Schools Getting Creative With Recruiting

I found this article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today and thought it was pretty interesting.

Georgia is apparently sending football recruits hand-drawn illustrations of their picture in a Georgia Uniform. Another recruit mentions that the Bulldogs sent him a picture of himself broken down into puzzle pieces. Ohio State apparently sent him a picture of his jersey hanging in an OSU locker with his name on it.

Trevor Thompson retweeted pictures he'd received OSU and Kansas with an OSU/Kansas jersey photoshopped onto pictures of him dunking. Pretty cool.

I know to a lot these seem unnecessary or ridiculous, but kids - especially high-profile recruits and the egos that usually come with them - LOVE these things. I work with kids this age every day and you'd think every time they saw a picture of themselves it was the first time they'd seen photography.

I'd love to see Purdue get in on this action and think outside the box with what they send recruits. I'm not saying give up recruiting normally to do this, but maybe in addition to what is already done. I know the football coaches have made recruits take note recently by sending 50+ letters per day, but this is nothing like Notre Dame's "Pot of Gold" they sent to some recruits in the fall.

The problem with Purdue seems to be - at least as far as what the public sees - is that if Purdue does anything "creative" in recruiting, it's nothing new. We see Notre Dame send 477 letters to a recruit (I know they weren't the first to do this) and think "good idea, lets do something similar."

Why not be the first school to do something? Why not be the one that gets a recruit saying, "wow, that's different/awesome!"? Purdue has a badass mascot.... a freaking TRAIN. There's got to be a way to take advantage of that, so as a way to help kick-start this effort, leave some ideas for the (apparently uncreative) people in the Purdue Athletic Department.