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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 5 30 would just throw the board. Not with just sports, but a lot was competi- tive. A lot of fights broke out." But those battles helped shape Jake Replogle over the years. Not only was he the youngest, six years younger than Tyler; four years behind Adam; and two years younger than Mike, but he was the smallest, too. Jake was a late bloomer, still playing guard on the basketball team as a high school freshman and linebacker for the varsi- ty football team as a sophomore. He'd get picked on. "I'd like to think that I'd beat up my brothers now," said Jake, who is up to 280 now on his 6-foot-5 frame, with sights on being 290 by the fall. "But when I was little, just getting beat up on and them saying how small I was, it kind of gave me a chip on my shoulder, knowing I had to work harder." That edge might help Jake de- velop into the best football player of the brothers. And that's saying something, con- sidering Tyler was an honorable men- tion All-Big Ten linebacker for Indiana in 2010; Adam, who is now a third-year center for the NFL's Atlanta Falcons, was a second-team All-Big Ten defen- sive tackle and the Hoosiers' MVP in 2012; and Mike finished his career as an Indiana special teamer last season. Jake could turn out to be more, considering his significant progres- sion over his first couple seasons as a Boilermaker. He's gained significant weight and strength, expanding to his current size from the 240 or so pounds he started at as a freshman in 2013. By the start of his sophomore year last season, he'd already put on 30 pounds, allowing him to move inside to defensive tackle. Then, he enjoyed a bit of a breakout, with 10.5 of his 40 tackles going for loss, with three sacks. But Purdue envisions Replogle as even more disruptive than that, par- ticularly now that he's grown more comfortable with his new physical dimensions. Even at 280, he doesn't look it, carrying much of the additional strength in powerful thighs and torso. That makes him a potentially dan- gerous interior player, having the lower-body strength needed to battle with offensive linemen. But he has athleticism too, perhaps carried over from his early high school days as a linebacker, that allows him to play on the edge. "He's fundamentally sound and a very smart football player," Purdue de- fensive line coach Rubin Carter said. "He studies all the time and is really meticulous about wanting to make improvements with his hands and his footwork and the techniques to make him a better football player. "I believe he has the ability to be a two-dimensional football player for us, be effective against the run but also in the pass, be able to get some pressure and push into the backfield." Now at Purdue, Replogle limits his destruction to the football field. Back in Centerville? Well … There was the incident with the TV, a brand-new Sony flatscreen, back when those were becoming popular, that dad was particularly fond of. The death of that TV came as a re- sult of a made-up basketball-like game involving marbles; the impacts of which caused black splotches on the screen. "I don't know exactly what we were doing," Jake said. "But I remember that Tyler, I think, ended up hitting this nice TV with a marble. We tried to hide it for about two weeks, until final- ly (dad) found out. We all just pointed the finger at Tyler and he was really mad about it. A lot of stuff was broken in that house." The drywall, for instance, which not only was dented due to the living room football games but wrestling too, and it once also absorbed Jake's foot due to a particularly bad showing in Mad- den football on the PlayStation. Tom became a master at repairing broken walls. Mom Theresa had to remind Jake that he couldn't treat friends like his brothers, so he couldn't roughhouse quite so fervently with them. She, un- derstandably, didn't want phone calls from Little Johnny's mom, wondering why her son's nose was broken. "Sometimes, I'd go overboard with my friends," Jake said. Call it survival instincts. Being the runt of the family for much of his ado- lescence, until a growth spurt between his sophomore and junior years at Centerville, Jake had to learn to push back. "I was always told I was going to be the smallest," Jake said. "Just because my brothers would be the tallest guys in their grades — they'd "He's a survivor. He's got a little mean streak going there." Tom Replogle on his youngest son Jake, who grew up battling with three older brothers