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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 27, ISSUE 4 15 in right now and compete for posi- tions and be given every opportunity to showcase (whether) they're ready to go. We'll hope they're ready to go. It'll be important for our team and im- portant to crank up the competition. I think it's important to have compe- tition at every position, whether you have a bona fide starter or not. He has to know that he has to continue to work to earn playing time. "Even if he is a bona fide starter, we have to have guys who can rotate in and give him some rest, or if some- one goes down or gets injured, the team doesn't totally collapse." And Purdue hit the emerging grad-transfer market hard. Football is going the way of basket- ball, where the fifth-year transfer has become one of the most coveted of springtime commodities. The rules allow for a player who has graduated from a school with re- maining eligibility to transfer with immediate eligibility at his next stop, as long as he'll be pursuing a gradu- ate program unavailable at the first school. Purdue's 2017 Signees Player Pos. Ht. Wt. Hometown/School Jacob Abrams DB 6-2 190 Carmel, Ind. (Carmel) Griffin Alstott QB 6-2 205 St. Petersburg, Fla. (Northside-Christian) Derrick Barnes LB 6-1 240 Covington, Ky. (Holy Cross) Viktor Beach OL 6-5 300 Ft. Myers, Fla. (Bishop Verot) KeyRon Catlett ATH 5-10 180 Hopkinsville, Ky. (Christian County) Allen Daniels DT 6-2 300 Dacula, Ga. (Dacula) D'J Edwards WR 6-2 180 West Palm Beach, Fla. (Palm Beach Lakes) Tyler Hamilton WR 5-9 168 Hilton Head, S.C. (Hilton Head) Kai Higgins DE 6-4 245 Pomona, Calif. (Chaffey C.C.) Jalen Jackson OL 6-2 260 Powder Spring, Ga. (McEachern) T.J. Jallow DB 6-2 205 Olive Branch, Miss. (East Mississippi C.C.) Cornel Jones LB 6-2 230 Miami (Miami Central) Tobias Larry LB 6-1 200 Lakeland, Fla. (Kathleen) Dedrick Mackey DB 5-11 165 Miami (Booker T. Washington) Kenneth Major DB 6-0 190 Hopkinsville, Ky. (Christian County) Robert McWilliams DE 6-4 210 Coral Gables, Fla. (Coral Gables) Darius Pittman TE 6-3 235 Bay St. Louis, Miss. (St. Stanislaus) Giovanni Reviere DL 6-5 270 Chattanooga, Tenn. (McCallie) Nick Sipe QB 6-4 190 Villa Park, Calif (Villa Park) Ethan Smart OL 6-6 290 Southaven, Miss. (Northeast Mississippi C.C.) Mark Stickford OL 6-6 260 Carmel, Ind. (Carmel) D.J. Washington OL 6-4 275 Louisville, Ky. (Ballard) Terry Wright WR 5-11 170 Memphis (Coffeyville C.C.) Isaac Zico WR 6-0 190 Milledgeville, Ga. (Georgia Military College) GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES Purdue's 2017 recruiting class was put together under difficult circumstances, but done so with an eye on the short term. Here are the spots where it could have a chance to pay immediate dividends. Wide receiver: Newcomers are going to play, because Purdue has very little else. And new coach Jeff Brohm's offense is known to be wide receiver-heavy. That's good news for junior college signees Isaac Zico and Terry Wright and early-enrolling freshmen Tyler Hamilton and D'J Ed- wards, most notably. Secondary: Purdue needs numbers at the very least in the secondary, but preferably an upgrade. Junior college transfer T.J. Jallow could loom large here. That's what he was recruited for. Offensive line: Purdue, on paper, is hurting here, with a bunch of important seniors gone, few proven commodities returning and what looks like a perilous lack of depth. True freshmen very rarely play on the offensive line, but for the third year in a row, Purdue inked a junior college transfer it'll hope can fill a void. Ethan Smart enrolled in January and may open his Purdue career in the spring as a starter. And Boilermaker coaches have hit the graduate-transfer wire hard looking for O-line help. — Brian Neubert