LSU quarterback Joe Burrow and LSU coach Ed Orgeron celebrate after winning the Southeastern Conference championship game 37-10 against Georgia on Dec. 7, 2019,
in Atlanta. December 7, 2019 – SEC Championship – #4 Georgia vs #2 LSU – video
Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Marx is the author of “Walking with Tigers:
A Collection of LSU Sports Stories” and five other books.
You can follow him on Twitter: @LSUTigersBook
This is the third in a three-part series. To read Part I, go here. For Part II, go here.
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Joe Burrow – Tiger King – YouTube
Tom Brady had funny remark about Joe Burrow’s career path (msn.com)
Give him his early-morning time alone on the balcony outside his office — his time
of solitary prayer and reflection — and then just give him non-stop people and action.
Give him noise and bustle. “Commotion all the time,” Kelly Orgeron says.
“Like … he can’t handle coming into a quiet room.”
Joe Burrow is fine with a quiet room. He is happy to be alone. No need for constant interaction or a lot of external stimuli when he has down time. “He really likes to be by himself … or in a very quiet environment,” Robin Burrow says. “Even when he comes home, we might all be together, but we’re watching our favorite shows or a movie, or
he’s playing video games.
“And I think that probably speaks to the fact that Joe grew up — even though he’s got Jamie (now 41) and Dan (38), the older boys — they were really not around in the house a lot as he was growing up. He was basically an only child with two brothers. It was mostly just me and Joe there. Jimmy was gone a lot, coaching or working, and recruiting and all that, so our house was always quiet, and I think that’s just kind of what Joe got used to.”
There are many other preferences and traits that set Coach O and Joe apart. Countless biographical details and personal tidbits also show us how different their journeys have been — how different they must be.
Coach O: hometown of little Larose, Louisiana, where the largest intersection has nothing to do with pavement or a stoplight. It is the intersection of Bayou Lafourche and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Joe: The Plains, Ohio, 1,000-plus miles from Baton Rouge but it might as well be planets away. The Plains is in the rugged Appalachian region and listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its Native-American burial mounds.
Coach O: Growing up, he thought himself the luckiest kid in the world whenever his mom, Coco, made him a shrimp po-boy and French fries for breakfast. Joe: Early in his time at LSU, he was teased by teammates for choosing salad instead of piling his dinner plate with the rich offerings of regional fare.
Coach O: had a summer job shoveling shrimp in Grand Isle. Also had a temporary job digging ditches. Joe: did a New York summer internship with Goldman Sachs, one of the most prestigious financial firms in the world. Did not dig any ditches on Wall Street.
Coach O: known and loved for his distinct way of speaking that is equal parts rumbling machinery and Cajun creativity — all of it lubricated and energized by a combination of Red Bull and endless passion. Joe: not always able to decipher exactly what his head
coach was saying. “The first year it was tough,” he recently said on The Rich Eisen Show.
As much as outsiders’ dwell on all the obvious differences, though, there is something else about Coach O and Joe that stands out to people who know them best. It is the remarkably long list of similarities. Both had been doubted and denied: Coach O fired at Ole Miss and passed over for the USC head job after a stellar stint as interim coach. Joe ignored by Nebraska — his dream school — and never able to win the starting job at Ohio State.
Both had been dogged by consistent questions about their so-called limitations: Was Coach O really just a defensive line coach without “the smarts” or proper personality to succeed in the CEO role of a head coach? Did Joe have the arm strength to make all the throws he needed to make
Both used their critics as motivation.
Both kept pounding away.
Both finally made it to the top of college football.
And they had done it the same way. With relentless work and perseverance.
With intensity and grit. With sturdy belief in themselves. With a natural love of competition. With toughness and single-minded focus. Derek Ponamsky spent
as much time as anyone with Coach O and Joe — and he is still amused by the
way people looking from afar automatically thought of them as being so different.
As if they were Felix and Oscar — complete opposites — from the old movie
and TV show The Odd Couple. “No, they’re pretty much the same guy,” Ponamsky says.
“I think if you cut them open, it’s the same exact DNA. They just look different. They just sound different. They’re just from different places. I mean, I’m telling you, they’re the same guy.”
How would he describe that guy?
The most straightforward, no-nonsense, passionate and compassionate person you could find. Always displays the mentality of a defensive player … just wants to go out and attack. And no BS. If he tells you something is going to happen, it happens. Always.
After following Coach O and Joe throughout the season, Marty Smith, ESPN reporter and storyteller extraordinaire, also saw the power of their similarities and the blending of two men into a singular being: “this two-headed monster of very like-minded philosophical approaches.”
Visiting with Jordy Culotta and T-Bob Hebert on their Baton Rouge radio show,
Off the Bench, Smith described those shared approaches by temporarily speaking in the role of that Coach O-Joe combination monster: “We’re blue-collar. We’re tough as hell.
We approach life like a linebacker – with snot bubbles and blood. And we’re gonna go do
this our way. And it couldn’t be more Louisiana, y’all.”
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Two primary factors allowed for the monster to be created and then held it together: mutual trust and mutual respect. And the bond was unbreakable. Over time — with Joe’s role as team leader constantly gaining strength — his interactions with Coach O extended well beyond the norm for any player and coach. “The more Joe showed me he could do,
the more I gave him the team,” Coach O says. “He was kind of like a player-coach for me.
“I believed in Joe. And I knew that he’d tell me the truth.
He never told me what I wanted to hear. He told me what I needed to hear.” Joe agrees — saying he never sugarcoated anything for Coach O: “If I thought we had a bad practice,
I was going to tell him. If you don’t trust your head coach enough to say that — to tell him anything — then you’re not going to be a great team.
I don’t think you can be a great team if you don’t have the trust in each other to be honest and direct.” Joe had the confidence to tell Coach O whatever he wanted or needed to say.
Coach O had the trust to then act on what he was hearing. Never before, not throughout his entire career, had Coach O sought out and relied upon input from any player as regularly as he did with Joe.
Sometimes it was Coach O walking over from working with the defense to check in with Joe about how practice was going for the offense. You guys getting what we want out of this period? Is what we’re doing here going to work against that coverage?
Is it too windy out — should we go inside to finish?
“Coach O spent most of his time with the defense and was very rarely ever with us,”
tight end Thaddeus Moss says. “But when he would come over to the offense, first guy
he’d come up to was Joe.” Coach O might ask about anything. “And Joe would just tell
him straight up … almost like a coach-to-coach conversation.
It most definitely didn’t seem like coach to player.”
Sometimes it was more than just on-the-field practice stuff — such as Coach O seeking Joe’s input with the specific game plan against that week’s opponent. “He put a lot of trust in me,” Joe says. “And that’s something that I really appreciated … that I was very involved in the game planning and that he trusted me enough to hear my insights.”
Coach O also went to Joe about off-the-field matters large and small:
What was the overall pulse of the team? Was there anything he needed to know about? What did Joe and the guys want for dinner? What did he think of bowling and a movie
as team activities for the two nights leading up to the national championship game in
New Orleans.
“I would describe them as father-son … as close as it’s going to get,” Clyde Edwards-Helaire says. “And then when it came to business, it was man-to-man … always 100 percent truthful, 100 percent heartfelt with everything they did and interacted about.”
One of the most dramatic and impactful examples of Joe’s input came in the days
leading up to the 2019 Peach Bowl, which was LSU’s semifinal game of the College Football Playoffs. Edwards-Helaire, one of the most important offensive players for
the top-ranked Tigers, had a hamstring injury. Who would replace the star running
back against No. 4 Oklahoma?
LSU had two heavily recruited freshmen, Tyrion Davis-Price and John Emery, waiting in the wings. Conventional wisdom pointed to one of them. Joe did not. He wanted redshirt freshman Chris Curry — and privately spoke up for him. Curry had barely played in two seasons. He was fourth string. But Joe felt he had earned the opportunity in practice.
“Chris was a scout-team guy all year, and he never stopped fighting,” Joe says.
“He didn’t get discouraged. All he did was work really, really hard. I wanted to reward that. And I’m glad that the coaches felt the same way.” Joe’s explanation makes him sound as if he were one of the coaches. Was he even aware how unusual it was for a college player to be so involved in a decision like that?
“It didn’t feel like it was weird,” Joe says. “I had been involved in decision-making
for most of the year. It started out with decisions about the game plan … and then
kind of evolved into them asking me what I thought about stuff like that.”
Curry got the start. And the selection worked out well. He displayed an impressive combination of flash and physicality — rushing for 90 yards on 16 carries.
LSU dominated from start to finish and left Atlanta with a 63-28 blowout win.
The LSU Tigers were headed to the national championship game.
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Joe and Coach O talked about things other than football every now and then.
But not too often. And never for long. “He was all football, I’m all football,” Coach O says. “That was the best thing about it.” That does not mean their interactions were always serious.
In his earliest days at LSU, one hot summer afternoon before the start of his first
camp with the Tigers, sun blazing in full force, Joe got a feel for what he could expect.
He was working on his own at the football facility, throwing into a net, and Coach O happened to walk by.
“Hey, Joe,” he said. “What do you think of Ray Baker?”
Joe did not know a lot of guys on the team yet — not even their names.
But he didn’t want to sound clueless … didn’t want to be a guy who
wouldn’t know a teammate. So, he just went with it.
“Yeah, he’s good,” Joe said. “He’s really good.”
Coach O gave him a look of bewilderment and walked away.
Joe turned to the only other person there with him, Foster Moreau, and sought help: “Who’s Ray Baker?”
Moreau laughed: “The sun. That’s what he calls the sun.”
He explained: Ray as in rays of sun. Baker as in it will take you out here.
Joe thought that was funny. It also was a sign of things to come. He and Coach O would always get a good chuckle out of their light moments. They could come at any time.
But Joe and Coach O practically had a weekly appointment. Late in Thursday practices, there was always a period of about ten minutes devoted to special teams.
Joe would be standing off to one side of the field — nothing he had to do during this period. And Coach O would walk over to him. “It was almost like clockwork,” says Jorge Munoz, now the passing game coordinator at Baylor. “It would just be Joe and Coach O
off to the side … and they would just talk and visit.
But I think that was their bonding time a little bit.”
Coach O says it was intentional. He might use part of the time to check in about something related to the team. Mostly, though, he wanted to be silly and light, tossing out a ridiculous comment or two just to keep things loose.
“Hey, Joe, you know I used to be a tight end in high school?”
“You want to see some film of the 1977 state championship game?”
And then the banter would go from there — the star quarterback and the big old
defensive-lineman-turned-head-ball-coach yukking it up for a few minutes.
Joe always loved it.
“That’s kind of just who we were as a team,” he says.
“You know, we were very serious about what we did. But we didn’t take ourselves too seriously. And I think that was the beauty of what we did as a team. We just had a lot of fun together.” Joe even had a favorite line Coach O used multiple times during their little Thursday get-togethers.
“Hey, Joe, are you guys putting in that forward pass today?” As if the “old” coach who played in the 1970s had come up back in the days of leather helmets and offenses that
did nothing but run the ball. It made no difference that the silly line was on repeat.
Joe laughed every time — still does as he recalls it: “Because I think it just shows
how old-school Coach O is.”
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Dan Burrow had purchased a T-shirt with Coach O’s image on it.
He’d bought one for his brother Jamie, too. They enjoyed wearing them and anything
else that announced the depth of their devotion to their favorite coach and his team. They enjoyed everything about being part of the purple-and-gold universe that is LSU football.
Robin Burrow had a favorite spot before home games. Standing in a crowded area just outside the door to the LSU locker room, she would watch the players and coaches finish their walk down Victory Hill. It was there that she would see Joe for one final wish of good luck before he went inside. It was also there that Kelly Orgeron always made a point of seeking her out for a hug and a few words before entering the stadium.
For the Burrow family, there had been one missing piece during Joe’s first season in Baton Rouge. Jimmy was still coaching at Ohio University. With Joe entering his final year of college ball and the hope of so much excitement ahead, that was no longer going to work. Jimmy did not want to miss any of his son’s games.
So after 38 straight years of coaching, he retired at 65 and became a fixture wherever the Tigers were playing — home or away. The Burrows had a regular tailgating spot outside Tiger Stadium. Jimmy was interviewed so often as the season progressed — even had his own weekly segment on ESPN radio in Baton Rouge — that he might as well have been issued a media credential.
What a year it became for the whole family.
Joe kept taking the impossible and transforming it into routine activity —
breaking records every step of the way.
The Tigers kept rolling over opponents.
And the magical moments kept piling up.
For the Burrows, one of the most memorable happened the afternoon of Saturday,
Nov. 9, on the field of Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It would have been enough that LSU snapped Alabama’s 31-game home winning streak with a 46-41 takedown of Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide. The victory made it nine straight wins for the Tigers and solidified their status as the top-ranked team in the nation. But there was more.
It happened while LSU was celebrating after the game. Coach O and Joe were standing next to each other — front and center — during the traditional singing of the alma mater.
“Joe, your mom and dad are in the stadium?” Coach O asked.
Joe smiled as he nodded in affirmation.
Coach O cackled, lifting his right hand for a fist bump, and they knocked knuckles.
“How about Dan?” Coach O said.
“Dan just got engaged,” Joe gushed.
“He did? Really?”
“He got engaged yesterday.”
The exchange was extraordinary not only in its time and place: the head coach asking about his quarterback’s family right after the most significant LSU victory in years … smack in the middle of such an emotional celebration.
It was also remarkable for its substance within the ever-expanding football fairytale that never stopped getting better — the fact that an Ohio kid choosing to play ball in Louisiana would also somehow lead his brother to find the love of his life.
In September 2018, Dan was in Alabama for the LSU-Auburn game and — through friends — met an Auburn alumna named Jama Cash. They first saw each other in a parking lot outside Jordan-Hare Stadium. Dan and Jama hit it off. Their long-distance relationship kept growing. And two days earlier, back in Alabama, visiting Jama before attending the LSU-Alabama game, Dan had popped the big question.
So, what if Joe was off by a day in his postgame announcement of the engagement?
He had been focused on other things. Bottom line: The Burrow brothers were leaving Alabama with mighty big victories both on and off the field.
With the alma mater finishing — forever L-S-U — Coach O and Joe formed representative Ls with the fingers of their right hands and raised their celebratory digits for all to see. Defensive lineman Tyler Shelvin then lifted Joe onto his right shoulder — a mountainous man ready to transport a triumphant king — and off went the Tigers.
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As the backup quarterback, redshirt sophomore Myles Brennan always had to stay ready in case anything happened to Joe. He had another priority, too. He wanted to support Joe and make sure everyone knew that he was fully behind him. Although Brennan had hoped to be the starter by this point in his career — and was understandably not thrilled when LSU added Joe to the team — they were now friends and hotel roommates the nights before games. Plus, Brennan was a team guy before anything else.
With that in mind, whenever Joe threw a touchdown pass, scored himself, or otherwise
led LSU to points, Brennan routinely tried to be first to greet him coming off the field.
There was one exception. If Coach O was headed toward Joe, Brennan waited his turn.
He was not about to step in front of the head coach. But being so close at such moments put Brennan in the perfect position to see something he otherwise would have missed.
It was the way Coach O and Joe looked at each other.
Sometimes they would hug. Other times they would share a fist bump or chest bump. Whatever they did, it was the way they looked each other in the eyes that stood out to Brennan as the perfect illustration of their relationship. No words were needed. The look alone always reminded Brennan of the special bond between his coach and teammate.
What exactly did he see between them at those moments?
“Just … I don’t even know,” Brennan says. “I don’t know the words to describe it.”
He pauses. Then he tries again: “I mean, I want to say love.
And I feel like that is the word.”
Joe embraces the word choice: “I just saw the eyes of a competitor who knew what we
we’re trying to do and knew that I was going to get the job done. And I think that has a lot to do with love. Because Coach O had a lot of trust in me — and I had a lot of trust in him.”
Love.
“Like a father-son,” Coach O says. “Like a family would love each other.”
Coach O also offers his own interpretation of what he saw in Joe’s eyes.
It starts with something that happens every Thursday of the season.
In the team meeting, Coach O put a color photo of an eagle on the big screen behind him. It was a close-up head shot dominated by the white of feathers and a menacing yellow-gold beak. More than anything, though, the photo was all about the eyes. They were intense.
The oval pupils were large and black and unmistakably locked in on something. A message had been placed at the bottom of the photo. In large, gold letters: FOCUS. And below that: If you chase two rabbits, you catch none. Coach O pointed to that eagle and told his players those were the eyes he wanted to see from them during games.
“It’s total focus,” he says now. “Myles might call that love. I call it total focus. We’re in war. There’s not a lot of things to say. It’s just that frickin’ look, man. And Joe and I have had that same look. It’s a competitive look. It’s serious.”
Call it what you want — love or focus. When Coach O and Joe connected eye-to-eye
like that, it was indeed serious business: two men — together as one — stalking a lone
and ill-fated rabbit.
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They did not miss a single rabbit.
Fifteen rabbits chased. Fifteen rabbits caught.
In college football, that makes you national champions with a perfect 15-0 record.
In Louisiana, that makes you royalty: a quarterback and a coach who will be celebrated
for the rest of your days … and then for many more once your own days are done.
Joe started the season as a 200-to-1 long shot to win the Heisman. After leading the most prolific offense in the history of major college football — 48.4 points per game — he ended the year as the most decorated player in LSU history. His 60 touchdown passes set the NCAA record for most in a season. He broke nearly every LSU single-season passing record and numerous SEC marks as well.
Coach O collected national “Coach of the Year” awards from The Associated Press
and other organizations. Clearly, they were impressed that nearly half of LSU’s wins —
seven of them — came against teams that were ranked in the top 10.
After one of those games, the 37-10 shellacking of No. 4 Georgia for the SEC championship, Joe and Coach O played hot potato with the game ball.
Coach O handed it to Joe — wanting him to keep it as a souvenir. Joe gave it right
back — wanting Coach O to have it. Safety JaCoby Stevens saw that as symbolic of
their relationship: “Joe looks at Coach O as a role model. He looks at him as a leader.
And Coach O looks at Joe as a son.”
Stevens also saw that moment as a clear definition of his coach and quarterback as individuals: “For Coach O, it’s never about him. It’s about us. It’s about his players.
And for Joe to hand the ball back to Coach O — it’s not about Joe. He’s not doing it for himself. He’s doing it for Coach O. He’s doing it for all of us. So those are two selfless men. Everything they do, everything they’re doing it for, it’s bigger than them.”
For Coach O, such an approach goes back to his childhood days down the bayou.
For Joe, it goes back to life with a caring family in a humble pocket of Ohio.
For both of them — as a pair — it goes back to one weekend they will long remember … and especially to a single conversation one night in a restaurant parking lot.
Multiple times during their amazing run last season — once while in New York for the Heisman presentation, once in New Orleans after beating Clemson for the national championship, and there were other times — Coach O privately shared a celebratory thought with Joe: “Thank God we went to Mike Anderson’s and had those crawfish.”
The exact words of Joe’s response varied each time he heard that.
But his core sentiment never changed: “Damn straight! I’m glad we did it.”
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Joe Burrows Incredible Heisman Acceptance Speech (EMOTIONAL) – YouTube
Joe is bigger than ever in the LSU football ops building. That’s what happens when
your All-American quarterback wins the Heisman, leads your team to the national championship, and is now projected to be the first player picked in the upcoming
NFL draft. He blows up — figuratively anyway.
At the moment, though, Joe is literally as big as he’s ever been in this building, too.
Just turn toward the mammoth TV screen — 220 diagonal inches overlooking the lobby. There he is. Joe is still giving his Heisman speech. He is again gathering himself after finally getting out those opening words — “You have no idea what you mean to my family” — directed to Coach O.
ESPN now has them in split screen. Coach O nods toward his quarterback.
Jimmy Burrow, left arm draped over Coach O’s back, gently grips his shoulder.
Robin Burrow reaches across her husband and momentarily takes Coach O’s
right hand for a squeeze.
Joe, meanwhile, sniffs, wipes his eyes, takes in a big breath, audibly exhales,
and sniffs again.
“You know, I didn’t play for three years,” he says.
Sniff. Quick wipe of the nose with the back of a finger.
“You took a chance on me …”
Voice breaking: “… not knowing if I could play or not.”
Pause. Sniff. Exhale.
Joe’s eyes are a mess: puffy swamps now spilling over.
“And I’m forever in your …”
Deep breath. Big exhale. Sniff.
“… forever grateful for you.”
Coach O tightens his right hand into a fist and lifts it toward Joe.
He shakes it in gratitude and support … in togetherness … in shared emotion.
It is as close as he can get to knocking knuckles without being able to reach.
Coach O is now himself that eagle from those Thursday meetings in the team room. Focused. His eyes are locked on Joe. They are moist. They are full. But he somehow manages to hold on without actually shedding a tear. He’ll later share what he was thinking: “Better not start crying on national TV.” And how he kept from breaking:
“Just gritted it out a little bit.”
Joe unleashes another big exhale.
Then: “Can you imagine a guy like Coach O …”
Sniff. Eye wipe.
“… giving me the keys to … to his football program.”
Sniff. Eye wipe. Sniff.
“He just means so much to me and my family …”
Sniff. Nose wipe.
“… and to LSU. I sure hope they give him a lifetime contract. He deserves it.”
And with that the mood is instantly lightened — the silent theater filled with
laughter and applause. Joe laughs. His parents laugh. Ed and Kelly Orgeron laugh.
Robin Burrow claps three times. Then she turns to Kelly. Reaching across Jimmy and Coach O, Robin extends her left arm and takes hold of Kelly’s right hand. Robin uses her own right hand to give Kelly’s two light taps. She leans in and kisses the back of Kelly’s hand. She gives it two more taps. Then Robin and Kelly look into each other’s eyes —
two mothers of boys, two wives of coaches, two proud women sharing a moment they will always own.
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The LSU sports world already had its most important pieces of action footage. In football, it was the black-and-white majesty of Billy Cannon’s legendary Halloween Run in 1959 — the 89-yard punt return giving the top-ranked Tigers a 7-3 victory over No. 3 Ole Miss and propelling Cannon to become the first LSU Heisman winner. In baseball, it was Warren Morris hitting the most dramatic home run in school history: his two-out, walk-off shot — bottom of the ninth inning and trailing Miami 8-7 — to win the 1996 College World Series.
Now LSU also had its most unforgettable piece of off-the-field footage — Joe Burrow live from New York — a speech for the ages. It was not only the love we saw between Joe and Coach O that elevated the speech to instant classic. It was also the way Joe revealed parts of himself we had never seen. It was the way he opened up and let his emotions pour out. As Joe would later say: “That’s the most I’ve cried in 23 years of living.”
He began by thanking his offensive linemen. Who does that?
Who wins a Heisman and starts by naming each guy on the O-line? Joe also brought up a non-football topic that nobody saw coming: the overwhelming problem of poverty in his home region of Southeast Ohio and the attendant issue of childhood hunger.
His closing words on the subject were spoken with great feeling and sincerity:
“I’m up here for all those … all those kids in Athens and in Athens County that go home to not a lot of food on the table — hungry after school. And you guys can be up here, too.”
It was a lesson for all of us. As things turned out, Joe’s message would also evolve into a lesson for himself. Thanks to his speech — watched by close to three million ESPN viewers and pieces of it bouncing all over the internet — people began donating to the Athens County Food Pantry. More than $500,000 was donated in two weeks.
What a beautiful way for Joe to learn about the power of his new platform —
so quickly realizing how strong it was and how easily he could use it to help others.
He was both awed and inspired by that.
Others felt the same way about the overall substance and feel of his speech — about
the depth and emotion of it all. Tom Rinaldi of ESPN had it just right on the broadcast:
“The pauses spoke as loudly as anything else.”
Congratulating Joe on stage, shaking his hand and hugging him, 1981 Heisman winner Marcus Allen told him, “Your speech was better than your season.”
If the immediate outpouring on social media could have been reduced to one collective statement, it might have been this: I’m not crying. You’re crying.
The Orgerons could hardly believe what they had just seen out of Joe.
“We were completely blown away,” Kelly says. “We just didn’t expect that.
We had never seen Joe show any emotions like that.”
“Not one time,” Coach O concurs.
Gov. John Bel Edwards, a devoted fan of LSU football and friend of the Orgerons, had been sitting next to Kelly in the front row. He thought back to something Coach O told
him before the season — that the 2019 Tigers were going to be “scary good … really good” and would even have a chance to play for the national championship. As Edwards remembers the conversation: “He had a lot of confidence in the entire program, but especially in Joe Burrow.”
Sitting in New York only months later — watching Joe accept the Heisman and seeing how much Coach O and the entire state of Louisiana meant to him — felt “sort of surreal” for the governor. He was glued to Joe’s speech.
“It was tremendously emotional in the room,” Edwards says. “I remember wondering how it was coming across on TV. If somebody was sitting in their living room watching it, I was wondering whether it was coming across the same way. And obviously it did. I think Joe connected with people all across the country … just by being so sincere and genuine and authentic.”
Bunnie Cannon, Billy’s youngest daughter, 50 and an employee of the Tiger Athletic Foundation, had also been in the front row. Seated across the aisle from the Orgerons
and Joe’s parents, she could see pretty much everything when Joe was speaking. She saw Coach O’s cheek quivering … saw the rims of his eyes getting red. She took in every word, every movement, and every emotion as Joe spoke to Coach O — and she felt the bond.
She saw the love.
Bunnie also thought about her father. Oh, how she wished he could have been there to see that LSU finally had another Heisman winner. She knew how happy that would have made her dad. She also knew he would have been instantly drawn to Joe — would have savored that speech as if a proud grandfather. “I was a basket case,” Bunnie says. “I was doing the ugly cry … total ugly cry … tissues in my hand.”
Chris Fowler, longtime host of the Heisman Trophy ceremony for ESPN, never
anticipated any emotion at all. He had great respect for Joe — for the way he played
and for how he handled himself. But Fowler had also seen him as being “almost robotic
… sort of insulating himself from the emotions” in the days leading up to the ceremony. When ESPN was timing out its broadcast, Fowler told his producers not to worry about Joe going too long as a speaker: “I didn’t think he would be expansive.”
Fowler was wrong. And he came to see that as a good thing.
Standing just off stage, the veteran broadcaster watched with amazement as Joe delivered one of the most powerful speeches he had ever seen — so packed with feelings and the expression of feelings that Fowler could hardly believe it. He now puts it this way: “Twenty-six years of doing this, of being ringside, having the honor of presenting the guy who wins the Heisman and then interviewing him right afterward, that one stands out.”
Once the speech was done and the ESPN show was over, Fowler noticed that Joe had left his folded sheet of paper — his notes — on the podium.
So, what if Joe had hardly even looked at his bullet points?
Fowler thought Joe should have the piece of paper as a keepsake.
So, he tracked him down.
Handing Joe, the paper, Fowler said: “You might want this back … pretty cool souvenir.” Joe thanked him and put the paper in a pocket of his suit jacket. Fowler shared a final thought: “That speech you gave was a gift to everybody.”
Some gifts are better than anything that can be bought in a store or wrapped in a box.
For a special group of four beaming recipients — Ed and Kelly Orgeron, Jimmy and Robin Burrow — the gift would forever represent a shared journey and their endless gratitude for every step along the way. It was the gift of seeing Joe — their Joe, the young man, not just Burreaux the football star — breaking out of his comfort zone and leaving an indelible mark of passion and purpose … shining for all the world to see.
“Just made my heart want to burst,” Kelly says.
She thought back to the Joe Burrow who first showed up in Baton Rouge: “very, very guarded … walls up … not someone you would sit down with to just chit-chat and have conversation.”
She thought about the way Joe had gradually opened up during his time at LSU: “letting his guard down — somewhat — and also falling in love with the people of Louisiana.”
And now: “those raw emotions … completely showing all of his raw emotions up on the stage like that.”
There was one additional gift Kelly felt throughout that night.
It was the way Joe’s parents so naturally embraced the Orgerons and pulled them in as complete partners in all the glory and celebration. Jimmy Burrow with his arm around Coach O when Joe was speaking.
Robin Burrow repeatedly reaching out — literally reaching out with her hands — to Coach O and Kelly. The Burrow parents shared whispered comments with the Orgerons — their words punctuated by the warmth of loving looks.
“They didn’t have to do those things,” Kelly says. “I mean, they are the parents, and they are the ones that should be getting all the attention.” But the Burrows did what came naturally. And that allowed Kelly to feel something she would always cherish.
Yes, she was there as the wife of a coach. But she also felt like an additional parent —
as if the Burrows and Orgerons were actually four parents sitting together to witness
the public crowning of one son.
When Robin found out Kelly had framed it that way — four parents together —
she responded with a grateful wow and then a stretched-out awwww.
“I mean, goodness, none of us would have been sitting there without Coach O, and Coach O includes Kelly,” Robin says. “I just can’t even say enough how much we appreciate the opportunities that Coach O has given to Joe, and the support, and the communication between them and our family. It’s just been wonderful.”
To adopt and adapt from Coach O: Two families. One heartbeat.
Coach O says he and Joe ended up joined at the hip. Joined in a two-year football
journey that gave new life to both of them. Joined in a storybook ending that took
them to the highest of heights. Joined in a stunning chapter of LSU sports history
that will be told and retold for years to come.
Jimmy Burrow has a thought about the perfect way to publicly and permanently commemorate the relationship: “If Joe ever has a statue, there better be one of
Coach O right by him, right?”
The idea is mentioned to Joe.
“Absolutely,” he says. “You know, I meant what I said in my Heisman speech.
Give him a lifetime contract. He’s done more for LSU than I think anybody ever has.”
So, lifetime contract first … “joined-at-the-hip” statue after that?
There is no pause now. No wipe of the eye. No sniff.
Heisman Joe just answers without a beat: “Absolutely.”
Source: The story of Joe Burrow and Ed Orgeron: Here’s the last chapter
of our ‘forever linked’ series | LSU | theadvocate.com
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