Three Thoughts From The Weekend: The upshot of transfer culture, offensive linemen and more

GoldandBlack.com’s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column runs every Monday morning, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting or whatever else comes to mind. In this week’s edition, an upshot of transfer culture for NCAA sports, football recruiting and more.

ON A POSITIVE FROM THE TRANSFER CAROUSEL

Before I unfurl this half-baked take, let me just say that transfer flexibility is a very positive thing for those who benefit from it, the very people who should have had more control over their careers and lives — the athletes. I have come to realize that original feelings that they ought to be protected from themselves at a particularly impulsive stage of their lives was probably selling the athletes and their decision-making capabilities short.

Otherwise, this development will drive coaches from the business and inevitably wear on fans who’ve historically connected with their teams in a way that’ll be weakened by the fact they, you know, have no idea who’ll be on those teams from year to year. Once all this settles down, the COVID year goes away and the NIL market corrects, time will tell what transfer culture will do to the overall strength of college football and college basketball.

Here is a positive, though: It is almost late May and we are all still talking about college football, because everyone’s still assembling the teams they’ll be fielding in like three months. It’s like all the excitement that used to make the February national signing date has been moved to spring, with much higher stakes, because these aren’t redshirt-bound freshman offensive guards being recruited at the moment; they’re starting running backs.

Joe Tiller used to say that anything that got people talking about college football was good for college football. In this sense, transfer culture has been good for college football.

ON OFFENSIVE LINE RECRUITING

This is completely random, but it’s May and random is just going to have to do sometimes.

With the season just a few months away, Purdue continues to need help on the offensive line. Time is a flat circle. It’s been a rite of winter and spring, this sort of thing. (Hey, that rhymes.) Every year since the graduate transfer became a thing, Purdue’s worked the transfer wire for linemen, particularly tackles.

Now, Ryan Walters and his staff pick up the baton, with so many Brohm-recruited linemen gone. Offensive line concerns are not unique to Purdue, but they are particularly consistent at Purdue, for a variety of reasons that I’ve detailed before, in a link long lost.

High school offensive line recruiting is the most inexact personnel science there is, in my opinion, which is why in the Transfer Era I’m not sure it wouldn’t be sound business to redirect efforts mostly to that arena. Obviously, you want to recruit the best of the best offensive linemen and try to protect your home state borders, but as for those 50/50 he’s-something-to-work-with camp guys, maybe recruit them now, let some poor MAC team sign them and live with all the uncertainty, then leverage your pre-existing relationship on the back end when they’re available again.

Yeah, everybody needs depth and competition, so numbers matter, but a two-prep, three-transfer class most years would more than suffice.

Just something coaches all over ought to think about at every position moving forward, how to dedicate resources as effectively as can be.

Gicarri Harris / Player submitted photo

ON GICARRI HARRIS

I don’t want to delve too far into the “Purdue needs this or that” waters because Purdue’s doing just fine, short of its well-documented NCAA Tournament losses the past few seasons, but I will say this: Sometimes the right recruit just happens to come along at the right time.

Years back, I thought that was the case with Dakota Mathias, whose offensive skill and savvy were precisely what the Boilermakers needed at that time. That whole class, actually, because Vince Edwards and P.J. Thompson were right there with him.

Now, I wonder if the same sort of thing might be true of Gicarri Harris should Purdue land him.

I can’t claim to be the nation’s foremost Gicarri Harris expert. I’ve seen him play at only two events to this point, but I do know enough to be dangerous, and in Harris, I see a big-time competitor with a defensive mentality and the physicality, strength, relative quickness and length to really be a transformational add to a Purdue backcourt that could definitely use such things. And it would come without compromising shooting as has happened with some of Purdue’s best perimeter defenders over the yeas — Chris Kramer, early Keaton Grant, Kelsey Barlow and Nojel Eastern.

Purdue’s quietly put together a great-looking 2024 recruiting class.

Harris, I think, would be a huge addition in the sense that he’s so much of what Purdue needs exactly when it needs it.

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