Ryan Walters, a first-time head coach who's taking over at Purdue after Jeff Brohm's exit, is making sure he has someone he can trust in arguably his program's most important off-the-field position.
Sources tell FootballScoop that Walters has tabbed Pete Roley to become the Boilermakers' director of football operations.
It's the same post Roley had held the past two years under Bret Bielema at Illinois.
An Illinois native, Roley joins the Purdue staff -- sources indicate he's already at work on campus in West Lafayette, Indiana -- with deep experience at the Power-5 level.
In addition to his past two seasons in charge of Illinois's daily operations, Roley spent almost a decade at North Carolina State, where he worked in a variety of roles and rose to the head DFO chair for the Wolfpack under Dave Doeren.
Roley also previously worked under Doeren at Northern Illinois and has collegiate coaching experience, having been an assistant coach at his alma mater, Western Illinois.
A former Broyles Award finalist, Walters has emerged as one of college football's top young coaches.
He engineered a remarkable defensive turnaround in his two seasons at Illinois, and the former Colorado standout who gained national acclaim for his Missouri defenses became a top candidate for multiple openings in this cycle.
When his alma mater opted to hire Deion Sanders in early December, Purdue in short order tabbed Walters as replacement to Jeff Brohm after Brohm returned to his alma mater as head coach at Louisville.
The Boilermakers are scheduled to open their 2023 season with a trio of non-conference goes -- home games against Fresno State and Syracuse sandwiched around a road-trip to Blacksburg, Virginia, to face Virginia Tech -- before opening Big Ten play against Wisconsin.
Walters and Purdue then face the new coach's former team, Illinois, at home on the last day of September.