Big Ten Focus #1 - Purdue

 I now begin my once-a-week analysis of the 14 teams in the Big Ten Conference, in honor of the final year that I will be featuring them in my columns.  I will mostly go in order of the teams' admission to the conference, except I will be postponing my Alma Mater, and founding member, the University of Illinois, to the final week.

The Big Ten Conference was actually the brainchild of the President of Purdue University at the time, so I will start with founding member Purdue.  Purdue has been a stronger conference competitor in other sports, but the football team has seen some success.  They have had five unbeaten seasons in their history, the last occurring in 1943.  That was also the last of their conference titles, sharing it with Michigan.  They had previously shared the conference crown with Michigan in 1931 and 1932.  The only year the Boilermakers were the lone conference champ was 1929.

Purdue has sent several players to the NFL, but perhaps their most prominent have been three quarterbacks.  All three of these gentlemen have won Super Bowls, and each made major contributions to their teams and the league.  Perhaps none so much as Len Dawson, who recently passed away.  Dawson played in the first Super Bowl (losing to Bart Starr's Green Bay Packers) and then returned three years later to give the Kansas City Chiefs their only Super Bowl title in the 20th Century.

Another major Prudue graduate QB was Bob Griese.  Not only is he one of a small number of QBs to win back-to-back Super Bowls, he is also the only QB to lead a perfect unbeaten team, the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

Of course, the most recent Super Bowl QB from Purdue was Drew Brees.  He is most known for turning around the fortunes of the "also ran" New Orleans Saints, basically single-handedly removing the "Aints" nickname from the New Orleans vernacular.  He also was one of the first football players to initiate recovery programs after Hurricane Katrina, forging a still-unbreakable connection vetween the player and his adopted city.

(Incidently, Purdue is one of only two schools to have produced three Super Bowl winning QBs.  The other school?  Alabama, who produced the first two Super Bowl winning QBS in Bart Starr and Joe Namath)

Another interesting fact about Purdue -- the have the second oldest rivalry trophy in the Old Oaken Bucket, the prize awarded to the winner of the in=state rivalry game with Indiana.