Purdue Football Recruiting: TE Commit Eric Karner is No Longer a Commit

Eric Karner, a 3* TE out of Elmherst, Illinois backed away from his Purdue commitment today.

Summary

I know, I know TL/DR. Karner used Purdue as a safety school. He received offers from Alabama, Arkansas, and South Carolina recently. Now that he has other options, Purdue is off the table.

Done and dusted in 3 sentences.

What It Means For Purdue

Coach Walters has learned a few tough lessons in recruiting over the last few weeks. Purdue was in on Karner early, but didn’t count on him blowing up. It’s a no win situation for schools like Purdue when this happens. They did the leg work, in terms of talent evaluation, and now a blue blood and a few mid-level SEC teams reap the benefits. Such is life I suppose.

The lesson here is if you’re going to take a guy early, you need to be close to certain he’s committing because he wants to play at Purdue, and not because Purdue is his best offer and he wants to hold a spot in case something better doesn’t come along. I’m not bashing Karner, he’s free to do as he pleases. College football “verbal” commitments are a product of the recruiting sites more than anything (in my humble opinion of course) and aren’t worth exactly nothing.

We’ll cover commits and decommits because it’s something to talk about but always take a verbal commitment with a giant spoonful of salt, especially this early in the process. I do hope the young man has a commitable offer because Alabama has offers out to 7 of the top 10 tight ends in the nation and South Carolina already has a 4* TE Michael Smith on board. Arkansas may be the softest landing spot, but they also have a ton of offers out, and Karner is at the bottom of that list, in terms of player ratings.

Purdue returns to the drawing board, and now they’re behind in tight end recruiting. It’s not a position of need moving forward, and they may not take a tight end in this class. There is plenty of time to figure things out, but it’s certainly a set back.