They Call Him Mr. Football

Story by Amanda Weisbrod

Story was published in the Spring 2015 Issue of Backdrop Magazine

Athens High School quarterback Joe Burrow’s on-field domination during his legendary senior season has led to high expectations in the Big Ten.

Photo provided by Scott Reed

It runs through his blood. He eats, sleeps and breathes it every day and night. Some say he’s a natural, others say that he’s determined and hard working. Either way, Joe Burrow, senior quarterback at Athens High School, was born to play football.

His family’s legacy speaks for itself — two older brothers and a father played football at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, an uncle played football at Mississippi State and a grandfather played basketball at Ole Miss. By committing to Ohio State University as a quarterback for the 2015-2016 season, Burrow will continue the legacy and hopefully meet his family’s high standards.

“We definitely have some high expectations in our family,” says Burrow, who was named Ohio’s Mr. Football by the Associated Press in 2014. That award is given to the best high school football player in Ohio. “All of my family members have been stars at their colleges, and they’re just waiting to see what I can do.”

And it seems like everyone else is waiting to see what he can offer the Buckeyes next year. Although OSU already has three Heisman-caliber quarterbacks in line to start, Burrow says he’s more excited than intimidated by their excellence.

“If you want to be the best you’ve got to beat out the best, and I’m going to learn from some of the best in the country,” Burrow says.  “I’ll get there and feel my way through it for a little bit and then try to separate myself in any way that I can.”

However, Burrow unknowingly set himself apart from other recruits in a strange way when he brought a pair of Ohio State socks with him to the Elite 11 football camp last summer. Numerous stories about Burrow’s footwear circulated the Internet, and according to him, “they took more pictures of my socks than of me throwing” during the Elite 11 camp.

His scarlet and grey socks weren’t the first instance of fame that Burrow dealt with, and they won’t be the last. Fans ask him for autographs and pictures in the street; people from his high school even treat him a little differently than before he committed to OSU. But Burrow isn’t interested in any of that.

At the Athens High School homecoming pep rally last fall, Burrow delivered a speech to his fellow classmates with one very memorable quote: “We’re just a bunch of kids playing football.” His words were so memorable that they are immortalized on the back of sweatshirts that can be seen around Athens.

“I still feel like a 13-year-old kid playing basketball and hanging out with my friends,” says Burrow, who is also team captain for varsity basketball at Athens High School. “I don’t think I like all of the attention. I just want to be a normal kid.”

However, his father, Ohio University’s Assistant Head Coach Jimmy Burrow, and offensive coordinator for quarterbacks Nathan White, both agree Joe isn’t an average kid. For White, the state semi-finals against St. Vincent-St. Mary High School from Akron will forever stick out in his mind as a time of Joe’s great leadership and playing ability.

“We get the ball at the 20 or 25 yard line, and it’s a time I will never forget looking at Joe. Every single kid on our sideline and every coach is looking at him, he’s the guy,” White remembers. “You just almost had that weird feeling that you know we’re going to go score. He just had that look on his face.”

For Coach Burrow, his son’s success and chance for opportunity are due to Joe’s determination to be better than the best.

“A lot of people think we watch tons of film together since I’m a coach, but we really didn’t do it all that much,” Jimmy Burrow says. “I never had to twist his arm to practice or lift weights because after his tenth grade year, he really knew that he wanted to play college football.”

Joe, who now weighs 200 pounds, only weighed 165 pounds as a sophomore. He thought he would be playing basketball in college, but once Division I schools took more interest in his football playing, Joe realized that he needed to pack on the weight.

Through working on his footwork, hitting the weight room four times a week and eating four or five meals a day, he gained the “strength necessary to take the beating that you have to take in football,” according to Burrow. However, he stresses that strength isn’t the only aspect of being a great player.

Photo by: OHSAA

“You’re kind of born with knowing how to play the game, and then you can supplement that with weight training and getting stronger,” Burrow says. “Once those two come together, you become a special player.”

Every Thursday, Joe would hit the gym with his teammates before the Friday night game. Every Thursday, he would wear the same black, ratty athletic shorts for good luck.

“My mom packed them two Thursdays in a row my sophomore year, and I’ve always just worn them from then on,” Burrow says. “They have a bunch of holes in them now and I still wear them. I’ll probably bring them with me [to Ohio State].”

After the weekly weight room session, Burrow and his lifelong friends would eat Subway and play tag football. The close bond the senior class shared is one of the major reasons why they were so successful, according to White. Four players for the Bulldogs will head to Division I schools upon graduation. They are the first players to make it to Division I from Athens High School in a decade.

“The more success we had and the more of a taste they got of that success, the harder they worked,” White says. “It was almost like it was never good enough for them. We had the best season we’ve ever had when they were sophomores, but none of them were happy. They wanted more.”

In 2014, Burrow led the Bulldogs to the Division III championship game — further than the team has ever gone before. Although the Toledo Central Catholic Fighting Irish brought in a 56-52 victory over Athens, Burrow completed 26 of 45 passes for 446 yards and six touchdowns — all championship-game records — and managed to throw one interception, only his second of the season.

But losing the championship game feels different than losing any other game, according to White. As Athens players consoled each other in the locker room after the Fighting Irish fans stormed the field, Burrow stayed humble and supportive of his friends and teammates.

“You combine losing the State Championship and the normal last high school game that every senior goes through, the locker room was very emotional to say the least,” White says.  “Joe was kind of one of the guys at a time when everyone was very emotional. I know that the rest of our kids don’t think of Joe as any different than them.”

Burrow got the call when he was walking out of Athens High School on May 27, the last day of his junior school. As he hopped into his car and drove the three or four minutes that it took to get home, he realized to whom he was talking.

Coach Urban Meyer called out of the blue a week before the Elite 11 camp, catching Burrow completely off guard. After all, coaches at OSU told him for about a month beforehand that they wanted to make an offer, but he needed to go to football summer camp in Columbus first.

Burrow hung up the phone, but it didn’t feel right. Something was off about the whole thing. Then he realized that he completely forgot to commit.

“I got off the phone and I was like, ‘Did that really just happen? Did he just offer me?’ Because it was my first really big time offer from a top-10 school, so I was in awe of it,” Burrow says. “I called back like a minute later and committed. But then I was trying to call my family to tell them about it and none of them would answer!”

As soon as he was off the phone, Burrow ran downstairs to his friends, who were waiting in his basement, and shouted the good news. They went out to the nearest store to buy OSU gear to wear for the rest of the day.

Before Burrow’s commitment to Ohio State, members of the Burrow family were never huge OSU fans. Joe had to replace all of his Nebraska gear with Buckeye stuff,; Coach Burrow even picked up some merchandise for himself.

“Here in Athens, sometimes I think you get a little tired of hearing all about Ohio State, so we kind of fell in line with that,” Jimmy Burrow says. “We weren’t die-hard Ohio State fans, and as a matter of fact, when we started to accumulate some Ohio State gear, it was strange. Still, I’ve only worn an Ohio State shirt twice.”

Although Ohio University was an option for Burrow and the first college to give him an offer, Ohio State was the bigger goal. He wanted to stay close to home — as did his parents — so even though Nebraska gave him a late offer after he’d already committed to OSU, he declined.

“There was a point in time where I was disappointed, but the day Ohio State offered, that kind of went out the door,” Jimmy Burrow says. “His mom and I are very proud of him; we’re probably happiest that he’s not going to be too far away because a lot of the people that were recruiting him were a long ways from home.”

Three Nebraska jerseys with “BURROW” across the back, one from a father and two from his sons, hang proudly in the basement of their Athens home. Hopefully, after the next four years of hard work, successes and failures, Joe’s Ohio State jersey will also hang on the wall of his family’s legacy for years to come.

Backdrop Magazine supports Cincinnati Bengal #9, Joe Burrow.