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64 GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED a bond. Parker says the five who have yet to arrive on campus are in an online group chat, encouraging each other to take care of the individual workouts that Purdue has sent out to signees. "We all have the mindset that we know that the guys at Purdue are already there working hard, so we have to do the same thing while we're here," Parker said. "We owe them that much. Then, when we get there, we owe them e v e n m o r e . "We definitely have camaraderie already." Purdue thinks it could be a group that not only has size (in numbers) but size (in physicality), the latter a charac- teristic the Boilermakers have coveted. Parker might be listed at a little more than 200 right now but has estimat- ed he'll come to West Lafayette 15 or so pounds heavier. And the cornerbacks — Hardy is listed at 6-1, while Smiley is 6-foot and Hayes and Shuman are 5-11 — have good length. Last season, nearly all of Purdue's corner- back snaps went to the 5-11 Brown and the 5-9 Williams. "I think you look for the best players first, but we're very fortunate to have some length on the back end," Coach Darrell Hazell said. "Any time you can get guys with long arms at the corner position and a sense of timing with those long arms, it's something special. "It's a big group (in terms of physical size) of second- ary guys." But some will have to step up, playing not only with size but good instincts, short memory and bravado need- ed for the positions. Maybe Hardy can be one. He wants it. While he was ineligible during his junior season at St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale, one of Florida's top high school football programs, Hardy lost his job as the Raiders' top tailback and he wasn't going to be able to win it back. "They basically forgot about me," he said. "I ended up moving to the defense. At high school at St. Thomas, there's no excuses, you can't slip up or your spot will get taken." Hardy, though, didn't immediately embrace a move. First, he had to be coaxed back onto the team during his junior year, taking a few weeks to regroup — it didn't help that St. Thomas won a state championship that sea- son — before coming back out to practice. Then, just before the start of his senior year, the new defensive coordinator started suggesting, and kept sug- gesting, a shift to cornerback. Hardy went with it, but not as a starter; he backed up and got into the rotation. And no college offers came. "At the time, I was very immature," Hardy said. "Sit- ting out my junior year helped me see the mistakes I was making and how I could correct them for the rest of my life and make better decisions. Going in to my senior year, I cleaned up my life, cleaned up everything, the mistakes I made. My grades still weren't good — they were a lot better than previously — but not high enough for teams to offer me. There were teams out there interested but they were afraid to put the offer on the table because of my grades. So I ended up taking the J.C. route. … And it turned out for the best." Because now he's at Purdue, where he'll get a chance to play and maybe even start. "They expect me to make an immediate impact, but nothing is guaranteed," he said. "I'm going to have to work for it, just like everybody else does." j Monroe Community College Cornerback Kamal Hardy is at Purdue for the spring, looking to lock down a spot.