Student with cancer inspires Boilermakers to upset Buckeyes
Tyler Trent, a student at Purdue University, met the Boilermakers’ football coach, Jeff Brohm, last fall while camping out to obtain tickets to the game against Michigan.
Trent was suffering from bone cancer. Brohm, who was beginning his first season at Purdue, was so impressed with the lad’s fortitude that he made him an honorary captain.
It was one of the smartest decisions Brohm has made as Boilermakers’ coach. Trent became a rallying point for the team and, for that matter, the entire campus at West Lafayette, Indiana.
Unfortunately, the bone cancer spread to Tyler’s spine. Last month he withdrew from school, confined to a wheelchair and suffering as much from chemotherapy as from the disease itself. His hair had fallen out and he was frequently vomiting. Life was miserable and he knew there wouldn’t be much more of it.
But the team did not abandon him. When the Boilermakers defeated Nebraska last month, players visited him at his home and gave him the game ball.
On Saturday morning ESPN aired an interview with Trent in which he predicted the 3-3 Boilermakers would upset 7-0 Ohio State, the country’s No. 2-ranked team.
As the kickoff approached, Trent experienced the crowd at Ross-Ade Stadium in a roaring frenzy and displaying “Tyler Strong” banners. Instead of the usual pregame mantra disparaging their in-state rival, Indiana University – “IU sucks” – the student body chanted, “Cancer sucks.”
What ensued was the most overwhelming upset of the season: a 49-20 rout by Purdue. It was a rare Win-One-for-the-Gipper moment.
Brohm began his postgame press conference by calling on a beaming Trent, who said, “I’m super happy my prediction came through.”
The team’s quarterback, David Blough, approached Trent and said, “I love you, man. I thought about you every time we took the field.”
In the locker room Trent was handed his second game ball. He told the team: “Thanks for leaving your heart out on the field and showing the nation what being a Boilermaker is all about.”
The most famous Purdue alumnus, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, tweeted: “Tyler Trent, you willed it to happen, and it did.”
Though college football cannot match the pros for athleticism or dramatic tension on the field, it uniquely brings out the humanity and brotherhood in masses of people. It shows the potential of mankind working together that may not have seemed possible. Except for the most diehard of Buckeye fans, anyone who saw the Boiler explosion had to have felt uplifted.
Certainly it’s sad to see a 20-year-old ravaged, thinned and doomed by cancer. But Coach Brohm saw him as an affirmation of life and a testament to tenacity: “To me he looks like a Boilermaker – somebody who’s going to fight until there is no fight.”
