Football signing day is a bit over two weeks away...and Hazell's nearly-complete coaching staff is pounding the pavement hard. They had recruits on campus last weekend, all of the players who were on campus attended Purdue's throttling of West Virginia...and a few of the coaches stayed for the entire game, according to Gold and Black.
At the end of the weekend, Purdue had two more verbals and a few guys who had changed their status from committed to another school to open and listening to offers from schools, including Purdue.
Just because we don't talk about recruiting here at BS doesn't mean we don't know that it's going on. But that said, we generally stay out of it because there's so much second-hand info out there and a ton of conjecture that clouds the picture. PLUS, and probably more importantly, and get this, NOTHING IS FINAL UNTIL A PLAYER HAS SIGNED.
There's a highly sought after player who lit up the Twitterverse in the last few days because, after a long commitment to Purdue, he got an offer from another school that gave him pause. Hey, I don't think anyone would fault a guy for thinking about and looking at all of his options. As a parent, if LBD was getting offers to play college football (which will never happen, by the way), I'd tell him not to commit until he's sure that he's going to that place. Not much good comes out of backing out of a commitment, even if it's a verbal commitment; it sets a bad precedent for later life.
But even the cleanest recruiting effort without any breaking of NCAA rules is a dirty business...Big programs use the middle programs to find a guy that they missed and then they throw a scrap offer at a player in the 11th hour. Typically, their name recognition pays big dividends and the school that put in the time and effort ends up holding the bag, but without the kid that they thought was a shoe-in.
If you want recruiting news, check out the Black Hammer- outside of Rivals or Scout sites, they're probably the best Purdue recruiting site around...and they do their own reporting from time-to-time, which is impressive. I don't think we know the guys personally and they didn't ask us for the plug, I just thought I'd give the heads up...we all have our niche after all. Ours is looking and sounding delectable.
When the guys are signed, we'll expound about them and let you know our thoughts. As of right now, the class looks pretty solid...but as we know from cases like a few clowns who currently play for UM, things can change literally overnight.
...Stay tuned.