You may recall a long time ago, I asked you to send in stories regarding Purdue athletes. Then that feature died on the vine because I'm lazy and also because my life interfered. However, we didn't forget about them and the best ones will run over the next couple weeks. Enjoy.
Today's story is from Daniel.
Sophomore year before I truly started following recruiting and all of that I had an EAS class in the basement of MSEE. I would wait in the hall before class for a couple minutes waiting for the previous class to leave. A really big guy -- of course I am only 5'6 so everyone is big to me -- and I started chatting. He never once mentioned to me he was on the football team or anything like that. One day a girl asked if he played football and he said he did, it was Ryan Baker.
He was the absolute nicest and most soft spoken guy. Him and I would chat before class and hardly ever was the conversation about football. We looked over the homework together before class often and he always seemed really focused on doing a good job in class.
The thing that stuck out to me was after that everytime I passed him on campus he always stopped and caught up with me for a minute or two. Not once did I see him in a bad mood or acting like a sterotypical idiot football player. When he got drafted by the Dolphins it was the first time I ever have felt that I knew a pro football player.