GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 26, ISSUE 6 33
Spotlight's On
A
year ago, Markell Jones spent May sitting out.
The running back, coming off a strong finish
to his first spring at Purdue, was too lackadaisical,
leaving campus for Maymester — when many others stick
around to work out — to head home to Columbus, Ind.
Maybe it was Mom's food that did him in.
Maybe it was fast food.
Maybe it was the lure of friends, many of them were
just graduating high school, something he had done
months earlier so he could get to Purdue in the spring.
But whatever the reason — or reasons — Jones let
his conditioning slip. By the time he returned to campus
in early June, the 5-foot-9 running back checked in at a
bloated 215 pounds.
"I was a little disappointed, very disappointed," said
Duane Carlisle, Purdue's director of sports performance,
who runs the offseason conditioning program. "He came
back probably 12 pounds overweight."
It wasn't the start that Jones needed. The high school
star — he rushed for a state-record 3,565 yards and 60
touchdowns in his four years at Columbus East and won
Indiana Mr. Football as a senior — suffered a few hiccups
in his first months as a Boilermaker. He hadn't studied
his playbook enough before that first spring, causing him
a slow start filled with botched assignments. And then the
weight issue.
But it's hard to be so good without being able to learn from
missteps. And Jones has done so; as a freshman, he gained
875 yards and scored 10 touchdowns, becoming one of the
most dynamic offensive underclassmen in the Big Ten.
Only a sophomore, Markell Jones
is already Purdue's marquee
offensive player. Although it's been
an accelerated rise, it's not been
without bumps.
BY KYLE CHARTERS
KCharters@GoldandBlack.com