Boiler Recruiting Update

Purdue got a verbal from their biggest recruit for the class of 2008 yesterday as Ralph Bolden "committed" to our Boilers. The 5'10" Georgia native, Bolden, had offers from Florida, Georgia Tech, South Carolina, Clemson and others. He's only a 3-star recruit, but that doesn't matter to me. He runs a 4.43 and is a true cornerback...not a position player that Purdue plans on converting into a corner. I honestly don't remember the last true cornerback that the Boilers recruited to actually play corner...but I have a memory like an 80 year-old woman.

Purdue's class is now up to 13 and will probably not be hailed by any publications as noteworthy. But, Tiller has had not-so-good-luck with blue chip recruits. Guys like (in no particular order) A.T. Simpson, Doug Van Dyke, Garrett Bushong, Kevin Noel, Joey Harris, Jason Kacinko, J.B. Paxson, Brandon Kirsch, Aaron Levin, Brandon Hance & Kyle Williams have all either not lived up to their billing OR gotten kicked off the team and sentenced to 37 years in prison shortly after.

Arguably Tiller's best team, which took the Boilers to the Rose Bowl was not highly-touted at all and had a bunch of guys who switched from their high school position (Matt Light & Chukki Okobi) or weren't recruited hard because of injury (Drew Brees). The point is, if blue chip recruits automatically won games, UND would have probably been undefeated in many of the seasons in the past 13 years...and definitely would have won a bowl game during that same period. Raw talent is only a small part of what makes a football team successful, but it doesn't hurt.