#Joe Burrow’s greatness evident has hoops legend

The basketball coach needed to give the quarterback some time and space. Joe Burrow had just finished a schoolboy career that will be talked about in Southeast Ohio for as long as the game is played, finished it with his head down and his hands on hips, staggering about the Ohio Stadium field after his six touchdown passes and 500 total yards against Toledo Central Catholic left him with only a crushing last-seconds defeat in the state title game. 

Burrow had removed his helmet, exposing his bleach blonde hair. His Athens High teams had scored 2,215 points in his three seasons as the starter, including a state-record 861 in his senior year, and yet there he was on the wrong end of a 56-52 classic, the devastation on his face as clear as the No. 10 on his jersey. 

“That kid’s the best quarterback we’ve ever gone against,” the winning coach, Greg Dempsey, told the Fox affiliate on the field as his players celebrated around him. The praise did nothing to ease Burrow’s pain. 

So Jeff Skinner, the Athens hoops coach, backed off the teen who had delivered every single playoff victory in his school’s history, and didn’t ask him anything about Toledo Central Catholic. Ohio’s Mr. Football had just eight days to go before the first game of the last basketball season of his life. 

“We tried to move forward, and it was hard for Joe,” Skinner said. “And nobody on our schedule cut us any slack.” 

The Athens High Bulldogs suited up 6-foot-4 twins Adam and Ryan Luehrman, who had caught a combined four touchdown passes in that state title loss, and Burrow, the 6-4 point guard, who had thrown them the football. Burrow was a two-way Appalachian legend, the best basketball player in Southeast Ohio. He started for the Bulldogs all four years. 

“And if he was allowed to play in eighth grade,” Skinner said, “he would have started for us for five years. He was that good.” 

The coach was on the phone to confirm that all the things millions upon millions of fans are seeing in Burrow now, as the Super Bowl-bound quarterback of the Bengals, were seen by the locals in the foothills of a depressed region the former LSU star later referenced in his emotional Heisman Trophy speech. 

“It’s a very impoverished area, and the poverty rate is almost two times the national average,” Burrow said in that speech. “There’s so many people there that don’t have a lot, and I’m up here for all those kids in Athens and Athens County that go home to not a lot of food on the table, hungry after school. You guys can be up here, too.” 

Those locals knew how Burrow felt before he failed to win the starting job at Ohio State, before he won the national championship at LSU, before he became a No. 1-overall draft pick and before he was trying to win Cincinnati’s first Super Bowl title just 14 months after major knee surgery. He was the son of a major-college coach and elementary school principal, and the product of a family of big-time athletes who didn’t big-time anyone. Nobody is terribly surprised that the grown-up NFL quarterback cares so deeply about food insecurity in the region, and inspired the Joe Burrow Hunger Relief Fund. 

“His ability to lead without even trying is something I have never seen before in anybody else,” Skinner said. “That’s why in Southeast Ohio we’ve got all the time you need to talk about Joe.” 

From a skinny, 5-11 freshman, Burrow grew into a 6-4 playmaker who could do it all. He could drain 3-pointers with frightening ease, and he could post-up defenders, and he could guard the opponent’s best perimeter scorer. When Burrow first dunked as a sophomore, stealing the ball and hammering it down over the front of the rim, the Athens coaches all looked at each other and smiled. The kid had made yet another addition to his game. 

Burrow was the first player Skinner allowed to shoot from three feet behind the 3-point line. As much as he adored football, Burrow remained fiercely devoted to basketball. After attending an elite passing camp at Ohio State one summer day, and throwing passes for four hours, Burrow waved off an excused absence, hopped into his mother’s mini-van and made the 2 ¹/₂-hour trip to Knightstown, Ind., to join his teammates for a game in the gym where “Hoosiers” was filmed. 

“Joe walked in lacing up his shoes, and got ready for the tip,” Skinner recalled. 

He was always ready to ball against the best teams around, including LeBron James’s school, St. Vincent-St. Mary of Akron. 

“The quicker, faster and stronger the competition was,” Skinner said, “the quicker, faster and stronger Joe played. He was fearless going against five Division I players, and it gave everyone else confidence. My favorite thing was to watch Joe just blow by people with speed nobody thought he had. He looked like he was coasting, but when he needed a spurt it was like he was shot out of a cannon.” 

After Burrow gave his football commitment to Ohio State, opponents’ trash talk became the norm. 

“Everyone had something to say to him, but he never backed down,” Skinner said. “Don’t let that face fool you. He’s as tough as nails.” 

During a sectional title game, after one younger Athens player took a hard shot to the face and looked a bit shaken coming out of a huddle, Burrow grabbed him and said: “This is a big game. We don’t have time for that.” Burrow was forever lifting his teammates, and projecting a sense of calm amid the storm. 

After Athens won its first district championship in nearly a half century in Burrow’s sophomore year, Skinner was so excited he wanted to sprint across the floor and perform a series of cartwheels. He then turned around and saw Joe looking and acting as if his team had just prevailed in a scrimmage against the JV. 

“Winning is just what Joe did,” Skinner said. 

Burrow had been winning big with the Luehrman twins since third grade, when a youth football coach named Sam Smathers appointed him the football team’s quarterback against his wishes. Smathers and assistant Heath Bullock had seen Burrow throw 20-yard ropes at a youth football camp. 

“Too bad we run a wing-T offense,” Smathers told his assistant. 

“We might have to change that down the road, Coach,” Bullock responded through a laugh. 

Change the offense they ultimately did. Burrow was lining up in shotgun formation by fifth grade, with two wideouts on each side of the field, and either firing away to the Luehrmans or running the ball himself. That core group stayed together through their senior basketball season, with Joey running the fast break. Burrow scored 32 and sank five of eight 3-pointers in a sectional title victory, before he finished with 27 points and nine rebounds in his final high school game on March 7, 2015 — a loss to unbeaten Unioto in the district semis. 

Burrow had led his team to a school-record 22 victories and had earned all-Ohio honors. Of course he had. Skinner said that if his point guard had committed to basketball instead of football years ago, he would’ve made himself a high Division I player, maybe even an NBA player. 

“I’d never question his ability to accomplish anything,” Skinner said. 

That applies to next Sunday in Super Bowl LVI, too.