Aidan O'Connell and Purdue open the 2022 college football season at home on Thursday night vs. Penn State.AP
Purdue and Penn State open the 2022 NCAA football season in prime time with a Week 1 Big Ten matchup on Thursday night. Kickoff in West Lafayette is at 8 p.m. Eastern.
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Sean Clifford returns as the starting quarterback for Penn State, which went 7-6 last season. Purdue went 9-4 in 2021 and returns its starting quarterback as well in Aidan O’Connell.
Who: Penn State at Purdue.
Where: Ross-Ade Stadium, West Lafayette, Ind. (57,236).
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Latest line: Penn State -3.5.
Announcers: Gus Johnson, Joel Klatt and Jenny Taft.
Check out some of what Michael Marot of the Associated Press wrote about the rise of O’Connell, who has Purdue in the mix for a Big Ten title this season.
Aidan O’Connell arrived at Purdue in 2017 as a hopeful, exuberant teenager.
He set out to prove a walk-on could win the starting job at the “Cradle of Quarterbacks” and lead the Boilermakers to postseason success. O’Connell routinely stayed after practice for extra snaps, gladly fine-tuned his skills with the scout team and even opted to stay when other schools presented more promising possibilities.
The reward comes Thursday night when O’Connell celebrates his 24th birthday in front of a sold out Ross-Ade Stadium and a national television audience for Purdue’s season opener against Penn State.
And he’s here, on center stage, for one reason — he never stopped dreaming.
“He came in knowing he had to start from the bottom and prove to everybody beyond a reasonable doubt he could be the guy,” Purdue coach Jeff Brohm said. “As coaches we gave him those opportunities and sometimes we gave it to someone else, but he stayed with the same work ethic, the same mentality.”
Getting to this point sure wasn’t easy.
O’Connell bided his time for two years behind future NFL player David Blough and strong-armed Elijah Sindelar. Then O’Connell watched Nick Sipe and Jack Plummer move ahead of him on the depth chart. When they transferred out, Brohm brought in Austin Burton from UCLA.
And while each supposedly possessed more natural talent than O’Connell, none could top his moxie. Teammates noticed it from the start and eventually Brohm caught on, too.
“Obviously, I didn’t recognize it soon enough,” Brohm said.
Six years of college ball helped, too.
While O’Connell didn’t play in 2017 or 2018 and only got his first real chance to take snaps because of injuries to Sindelar and Plummer in 2019, he took advantage of the opportunity by winning the quarterback competition heading into the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. Three games later, his season ended because of an ankle injury.
Yet today, O’Connell acknowledges it was that journey that allowed him to grow as a player.
“To be honest, I think I needed those times and those moments in the shadows to develop,” O’Connell said. “I wasn’t ready to play my first year. I probably wasn’t even ready to play my second year. But having those two years to get more lifting, more film study, more practice definitely helped.”
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