which completed Hodges' first in-depth look at the program he now plays such a crucial role for.

Shortly thereafter, Hodges formally interviewed for the position, at which time he indicated to Purdue that if an offer was coming, so was he.

“As soon as I sat down with the staff and the minute I walked in," Hodges said, "I felt like I wanted to loosen up my tie, things were so comfortable.”

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The offer came, and so did Hodges.

A few weeks later, he was on the job at Purdue, playing a central role in its recruiting efforts, an arena in which the player personnel position looms large all across the country, a post that's become more and more proactive and involved in the recruiting process, far beyond its largely administrative roots.

But the uncommon circumstances of Hodges' hiring at Purdue fell in line with the uncommon road that brought him to his office in the program's sparkling new facility and into a prominent role in what the school hopes is the beginning of a golden era of sorts for its football program.

It started in Chicago, where his Mississippi-born parents raised him and his nine siblings before relocating to Joliet for his high school years, the last of which he was barred by his mother, Linda, from playing football because of his grades.

“My GPA went from 2.0 to maybe 2.9 that semester and I was really upset I didn’t get to 3.0," Hodges said, "because it was the first time in my life I was fighting for something.”

The term took on a different context after he and friend Ryan Dodge joined the Navy following high school.

Then, 9/11 had just happened. Hodges watched the towers fall as a senior in high school. On Oct. 1 he enlisted. "Can't run from a fight," as he puts it.

In response to Sept. 11, the U.S. launched Operation Enduring Freedom against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Hodges, petty officer third class, assigned to the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, didn't deploy as part of that operation, but when Iraqi Freedom launched in '03, so did the Kennedy.

The aircraft carrier took Hodges to stations in Dubai, Bahrain, Malta, Belali, Spain and the United Arab Emirates during his deployment. In those days, while in the Navy, Hodges came under the mentorship of Victor Glover, who in 2013 NASA minted as an astronaut, and it was Glover, who played college football at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, who may have helped set Hodges on a path toward a career in football during those informal games in the sands of Dubai.

After nearly 50 months of service, Hodges moved down that football path upon the Kennedy returning to port in Jacksonville, where the GI Bill combined with money earned pumping gas and working at Dillard's eventually got Hodges a college degree, from Illinois State in 2012, by way of the College of DuPage in Chicagoland.

Hodges' path ultimately toward Purdue then began getting steered by Purdue connections.

At ISU, Hodges had latched on with former Boilermaker player and coach Brock Spack's staff as an undergraduate assistant coach, working with former Purdue DB Lamar Conard, now a Miami (Ohio) assistant.

From Illinois State, Hodges landed as a strength and conditioning intern at Notre Dame under Tony Rolinski and Elisa Angeles, who's now at Florida State. A brief coaching stint at Valparaiso followed — "We lost a ton of games, but that time was instrumental in my life," Hodges said — and then a strength and conditioning internship at Ohio State, where he might have planted seeds for a future opportunity.

Purdue then influenced Hodges' career again.

Darrell Hazell took the Purdue job, opening a spot on the staff of his successor at Kent State, Paul Haynes. Hodges took a graduate assistant coaching position with the Golden Flashes, continuing his bouncing back and forth between coaching and working in strength and conditioning.

A different sort of opportunity followed, an interview for a position in Urban Meyer's recruiting office at Ohio State.

“I came in there dressed in damn near all blue," Hodges joked, "which everyone knows is the cardinal sin, to wear anything resembling Michigan colors.

"I remember Coach Meyer saying he wanted a front-office guy, a guy who really wanted to do this. He said, ‘And you’re a football coach. But it’s Mark Pantoni’s call.’”

Pantoni, Ohio State's revered director of player personnel, made that call in Hodges' favor and he was off to Columbus, where he found both a job and a home on the couch of another of his Navy mentors, Kenneth Lake, who resided in the city.

As part of Ohio State's recruiting machine, Hodges worked long hours and starred in the program's idea-driven "creativity meetings" under Pantoni, "the best in the business, the absolute best," per Hodges.

When Buckeye assistant Luke Fickell landed the head coaching job at Cincinnati and an opportunity might have loomed for Hodges to accompany him, Meyer and Pantoni met bumped him up to their assistant director of player personnel.

“They said, ‘What do you want to be?’” Hodges said. “At this point, I’m a grown man, but still kind of a kid, and I said, ‘I want to be the next Urban Meyer. I want to be the next you.’ That’s literally what I said to Urban Meyer, and hindsight being 20/20, I’m an idiot for ever doing that, but he said, ‘I see a gift in you and want to groom you in this area,’ and that’s literally what Urban Meyer and Mark Pantoni did for me the next two-and-a-half years. They poured a lot into me and taught me how to operate, and that’s where the passion kind of started, and it became, ‘You know, I am really good at this.’”

Purdue now stands to benefit.

While Hodges signed on a few months into the 2019 recruiting cycle, his presence seemed to impact things for the better immediately. Prospects have spoken highly of him — Rivals.com four-star linebacker Cameron Williams: "He's already like an uncle to me" — and the results are what they are. Purdue currently has one of the top recruiting classes in the Big Ten committed, an upward trajectory that preceded Hodges, but one the program will obviously want to carry on, if not exceed, with him.

Jeff Brohm cites Hodges' relationship skills as one his strengths in his recruiting-driven position. Clearly, it's part of what he is, as illustrated by the fact that all his mentors, all those people who helped him along the way, they all still speak regularly.

Glover — the astronaut — offered, maybe jokingly, maybe not, his services for fly-overs before Ohio State games. Lake, the man who Hodges credits with teaching him to apply himself while in the Navy, opened up his home in Columbus to him. Conard was the first call Hodges made after hanging up with Shephard in the spring.

And so on.

"Relationships are everything to me," Hodges said, "as you can tell."

That would put him in the right line of work.

Recruiting's about relationships.

And experiences.

If there's one thing his story illustrates, it's that Hodges knows both.

“Life’s about experiences, so how you experience someone else, how they experience you, that’s what life is," Hodges said.

"And that’s all recruiting is."

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