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Looking Back at Recruiting, Players, Coaches Under Joe Tiller
After back-to-back 9-win seasons and coming off an upset of fourth-ranked Kansas State in the Alamo Bowl, Joe Tiller and his coaching staff thought it was time the Purdue football program reached for the stars: the four- and five-star recruits who could lift the Boilermakers into national prominence.
Tiller learned a hard lesson with the 1999 recruiting class, which not only did not measure up to his first two Boilermaker classes but saw Purdue swing and miss on too many targets.
“We had a number of players that were scheduled to come on campus the last two weeks (in January) and they just never made it. They committed elsewhere,” Tiller told the Lafayette Journal and Courier’s Tom Kubat.
“There still is a pecking order out there, even when it comes to making a campus visit. I’ve never forgotten what LaVell Edwards told me after Brigham Young won a national championship. Their staff decided to step up recruiting and go after the Top 100 players. But in the end, they got the guys BYU would normally get.”
One recruiting service ranked the 1999 Boilermaker class 53rd nationally and last in the Big Ten Conference. Of the 19 players in the class, four would go on to play in the NFL and a fifth would be a key starter for the 2000 Big Ten championship team.
Linebacker Landon Johnson would redshirt in 1999 but cracked the starting lineup in 2000. “He’s the fastest linebacker we’ve recruited since we’ve been doing this business,” Tiller said. That speed helped Johnson start four years for Purdue and play seven years in the NFL for Cincinnati, Carolina and Detroit.
Two other freshmen who would also redshirt in 1999 joined Johnson in the starting lineup the following year. Defensive end Shaun Phillips would set the Purdue record for sacks with 33.5 and earn second-team All-America honors in 2003. Phillips recorded 81.5 career sacks in a lengthy NFL career with the San Diego Chargers, Denver, Tennessee and Indianapolis.
Defensive tackle Craig Terrill came north from Lebanon, Ind., and was a four-year starter before playing in the NFL with Seattle.
Defensive end Akin Ayodele, a member of the 1997 recruiting class forced by academics to attend Coffeyville (Kan.) Junior College for two years, kept his pledge to the Boilermakers. His nine-year NFL career included stops in Jacksonville, Dallas, Miami and Buffalo.
The fifth future starter, junior college transfer Ashante Woodyard, will be forever remembered by Purdue fans for recovering Terrill’s blocked field goal and returning it for the game-winning touchdown in overtime at Wisconsin in 2000.
Lesson learned, Tiller and his staff signed an impactful class in February 2000. “We feel like this certainly is the best class we’ve been able to recruit in our short tenure here at Purdue,” Tiller said.
The star of the class was safety Stuart Schweigert, who was recruited by Tiller and defensive coordinator Brock Spack out of Saginaw, Mich. It was a major coup to get Schweigert away from Michigan and Michigan State.
Schweigert lived up to his billing, becoming a four-year starter at Purdue and leaving for the NFL with the career interceptions record. Schweigert’s 17 interceptions easily topped the 11 Rod Woodson recorded during his All-America career. Coincidentally, Woodson’s defensive coordinator at Purdue was Joe Tiller. Schweigert added the 2000 Big Ten Freshman of the Year award and was a first-team All-Big Ten selection in 2001 and 2003.
Gilbert Gardner also started as a true freshman, making the switch from wide receiver to linebacker in training camp. He went on to play five NFL seasons, including three with the Indianapolis Colts.
Other future starters signed in 2000 were offensive tackle Kelly Butler (the 24th-ranked offensive lineman in the nation), running back Joey Harris (the 19th-ranked running back in the nation), cornerbacks Antwaun Rogers and Jacques Reeves, linebacker Niko Koutouvides and two record-setting wide receivers: John Standeford and Taylor Stubblefield.
All but Stubblefield would play in the NFL
“Standeford is a guy we consider to be an exceptional candidate as a receiver,” Tiller said on signing day. “He’s tall, he has soft hands, he has very good speed. We wanted to get bigger receivers and he certainly fits that description (at 6-4).”
Standeford cracked the starting lineup as a true freshman and would leave Purdue as the all-time Big Ten leader with 266 receptions and 3,788 receiving yards. He was a semifinalist for the Biletnikoff Award as a junior and was voted a Freshman All-American in 2000.
Stubblefield was redshirted in 2000 but statistically would become Purdue’s best wide receiver until Rondale Moore and David Bell came along a decade later. The Yakima, Wash., native set the NCAA record for career receptions at 316. That figure doesn’t include his nine catches in the 2001 Sun Bowl, the final season the NCAA did not recognize bowl statistics.
His 3,629 career receiving yards ranked second in Purdue history behind Standeford. Stubblefield caught 16 touchdown passes as a senior in 2004, a school record and at the time the third-most in Big Ten history. He left Purdue as a consensus All-American and a finalist for the Biletnikoff Award. Stubblefield has been on College Football Hall of Fame ballots since becoming eligible for induction.
Of the 19 players signed in this class, eight were starters on the 2003 Purdue football team that came within an overtime loss at Ohio State of returning to the Rose Bowl.
Epilogue
Twenty-one of the 85 scholarship players on the 2000 Rose Bowl roster would go on to play in the NFL.
Tiller would retire after the 2008 season as Purdue’s winningest football coach, posting an 87-62 record.
Three of his assistants became head coaches. Defensive coordinator Brock Spack, who in hindsight should have replaced Tiller in 2009, left his alma mater to become head coach at Illinois State. Now in his 17th season, Spack is the school’s winningest coach with a 114-75 record through four games into the 2025 season.
Offensive line coach Danny Hope left after the 2001 season to become the assistant head coach at Louisville. The following year, Hope became head coach at his alma mater, Eastern Kentucky. After winning the Ohio Valley Conference title in 2007, Hope was chosen over Spack to replace Tiller following the 2008 season.
Hope was fired following the 2012 regular season with a 22-27 record. After one-year stints as an assistant at South Florida (2015) and Eastern Kentucky (2019), Hope returned to coaching at UCF following the unexpected death of offensive line coach Shawn Clark on Sept. 21. Clark coached for Hope at Purdue from 2009 to 2012.
Wide receivers coach Kevin Sumlin became the head man at the University of Houston from 2008-2011. Sumlin went 35-17 before taking the Texas A&M job. There, he coached Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel and went 11-2 in his first season. Sumlin was fired with a 51-26 record after six seasons. Following three losing seasons at Arizona, Sumlin has not been a collegiate head coach since 2020.
Defensive tackles coach Mark Hagen remains active as co-defensive coordinator at Louisville under his former Purdue boss, Jeff Brohm. Offensive coordinator Jim Chaney serves as an offensive analyst at Georgia State. Quarterbacks coach Greg Olson serves in the same capacity with the Las Vegas Raiders and has been an NFL assistant for 23 years.
Assistant head coach Scott Downing, defensive ends coach Gary Emanuel and defensive backs coach Ken Greene are out of college football.
Kenny Thompson is the former sports editor for the Lafayette Journal & Courier and an award-winning journalist. He has covered Purdue athletics for many years.