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SUPER BOWL LVI: Bengals vs. Rams

HoosierCat

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Earendil Apprentice

Earendil

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3 minutes ago, ArmyBengal said:

Was that a Nickelback song ?

From the video description:

Song: Do You Wanna Taste It? by Wig Wam from the 2010 album "Non-Stop Rock N Roll" & as heard on HBO Max’s Peacemaker in the opening credits/soundtrack.

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ArmyBengal
ArmyBengal

I wish Billy was here to watch Burrow and the Bengals play in the Super Bowl.  He would be going crazy right about now. Just like all of us !!!

ArmyBengal
ArmyBengal

Our school district has a group of Facebook moms all up in arms about giving kids off the day after the Super Bowl like it’s the end of the world.  Personally I think the day after the Super Bowl shou

membengal
membengal

Has this been linked? Click through to YouTube - first 20 minutes of it are the mic'd up stuff from the AFC Championship. It's...godddamn, it's perfect:  

ArmyBengal Grand Master

ArmyBengal

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4 minutes ago, Stripes said:

Bengals football has a way of neutralizing my music tastes.

I think Guns N Roses sucks and in most contexts would make fun of “Welcome to the Jungle”. But on game day? I’m all in.

I can see that.
I hate Guns N Roses and every time I hear them I quickly turn the station. 
"Welcome to the Jungle"  ??  I tolerate it on game day.  Won't admit to enjoying it.

Better turn up the aggressiveness if you are trying to get me to run through walls.
All that song did was make me want to slap a girl scout.

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COB Veteran

COB

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Back when I was the son of god, sent to earth to rescue mankind, the Pharisees brought to me a woman, an adulterer.  
 

They wanted to stone her, but I talked them out of it.  I was like, “He who is without sin can slap the first Girl Scout.”  They were all confused, going, “what?  What’s a Girl Scout?”  

Except for this one guy who was all like, “Bring this ‘girl scout’ forth, I will slap her!  Let the slapping commence, where is she?”  I go, “Dude, seriously?  Chill the fuck out.”  
 

He took it down a notch, and I was like “another W for the almighty, nice.”

You’d think the story would end there.  Wrong.  Fast forward like 12 years.  Things just generally take a turn for the worse and I end up getting crucified.  I wake up afterwards and I’m like “WTF?”  So I’m out walking around in this sort of undead state, and I was just straight up cranky.  
 

By chance I come across this dude, the guy who was so hyped to slap a Girl Scout.  So I conjure up a some Girl Scouts out of Adam’s rib or whatever.  These little gals are like, “what’s happening?  This isn’t the Walmart parking lot.  Where’s my mom?”  I tell the guy, “have at it.  Attack, slap them, whatever.”  
 

But instead of thanking me, this dude goes, “Man, you don’t look so good.  Are you ok?”

I just completely lost it.  “Motherfucker, I look this way because I got crucified!  Read the fucking news!  A mortal man would be decomposing in the tomb, but I’m out here rolling boulders out of the way, stomping on the terra.  Ok that’s it.”

Then I used my supernatural powers to turn the Girl Scouts into these sort of demon wild dog things, I just turned ‘em loose on this guy.  I’m going, “slap these Girl Scouts all you want, better hurry.  Oh wait, you’re getting dismembered!”

So this dude just gets ripped apart.  I’m a little too into it, taunting him a bit, going “got anything else to say about my undead appearance?  Don’t be shy now,” that sort of thing.  
 

I’m not proud of that whole episode.    Try getting murdered then staggering around like a zombie for 3 days.  Guns and Roses blows, and that’s that.

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Wraith Contributor

Wraith

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7 hours ago, COB said:

Back when I was the son of god, sent to earth to rescue mankind, the Pharisees brought to me a woman, an adulterer.  
 

They wanted to stone her, but I talked them out of it.  I was like, “He who is without sin can slap the first Girl Scout.”  They were all confused, going, “what?  What’s a Girl Scout?”  

Except for this one guy who was all like, “Bring this ‘girl scout’ forth, I will slap her!  Let the slapping commence, where is she?”  I go, “Dude, seriously?  Chill the fuck out.”  
 

He took it down a notch, and I was like “another W for the almighty, nice.”

You’d think the story would end there.  Wrong.  Fast forward like 12 years.  Things just generally take a turn for the worse and I end up getting crucified.  I wake up afterwards and I’m like “WTF?”  So I’m out walking around in this sort of undead state, and I was just straight up cranky.  
 

By chance I come across this dude, the guy who was so hyped to slap a Girl Scout.  So I conjure up a some Girl Scouts out of Adam’s rib or whatever.  These little gals are like, “what’s happening?  This isn’t the Walmart parking lot.  Where’s my mom?”  I tell the guy, “have at it.  Attack, slap them, whatever.”  
 

But instead of thanking me, this dude goes, “Man, you don’t look so good.  Are you ok?”

I just completely lost it.  “Motherfucker, I look this way because I got crucified!  Read the fucking news!  A mortal man would be decomposing in the tomb, but I’m out here rolling boulders out of the way, stomping on the terra.  Ok that’s it.”

Then I used my supernatural powers to turn the Girl Scouts into these sort of demon wild dog things, I just turned ‘em loose on this guy.  I’m going, “slap these Girl Scouts all you want, better hurry.  Oh wait, you’re getting dismembered!”

So this dude just gets ripped apart.  I’m a little too into it, taunting him a bit, going “got anything else to say about my undead appearance?  Don’t be shy now,” that sort of thing.  
 

I’m not proud of that whole episode.    Try getting murdered then staggering around like a zombie for 3 days.  Guns and Roses blows, and that’s that.

Dude, are you ok?

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membengal Mentor

membengal

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There's just an all-time great piece co-authored by Brody Miller (who covered Burrow at LSU) in the Athletic that I think you all should read...so here it is:

https://theathletic.com/3121354/2022/02/10/everyone-loves-joe-why-joe-burrow-is-treasured-by-bulldogs-and-buckeyes-tigers-and-bengals/?source=twitterhq

Everyone loves Joe: Why Joe Burrow is treasured by Bulldogs and Buckeyes, Tigers and Bengals

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A few days after the AFC Championship game that changed his life, Joe Burrow was talking to a longtime friend on the phone. And when Burrow and Zacciah Saltzman talk, stupid jokes eventually morph into deeper dialogues. And in this conversation, as his new reality began to set in, Burrow talked about the nature of fame.

“He was like, ‘I can’t believe at the end of the day, I’m literally just playing football, just throwing a pigskin around, and this is what people see me as,’” Saltzman said. “He’s just throwing a ball to people. And because he can do that better than other people, he’s a legend.”

Saltzman, who played football with Burrow at Athens High, will be at the Super Bowl in person Sunday. So will Burrow’s family, some friends and coaches.

But plenty of other people will be there in spirit. Entire cities. Most of two states. The Joe Burrow diaspora.

As he’s shown everywhere he plays, Joe Burrow is a uniter.

Athens is just one hometown that claims Burrow, who was born in Ames, Iowa, and spent time in Lincoln, Neb., and Fargo, N.D., before his dad Jimmy Burrow moved the family to Athens for a college football coaching job.

From high-school stardom in southeast Ohio, Joe Burrow went north to Columbus to play for the Ohio State Buckeyes, and when that didn’t work out, he took his right arm (and his degree) to Baton Rouge, La., to play for the LSU Tigers. That led him back to Ohio when the Bengals took him with the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.

Athens, Columbus, Baton Rouge and Cincinnati are all basking in the reflected glory of Burrow, the precocious quarterback who has taken the NFL by storm with an unlikely, unbelievable Super Bowl berth.

“It’s funny, because everyone wants to claim a piece,” said Trae Williams, who played high school football with Burrow and Saltzman.

At LSU, for instance, the fans retain an almost religious fervor about what Burrow was able to accomplish in two seasons, culminating in a national championship.

“I do feel a bit like the chosen people, in a way. Like God’s people,” said T-Bob Hebert, a former LSU center who now hosts a major Baton Rouge morning radio show. “I feel like we witnessed first hand the power of this man, and because of that, if anybody questions Joe — like go question Joe Burrow to an LSU fan, question anything, and you would get loudly shouted down.”

As the starting quarterback of a Super Bowl team, Burrow has reached the precipice of sports immortality at the beginning of his NFL career.

The Bengals are decided underdogs this week in Los Angeles, facing the Rams at their home stadium. What can Burrow do against those odds and that defensive front?

To hear the people around Ohio and Louisiana talk about Joe Burrow, the man and the myth, there are no limits. Only glorious possibilities.

The curious nature of athletic celebrity is something we take for granted, why we value some jobs more than others. But for a 25-year-old, baby-faced Joe Burrow going through the transition from quarterback to Super Bowl quarterback in real time, it’s weighty stuff to think about. The people who have known Burrow the longest feel that he is equipped to handle the mental load.

“He’s a pretty deep guy,” Saltzman said.

“Super, super confident, and he’s not a jerk about it,” Williams said. “But he’s gonna let you know.”

How popular is Burrow in Ohio? Well, if he wins his next game, he’s in the neighborhood of space-traveling John Glenn and title-winning LeBron James. His comps are astronauts and kings.

Burrow’s parents, Jimmy and Robin, have been dealing with their son’s rising stature for the past three years. It’s one thing to raise a small-town sports hero who goes into coaching or business. But now their son has the chance for a uniquely American hero trifecta: Heisman winner, college football national champion and Super Bowl winner.

And he could do it in a three-year span.

“I just continue to just say it’s so surreal,” Robin Burrow said in a phone conversation from her home outside of Athens. “You think that it’s gotten to be as great as it’s going to be, and it just keeps getting bigger and better.”

Since Joe’s Heisman season, Jimmy has taken on the lead role as his son’s press contact and anecdote provider. He retired from his job as the defensive coordinator of Ohio University’s football team to enjoy his son’s senior year and found himself busier than ever.

Jimmy, who has been a football coach in college or high school since 1981, had never tailgated, but soon enough, he became a pro at it outside of Tiger Stadium. In the past two seasons, he’s engrossed himself in the NFL for the first time since getting drafted by the Packers in 1976. He and Robin host a tailgate at Bengals games and welcome family and friends from all over the country to share in their experiences.

The Burrows get stopped often when they’re home — Robin is the principal of Eastern Elementary School in nearby Meigs County — and when they go to Cincinnati, they’re amazed at all of the fans who revere their son. Burrow’s brother, Dan, was stopped in Nashville by a Titans fan asking him to sign their Burrow jersey. At LSU, it was similar adoration with about twice as many people in attendance at the games. But the difference in Cincinnati is thousands of people are wearing the Burrow surname on their backs.

“That first game we went to this year against the Vikings, there’s literally thousands of (his jerseys), and so that was kind of our first, ‘Hey, this has gotten to be a pretty big thing here,’” Jimmy said. “And it’s a little overwhelming at times. People want to talk about Joe everywhere we go, and we’re good with that. We never get tired of talking about our son, and he just happens to be now in the Super Bowl. But it’s a good thing. We enjoy it.”

Burrow is only the fourth quarterback who was born in or grew up in the football-mad state of Ohio to make the Super Bowl, joining Len Dawson, Roger Staubach and Ben Roethlisberger. And though he made his college name at LSU after redshirting and backing up other quarterbacks at Ohio State, Burrow’s Buckeye State bonafides are unquestioned and celebrated.

He took Athens High to the state championship game at Ohio Stadium, where they fell to Toledo Central Catholic. (During Super Bowl week, Burrow again mentioned how that loss still pains him.) His 11,428 passing yards are the fourth-highest in Ohio history, and his 156 touchdowns are the third-highest. His senior year he threw for 4,437 yards and 63 touchdowns. Athens’ stadium is now named for him.

Burrow did all of this for a high school not known for its athletics success — and that’s putting it nicely. But he teamed up with an unusually high number of NCAA Division I-caliber athletes who wound up playing at Ohio, Northwestern and Georgetown, not to mention his basketball teammate Ibi Watson, who went to Michigan and Dayton and now plays in the G League.

At Ohio University, current students and alumni treat Burrow with the same amount of veneration as Goodfella’s Pizza or The CI.

Students aren’t just wearing Burrow Bengals jerseys to the Court St. bars, they’re also still wearing LSU ones. On the night of the AFC championship game, students were celebrating in the streets. There’s a banner over the main drag of Uptown Athens, and every tavern is now a de facto Bengals bar. A local arts collective PassionWorks Studio (motto: To inspire and liberate the human spirit through the arts) had a Burrow- and Bengals-inspired painting night. Donkey Coffee has a drink named after him, and Bagel Street Deli (Bengal Street Deli on Twitter) has a sandwich inspired by him. If only Burrow could stop at any of these places and not get swarmed.

As his fame grew at LSU, his anonymity in Athens declined. After he won a Heisman and a national title, it became impossible.

“After the national championship game we had a little reunion back in Athens,” Williams said. “We wanted to go play pool on Court St., so we went to Pawpurr’s because we knew one of the bartenders there. So it was like, ‘Hey man, Joe’s coming in, let’s keep this on the low end and not let the entire campus know. There shouldn’t be that many people out there tonight, we’ll be fine.’ It was like 10 minutes and the entire bar is flooded and we’re having to escape out the back.”

Burrow wasn’t one to go out during his LSU title run. He once joked as an online graduate student he only knew three locations in Baton Rouge — His apartment, a nearby shopping center and the L’Auberge Casino — with his focus purely set on winning football games. The only teammate confirmed to have gone to Burrow’s place those two years was center Lloyd Cushenberry, because he lived in the same building, and Dan Burrow isn’t even confident whether Joe’s closest teammates Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Thaddeus Moss ever made it in.

But one time, after beating Arkansas in Tiger Stadium in 2019, Burrow wanted to entertain some friends. His former Ohio State teammates J.T. Barrett and Stephen Collier were in town, so Burrow used some connections to get in touch with the co-owner of Uncle Earl’s bar, BG Lanoix. Lanoix set it up so Burrow and company could enter through the back, and Burrow kept a low profile with a hoodie and a ball cap covering his face.

The next day, the diehard LSU fan Lanoix had to check the camera footage. He saw an intoxicated LSU fan rocking a No. 9 Burrow jersey, chaotically dancing along the dance floor railing. Lanoix laughed.

The fan had no idea that two feet below him was an incognito Burrow on a rare night out.

Flash forward to this season, in the second week of November, Burrow was the quarterback of a 5-4 football team and had a week off. The Bengals had just lost to the Browns 41-16 in a game that saw Burrow throw two interceptions and zero touchdowns. With a few days free, he found himself in Columbus, his old college home, the place he had to leave to become a legend in two states.

“I was like, come on, we might as well go out,” Saltzman said. “(Bengals defensive end) Sam Hubbard was there and he was like, ‘What do you think about going out?’ And Joe said, ‘Well, No. 1, it’s not a good look after losing to the Browns last week. And two, I’m not going to have a fun time in that atmosphere anyway. So there’s no point.’ We were all kind of like, that makes perfect sense.”

So they had a quiet dinner at The Top Steak House and went back to an Airbnb that Burrow had rented.

“We watched a movie and listened to a lot of Kid Cudi,” Saltzman said.

That attitude didn’t change when the Bengals’ fortunes did. After the Bengals beat the Chiefs in Week 17 to clinch a playoff berth, some people wanted to go out but Joe just went to Hubbard’s house, where they played cards with Trey Hendrickson, DJ Reader, Hubbard and Kevin Huber. Then, after the playoff win against the Raiders, Dan got back to his little brother’s house at midnight hoping to celebrate. Joe had been in bed since 9:45 p.m.

There’s a difference between being a famous quarterback and being a legend. Much of it has to do with winning, which Burrow has done a remarkable job of over the past three years. But there’s something else about Burrow that endears him to people in a unique way.

And if there was a moment when Burrow became more than a quarterback, it was during his Heisman Trophy acceptance speech two years ago.

Two hours before he officially won the award given to the best college player in the country, a prelude to the national championship he would win for LSU a few weeks later, Jimmy Burrow went to his son’s room to see if he had anything prepared when the inevitable award was announced.

The elder Burrow found his son jotting down some notes for his speech. Joe told his dad he wasn’t going to write out a formal speech. What he wound up saying changed lives. Not something you can normally say about a Heisman speech.

“Coming from southeast Ohio, it’s a very impoverished area,” Burrow said. “The poverty rate is almost two times the national average. There’s so many people there who 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.”

He paused to collect himself, and that’s when the applause started. But it hasn’t ended.

“The crazy thing is I remember talking to him about it,” Saltzman said. “And that was completely off-script. He was going to give a little thanks, and I think when he got up there, he really started thinking about Athens and his connection to it, and I think that just hit him so hard that he just got super emotional. He’s always gonna rep the community, but I don’t think he anticipated crying, you know?”

No one remembers Heisman speeches, but as the NFL is learning, Burrow is a little different.

“I mean, we knew he knew about that, and was sensitive to it, because he had friends that were not as fortunate as he was and he always treated them the same no matter what,” Jimmy said. “But this wasn’t really a dinner-table discussion. So, you know, he opened our eyes to that.”

“Food insecurity” is defined by the charity Feeding America as “a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, healthy life.” As of Feeding America’s records from 2019, there were 12,460 food-insecure people in Athens County, which accounts for 18.9 percent of the population. That was one of the highest percentages in Ohio. The charity estimates that more than 38 million people face food insecurity in this country.

“It did blow everybody away, including us,” Robin Burrow said. “It was so great to hear him speak of his love for our area. And for me, as a mom, I was so proud that he was so reflective and aware of all of the needs in the area and very happy that he used that platform that he had that night, to be able to bring some extra support and, and really some awareness of that problem in our area.”

Will Drabold, a former journalist who was three grades ahead of Burrow at Athens High, was watching and was so moved, he wanted to use the moment to do something.

He remembered there was an Athens County Food Pantry, and he checked its Facebook page and saw it could take donations via the website. So he created a little fundraiser with a $1,000 goal and sent the link to friends and family.

“I put that up and then later that day, got on a flight from Columbus to L.A., and when I landed, it was like $25,000,” he said. “So this is something. I woke up early Pacific time, it was like $80,000. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is crazy.’ That was not even 48 hours after a speech.”

Drabold’s Facebook messages were full of support from LSU fans.

“I started getting messages from people all over Louisiana,” he said. “Like we got this, the Cajuns got it.”

They did get it, and so did a slew of other people. The fund became a social-media sensation, raising $650,000 by the end of January. Other fundraisers for local missions popped up as well.

Burrow made food insecurity in Appalachian Ohio a trending topic.

Karin Bright, the head of the Athens County Food Pantry, said, “It enabled us to change the model we had used for years, and that model was we had a certain amount (of food) that we packed (to give away) each week. We had our budgeted amount, and this is what we packed. And at the end of the week, if we ran out on Thursday, we ran out on Thursday. If we made it to Friday, then that was great.

“So when we knew that we no longer had to worry about that limitation, we immediately went to what we now call a never-out model. Anytime we start to run low on those packed bags and boxes, we bring in a packing crew. Whatever the demands are, we’re able to meet that demand and don’t have to turn anyone away because we were out of food for that week.”

They wanted to divvy up and invest the money in a responsible manner and one thing they wanted to do was create a “long-term sustainable investment.” They decided to partner with the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. The food pantry donated $350,000 to get this started, which the foundation matched and they named the fund for Burrow.

“Joe generously and graciously permitted us to use his name to name that fund,” Bright said. “So that’s why it’s named the Joe Burrow Hunger Relief Fund, because we wanted to honor what he had said and the fact that he had put such a spotlight on hunger and food insecurity in this area.”

Burrow didn’t find fame in Columbus. But he still holds Ohio State true to his heart.

“I’m definitely still a Buckeye,” he told reporters recently.

After all, he came to Urban Meyer’s football factory with a lot to prove. He was a highly touted player with immense numbers but was not a slam-dunk Power 5 QB recruit. NFL quarterbacks don’t come from the Tri-Valley Conference, no matter who their dad is.

“I really wasn’t very good coming into college, and I knew that I was going to have to get better,” Burrow said Monday during his first Super Bowl press conference. “I came from a really small school in high school, and it was kind of a culture shock when I got to Ohio State and realized how good everybody was. So I knew I wasn’t going to play early, but I worked really hard, and they helped develop me to the player that I am today. So I owe Ohio State quite a bit.”

As Tim Hall, a sports-radio host in Columbus said in a conversation, Burrow’s connections to Ohio State are obvious — “He, 100%, is a Buckeye. I think it’s ridiculous to say that he’s not.” — and fans are taking pride in his local success. But this is a fan base still waiting for an Ohio State quarterback to take hold in the NFL, and Hall doesn’t think Buckeyes fans can truly lay claim to Burrow as their guy in the NFL.

“I think to this day, the best QB they’ve ever produced in the NFL is Mike Tomczak, and that’s shocking, Mike Tomczak for a football program as proud as Ohio State,” Hall said. “They were hoping that Dwayne Haskins would be that first guy and he wasn’t, so now it’s Justin Fields.”

This week, Homage, a popular sports apparel company based in Columbus, re-launched its “Just A Kid From Athens” shirts, with part of the proceeds going to the Southeast Ohio Food Bank. Homage was founded by an Ohio University graduate and focuses on Ohio State gear, so Burrow is a natural attraction. The company just got its NFL license in January, perfect timing to sell Bengals gear as well. Homage has been selling every orange hoodie it has and spending the week working to stock their stores in Columbus and Cincinnati.

“This week, there’s so many stories coming out about Joe Burrow, the Ohio kid, I think our audience, our audience being Ohio State fans, a lot of Ohio State fans, there’s just a lot of love for him,” said Nathan Okuley, Homage’s vice president of brand marketing. “So, the moment he said, ‘You know, I’m still a Buckeye,’ I feel like the amount of searches that we saw on our site for Joe Burrow just skyrocketed.”

The football pecking order among Columbus sports fans has long been Ohio State, the Browns and then the Bengals. But things are changing.

“I think the fan base, the Cincinnati fan base, is growing louder and louder in Columbus each and every day,” Okuley said. “In years past, I would say it was predominantly a Browns city, at least you know, just by walking the streets or talking to people who were going to sports bars. So I think you’ve seen a shift.”

As Evan McPherson’s kick went through the uprights in Kansas City on Jan. 30, the bars in Louisiana erupted as if it were a Saints game. This was their favorite adopted son, the Ohio transplant who changed his jersey to read “Burreaux” on senior night to make clear this will always be his other home. The Walk-On’s by Tiger Stadium, the fittingly named Bengal Tap Room and homes throughout the state cheered because he is their guy. Burrow didn’t start out at LSU, but they hold him as dear as any athlete in school history.

Lanoix had 25 or so people over for that AFC title game. His dad made sauce piquante, and they drank wine as the Bengals went down 18. It could have been over, “But here comes fuckin’ Burrow again,” he said.

“At the end of the game, I told everyone there, ‘I love the Saints, but I think people were happier and celebrating more that Joe was going to the Super Bowl than if the Saints would have won.’ Maybe not that extreme, but pretty close.”

The reverence Burrow draws in Louisiana is matched only by Drew Brees, the man whose Saints’ Super Bowl helped a state heal after Hurricane Katrina. But Burrow carries his own unprecedented sort of folklore, this near mythological quality that makes people just believe. It goes back to Hebert referring to LSU fans as “the chosen people.” Now they follow him unconditionally, leading to an entire state of southern Bengals fans.

LSU has had great players before, sure, but Burrow is something different. He’s the guy who took the offense from the Stone Age and made it college football’s greatest ever. He’s the one who, every time LSU went down, allowed them to feel a strange sense of calm. Because they had Burrow. And he did it with his sense of cool.

“It’s all very meathead, but the thing you can’t get away from is the animalistic alpha sort-of aura,” Hebert said. “The alpha aura. There’s always gotta be a big dog. Eventually, you’re going to get to the top … It’s his supreme confidence and belief in himself.”

Lindsey Thompson, a Cincinnati native who has been LSU Athletics’ creative services coordinator for the past five years, has the complete perspective of Burrow. She’s lived the years of Bengals losing, she’s lived a few years of LSU being unable to field a modern offense, and she’s seen Burrow come to both places and “He just changes the world.”

Thompson has spent each Bengals playoff game at the same table at Walk-On’s. At first, the whole bar was casually rooting for their boy Burrow, but eventually, the place evolved into roaring fans hyping her up. On the other side of the building, a video captured LSU’s new assistant athletic director of sports nutrition, a young, well-built Ohio native named Matt Frakes, succumbing to deep tears as the kick went through.

But the Burrow’s reach doesn’t stop with the football program. It touches Leslie Blanchard, an adjunct professor at LSU also serving as executive director of the school’s Leadership Development Institute. Burrow took three graduate-level courses on leadership under Blanchard, all electives he pursued because he simply wanted to grow as a leader. She joked with him in the summer of 2019 that she wanted him to sign his final paper and send it back before he won a Heisman and a national championship.

After the season — and thanks to her new friendship with Burrow’s mother — Blanchard checked her mailbox. Burrow’s final paper was signed “Joey B” with the message, “Thanks for all the help.”

“I won’t lie to you, I fist bump the air every time a commentator or reporter says, ‘This man shows such great leadership for his age.’” Blanchard said. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, he does!’”

By the time LSU had become No. 1 and beaten Alabama, the Burrow clan was like LSU’s first family. While tailgating the final home game, Jimmy, Joe’s eldest brother Jamie and Jamie’s stepson Charlie were playing catch. It was three generations of Burrow men throwing a football around before watching Joe’s Heisman run.

And right then, some college kids came up and asked if they’re the Burrows. They said yes.

“The next thing you know, our special moment had ended and been replaced by these college kids running routes because they wanted to catch passes from Joe’s dad, Joe’s brother and Joe’s nephew,” Jamie said.

Lanoix watched that LSU season and doesn’t think the Burrow family fully grasped what Joe means to this state.

 “They’re gonna put a fucking statue outside of Tiger Stadium of this kid,” he told Joe’s brother Dan. “He’s on the Mount Rushmore. You don’t realize. He will never have to pay for a meal or drink in this state ever again.”

So as the Bengals have gone on this shocking run, Hebert starts every Monday talking more about Burrow on his ESPN morning radio show, “Off The Bench”. It’s all anybody wants to talk about. He playfully compares himself to John the Baptist preaching Burrow’s glory.

“Immortality that can be gained by accomplishing some of these things. So even though it’s been two years, and maybe because of how the last two years have gone for LSU, Joe Burrow’s star has not been lessened in the slightest. It’s only been heightened.”

After watching Burrow and the Bengals clinch a trip to the Super Bowl, Kyle Schwarber can really relate to Chicagoans.

“Cubs fans might feel like I’m being a little outrageous here, but I know what it feels like to be a fan in ’16 now,” said Schwarber, a Middletown, Ohio, native and lifelong Bengals fan.

Schwarber, who helped lead the Cubs to a historic World Series championship, watched the Bengals rally from an 18-point deficit against the Chiefs in the AFC Championship at the new house he and his wife had just built in Middletown. How excited was he? Well, when asked if he were wearing a jersey for the game, this was his answer:

“Well, I’ve got a rotation,” he said. “I got a (Joe) Mixon, I got a Tee Higgins and I got a Burrow jersey. So sometimes I rotate them out between quarters, things like that. Just try to change up the mojo. Last week, I started with the Tee Higgins jersey and once we got to that second half, I said, ‘Yo, we got to switch up the mojo and I put the Joey B jersey on.’”

Schwarber, who is a free agent waiting for the MLB lockout to end, procured four tickets to the Super Bowl. He stressed how the experience alone could benefit Burrow and the young Bengals in the future. Schwarber has experience in professional locker rooms and has played with renowned leaders like Jon Lester. He sees something special in Burrow, if only from afar.

“I think the biggest thing when you look at this guy talk, is he talks about his teammates a lot,” he said. “He doesn’t really talk about himself. I think that that’s a special thing that you see. Obviously, he’s the quarterback of the team, he’s going to be making a lot of decisions, but he trusts his teammates. He trusts that they’re gonna do the right thing for him to get the ball to them. And they’re gonna make the plays. He believes in his team, and his team believes in him. That’s half the battle. Now, it’s just go out there and do it.”

Schwarber is onto something with his assessment of Burrow, according to one of his former teammates.

“I’ve never seen him rattled,” said Williams, Burrow’s running back who went on to play at Northwestern. “I’ve known him since I was 15. Not one situation has he ever been rattled. That’s just not in his DNA. And people gravitate toward that, whether it’s fans, whether it’s people on the same team as him. And I mean, in my experience, being on the same team as him, you don’t want to let somebody like that down.”

As a sports town, Cincinnati has needed someone like Burrow for a long time.

As the starting quarterback for the University of Cincinnati in 2008-09, Tony Pike led the team to two BCS games. Now he hosts a sports-radio show in the city and is basking in the glow like everyone else.

“Everyone’s sold out of Bengals stuff and everyone you see is yelling, ‘Who Dey,’” he said. “It’s amazing what winning and sports can do for a frickin’ city.”

Pike grew up there, so he’s familiar with the downside of being a local fan.

“You grow up in Cincinnati and all you really know is heartbreak,” he said.

There’s Jeremy Hill’s playoff fumble against the Steelers six years ago, and a decade before that, Steelers lineman Kimo von Oelhoffen tumbling into Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer’s knee. Kenyon Martin getting injured before the NCAA tournament in 2000. The Bengals’ two Super Bowl losses in the 1980s. On and on. The Reds’ 1990 World Series was a long time ago.

“It’s always that tugging feeling as a Cincinnati sports fan of, you know, you’re going to get pulled back down to reality,” Pike said. “And you’re going to face this heartbreak and all of a sudden here are the Bengals.”

And here is Joe Burrow.

“There’s the side of playing the game that I look at Joe Burrow, and I say, you know, he got drafted two years ago, he had a virtual offseason because of COVID,” Pike said. “He gets major knee reconstructive surgery in his second offseason. So he’s not had one normal offseason. He’s not had the normal progression that every quarterback coming out of college gets. And I think you could talk about him as a top-five quarterback in the NFL right now. So there’s that side of Joe Burrow.

“And then there’s the Joe Burrow that literally has the city in the palm of his hands, right? He wears the Cartier glasses, and everyone goes and buys the glasses. And he wears the chain. And everyone’s talking about that. Everything that he does is front-page news in the city of Cincinnati, and he does it without being like the boisterous over-the-top talker, right? He’s one of those guys that is quiet. When he talks, you listen. But whatever he does, people are wrapped around what he does.”

At Cincy Shirts, a top producer of local zeitgeist sports and culture apparel, they’re working seven days a week to fill orders for Bengals gear for the Super Bowl. During the playoffs, its top seller has been the “Joey Warhol” shirt, a pop-art creation celebrating Burrow rocking those Cartier “buffs” to the press conference following the Bengals’ first playoff victory in 31 years.

“Speaking as both a business owner and a fan, we haven’t seen the total package, you know what I mean?” Sneed said. “We’ve lacked a guy that has that swagger that it’s just teetering on the borderline of confidence and cockiness, but also the skill to back it up where you have the confidence in him to come through. We’ve just needed that guy.”

For the second time in three years, Burrow finds himself on the biggest stage he’s ever been on, and on the cusp of doing something nobody expected. During this ride that has taken him from Athens to Columbus to Baton Rouge to Cincinnati and now to Los Angeles for the biggest game of his life, everyone around him says Joe Burrow hasn’t changed a bit.

But those places he’s been? Well, he’s changed everything.

 

 

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