On Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011, Council Rock North senior Brandon Cottom signed a letter of intent to accept a football scholarship to Purdue University.
Brandon Cottom – Purdue University (Football)
Major: Aviation
Final list of colleges: Purdue, Rutgers, Syracuse, Duke
Reasons for choosing Purdue: “I just loved all the coaches. It was a real family feeling. When I made my visit, it was a blast. All the students just came back on campus, and I got to see a little bit what campus life was like as a football player. I got to check out a game and had a chance to hang out with my teammates. Purdue also had my major, and none of the other schools had my major.”
What was the progression that led you to Purdue? “Around this time last year, they contacted us. We were looking at schools that had aviation as a major, and that was one of them. They gave us positive feedback.”
What are your expectations going in this fall? “I was told he wants me to come out to summer session to start getting into the flow of things, to start getting used to the system and hopefully getting some playing time this fall.
“I wanted to go into college as a running back. Some schools recruited me as a straight linebacker. They recruited me as a running back.”
Purdue coach Danny Hope comments on Brandon Cottom during a Feb. 2 news conference announcing 12 signings: “We really like the big running back/utility back/h-back Brandon Cottom. We knew a lot about him. He came to our camps, and we identified him on junior film and thought he was a heck of a player. He did a lot of great things as a junior – made people miss. He was a physical runner. He had good numbers on paper. When he came in person, he had a great body. He’s over six-foot tall, 240 pounds, and he looks a lot older than what he is. (He’s) a big-time looking prospect.
“He was really interested in flight aviation. He wants to be a pilot, so we had the right academic program. He was at our camps. We had a chance to work him out and time him and watched him catch passes out of the backfield. He was at other camps, and we knew the coaches at the other camps, and he came out of the camps rated as their top running back prospect. We’re really excited about getting Brandon Cottom here at Purdue. He’s a very good student as well.”
Council Rock North coach Adam Collachi says: “He’s a special athlete. He just has a different ability level than other kids. Watching the tapes from previous years and seeing him on tape, it was awesome. You just stop and watch. You stand there in awe – ‘Wow, this kid plays for us,’ and you almost pinch yourself.
“The one game this year he was almost 100 percent was against Bensalem – he was a dominant player. He had 130-plus yards and four touchdowns. It was a snapshot of what it could have been the whole season for him. To his credit, he was the consummate team player. Even though you could tell he was so frustrated and wanted to be out there and wanted to help the team through the adverse times we had – he was the consummate leader of our team, and that’s a quality that is rare in young men. He possesses quality characteristics that will take him far in life beyond the football field.
“Purdue has been great during the recruiting process. Their coaches really respected Brandon. We developed a good rapport. As a coach, you want what’s best for your student-athletes. I’m extremely comfortable sending him there. I think he’s getting into a quality program with quality coaches. It’s going to be great for him.”
Former Council Rock North coach Tom Coates says: “He played for us as a sophomore and then as a junior got a concussion in our Father Judge game. Our biggest concern was his safety coming back. He wanted to be a running back, and I said, ‘Here’s how we’re going to work this. We’re going to put you at receiver - you’ll be outside, you’ll be one-on-one, not too many people can match up with you physically. The more comfortable you get with the hits you get – you’ll let me know when you’re ready to come back inside to run the ball.’
“We went through the first five games with him at wide receiver and then put him in the backfield a little bit. It didn’t take him long to figure out that when he was in the backfield we throwing the ball. He said, ‘Coach, I want to run the ball.’ I said, ‘When we see you’re confident and that head isn’t going down, we’ll let you do it.’ Halfway through the season, he was ready, so we started giving him the ball. He was like a man amongst boys. The number of tackles he would break, the number of people he would leave in his wake – it was routine to see him break two or three tackles on a play. He did wonderful things for us, and we thought his senior year would be magic to watch.
“Unfortunately, he had that ankle injury, and they had to be careful with that. I liked the approach they took and were careful with that because beyond this year he has quite a future.
“During his junior year, as the year went on, we played the bigger teams, and he played big against the big teams. We were real proud of him. We found ourselves watching sometimes. To top it off, academically he’s a heck of a student, and individually, he’s a heck of a kid, he’s a character kid. He’s a kid who’s always doing the right thing when no one is watching. As a coach, you never had to worry about him. His parents did a great job. The values he brought along with him he spread to the other kids. His work ethic was outstanding. He was not a ‘me’ player, and a kid like that could very easily have been a me player. He was not. We succeeded and benefitted because of him. I think he made kids around him better.”
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