Perfect Warriors

They knew their time together would be short and in just four short months, many of them would be headed off to war but for one glorious Midwestern autumn, a group of men came together to seek greatness. What they actually found was perfection.

The 1943 Purdue Football team was unlike any in school history. A collection of future Navy and Marine officers from around the country, brought together as members of the Navy's V-12 officer training program, this talented group of men took the college football world by storm. The group included several future All-Americans, two men who would go on to be named Big Ten Player of the Year and a handful of College Football Hall of Famers.

The centerpiece of the story is a man named Tony Butkovich, a 21-year-old running back at the University of Illinois who joined the Marines after passing the exam and earning, causing him to transfer to Purdue. He and his fellow Marines would spend the mornings in the classroom and on the parade grounds training to be warriors and their afternoons on the practice field playing a game they loved. In his short time on campus in West Lafayette, Butkovich was transformed from a part-time player into an all-out legend, breaking a decades-old conference scoring record.

Heightening the drama of the season, Butkovich and nearly a dozen fellow Marine trainees were called to active duty with three weeks left in the season. In the blink of an eye, nearly a third of the team shipped to Parris Island, S.C., for basic training. Perfect Warriors tells the story, week by week, of this group of men, the challenges they faced and the obstacles they were forced to overcome. It is an exemplar of all that could be accomplished when motivated Americans came together to fight for a common goal.