A three-year starter at Purdue and a Heisman Trophy finalist in 2000, Brees shattered virtually every school passing record, while also making a sizeable dent in the Big Ten Conference and NCAA Division I-A passing charts. He left the West Lafayette, Indiana campus as the Big Ten's and school's all-time leader in passing yards (11,792), touchdown passes (90), total offensive yards (12,693), completion percentage (.611), completions (1,026) and attempts (1,678). He ranks fourth in the NCAA record books for total offense, completions and attempts.

Brees is a big-game player, who led his team to its first Rose Bowl since 1967 as a senior. Known for being cool under pressure, Brees earned the nicknames "Cool Brees" and "Hurricane Drew" during his years with the Boilermakers. He is the only player in conference history to throw for more than 500 yards in a game twice in his career. He also added seven 400-yard passing games and 16 300-yard efforts. With those statistics it wasn't hard to figure out how he matched former Wisconsin Badger Ron Dayne's conference record of eight Big Ten Player of the Week awards.

Drew was a second round choice in the 2001 NFL draft. Last year Brees played in the NFL Pro Bowl after leading the San Diego Chargers to a 12-4 record and the AFC West championship; completed 262 of 400 passes for 3,159 yards, with 27 touchdown passes and just seven interceptions, and a quarterback rating of 104.8.