WEST LAFAYETTE ― It was Jeff Brohm who provided a preferred walk-on role with Purdue football for Ethan Trent.
Trent’s mind was made up.
He was going to play football at Indiana State University after graduation from Carmel High School, where he was a two-time all-state honoree for the Greyhounds. Brohm departed to take over at his alma mater Louisville after the 2022 season. Brohm’s successor Ryan Walters assured Trent that if he still wanted to walk on at Purdue, the invitation remained extended.
Being a Boilermaker made sense, but also came with reservations.
At Purdue, Ethan Trent was always going to be known as the younger brother of Tyler Trent, the former Purdue student who gained national recognition during his fight with osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer, before he died on Jan. 1, 2019.
When Brohm’s Boilermaker tenure reached its peak, it was Ethan Trent who pushed his oldest brother across the field at Ross-Ade Stadium while Purdue put the finishing touches on a 49-20 thumping of previously unbeaten Ohio State in 2018.
Still, when faced with the dilemma, the choice seemed obvious ― and not just because of the ties to Tyler.
“He got offers from other spots. He said, ‘Dad, I want to go to the school that makes me better,'” Tony Trent recalled of Ethan’s decision. “I said, ‘Son, you may never play, and you may never get a scholarship.'”
Maybe not, but Ethan informed his father he was headed to West Lafayette and willing to outwork everyone, then see how that strategy played out.
Purdue football changes leadership. Again.
As a freshman in 2023, Trent never saw in-game action. Last season, because Purdue was comfortably ahead of Indiana State in the 2024 season opener, he made his Boilermaker debut against the program he once planned to be a part of. Trent would play in two more games during the 2024 season because, unfortunately for the Boilers, they were on the wrong side of lopsided scores.
And then Walters was fired, meaning Trent was going to have to receive confirmation from a third head coach that Purdue had a roster spot available for a walk-on offensive lineman.
Trent initiated a meeting with Barry Odom, the hire in December after much of the previous staff and roster ― including Trent’s best friend Will Heldt ― had cleaned out their lockers to find new homes.
“I asked him what he needs to see from me and what he likes from his offensive linemen,” Trent recalled of his first meeting with Odom.
Trent left that meeting prepared to embody everything Odom relayed about what Purdue football was becoming, molded by the mantra, “hard, smart, tough.”
Ethan Trent’s work ethic
Barry Odom had been on campus less than three months when the first spring practice took place.
Afterwards, strength coach Kiero Small was asked which players stood out in offseason workouts. Small singled out two people: Ethan Trent and defensive end CJ Madden.
Throughout the next six months, any teammate or coach asked about Trent brought up his work ethic. That includes two players in the last week alone: starting center Bradyn Joiner, who had never met Trent until this summer, and defensive tackle Jamarrion Harkless, who has competed against Trent in practice for two years.
The scholarship
Kelly Trent was in the dressing room at an Old Navy when she received a phone call from her son Ethan.
Moments after that call, Kelly would see video on social media to accompany the story she’s just heard over the phone.
Purdue’s spring showcase was just two days away when Barry Odom huddled the team together at the Boilermaker practice complex. Purdue had a walk-on who exemplified the work ethic and leadership coaches wanted. And those traits were to be rewarded with a scholarship.
The team broke out in celebration.
“The way it worked out is the best story that could’ve been,” Kelly Trent said. “He earned it. Nobody handed it to him. There’s so much to be proud of.”
Ethan Trent ‘is Purdue’
Former Purdue quarterback David Blough, now a quarterbacks coach of the NFL’s Washington Commanders, was asked during a segment that aired on ESPN College Gameday Oct. 20, 2018, how Tyler Trent looked to him after the team had visited the Trent home to present a game ball after beating Nebraska.
“To me, he looks like a Boilermaker,” was Blough’s response. “He looks like somebody who is going to fight until there is no fight.”
Almost seven years later, first-year Purdue offensive line coach Vance Vice was asked about Ethan Trent as fall camp began.
“Ethan is Purdue, it’s who he is,” Vice said, noting Trent’s “lunch pail attitude.”
A week later, Trent was asked what his definition of a Purdue person is, and it’s uncanny how much the definition resembles the one Blough described in 2018.
“I’d say a Boilermaker is someone just works really hard and just finds a way, has a little bit of grit to them, and I Iike to pride myself on that,” Trent explained. “You have to have that mindset that no matter the circumstances or the situation, you’ve got to find a way.”
Stepping out of the shadow
If there was hesitancy about coming to Purdue, it was the constant reminder about Tyler Trent’s impact on Purdue football and where that left little brother.
Outside the south end zone of Ross-Ade Stadium, where it was relocated after facility upgrades, is the Tyler Trent Student Gate that not only memorializes the Purdue superfan, but also a plaque that educates those who are unfamiliar with the story.
“When I first came to Purdue, it was something I was a little bit ashamed of because I didn’t want to be in his shadow,” Ethan Trent said.
Now, Ethan Trent is a scholarship offensive lineman for the Boilermakers. He’s started the 2025 season’s first two games at right guard, both Purdue victories.
“This was the dream and he’s living it right now,” Kelly Trent says of her youngest of three sons. “As a parent, to see his hard work is seen and rewarded is so cool. It’s full circle for sure.
“I think because he’s made his way, he’s earned that scholarship, it’s given him freedom to be proud to be Tyler’s brother versus not wanting to live in the shadow and not wanting people to think he was handed it because of Tyler.”
That’s become evident.
Being Tyler’s brother may have gotten his foot in the door at Purdue. Everything that’s happened since has been driven by Ethan Trent’s own passion to succeed.
And as his mother eloquently put it prior to a charity golf event at West Lafayette’s Coyote Crossing on Sept. 5, the story is not over.
“It’s funny how God works,” Ethan Trent said. “The best is yet to come. I am still a young man and I am excited about the future.”
Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sking@jconline.com and follow him on X and Instagram @samueltking.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Once hesitant to be in shadow of brother, Purdue football’s Ethan Trent carves own path
Reporting by Sam King, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
