There is no event that stops the US like the Super Bowl. The whole country will be watching tonight – early Monday morning in Spain – for the final of the NFL, the American football league, between Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals. But no one will live it with the intensity of the neighbors of Athens County, in southeastern Ohio. They play more than a sports victory.
His favorite son is only 25 years old. His name is Joe Burrow and he is the ‘quarterback’ of the Bengals, a team that no one counted on for the Super Bowl. Just as no one cares about this corner of Ohio in the Appalachian foothills. Burrow was a kid
when it closed the last mine in the county, in 2002. Like other mining regions in decline since the mid-20th century, Athens became an undesirable place. It is the white, deep and forgotten America. The one with the opiate epidemic, the one with the flight from the factories, the one that sends young people to the front, the one that distrusts the ‘progressives’. The one that seduced Donald Trump with his candy of past glories. Athens is the eighth poorest county in the country. There the children are educated so that they leave and find a better future elsewhere.
Its main economic engine is the University of Ohio, an educational institution of the bunch, to which students from the state go who do not get a place in other more prestigious centers. Joe Burrow’s father, Jim, found work here as a defensive coordinator for the football team. In cities and towns like those in Athens County, as in much of the country, from the plains of the Midwest to the wetlands of the South, american football is religion. On Friday he makes a pilgrimage to the high school field to see the local team. On Saturday the university games are followed. And on Sunday, like today in the grand final, it is reserved for the big stars, the NFL.
It was no surprise that Burrow, the son of a former player and professional coach, excelled on the Athens high school team. The unthinkable is that the kid would take him to the 2014 state final, a stage reserved for private schools that recruit players from all over the state. In front of ten thousand people they confronted Toledo Central Catholic, a powerful college in Ohio’s fourth city. Burrow and the rest of his teammates managed to make their people believe that they could also have a leading role on the big stages.
Something similar will happen tonight in the Super Bowl. The Cincinnati Bengals, also in Ohio, were little more than a promising team this year. In the last season, they only got four wins. The rest were eleven losses and a draw. The hope this year was a change of course with the arrival of the prodigal son: Joe Burrow.
After that final with his high school, Burrow was offered to play at Ohio State, one of the heavyweights of college football. He did not finish establishing himself as a starter and preferred a change of scenery. He signed another great team for him, the one from the Louisiana State University (LSU)with which he achieved glory: Heisman trophy -the one given to the best quarterback in the country- and university national champion (if he wins the Super Bowl today, Burrow will be the first player to achieve all three milestones).
Homecoming
Nothing excited Ohio more than Joe Burrow’s homecoming with the Bengals. But the soufflé fell at the first change, with a knee injury which left him without his debut season.
This year has been different. It was perhaps a team to dream of future glories, thanks to Burrow’s recovery, the addition of wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase – Burrow’s teammate at LSU and ‘rookie’ of the year – and the presence of other young promises. One of them is Tee Higginsanother wide receiver, who came off in the conference final — the championship semifinal — against superstar Pat Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs.
Burrow has been the helmsman of this unexpected promotion of the Bengals to the final. He has done it with tremendous personality, on and off the pitch. With his helmet on, and despite his youth, his pulse doesn’t tremble. “He has ice in his veins”, his partner CJ Uzomah said of him this week. “He is a cold killer when he has to dissect defenses.” When the games are over, he has the ‘swagger’, the bravado of geniuses. The best example of him was the cigar he smoked in the locker room at LSU after becoming champion.
Today the Bengals will start uphill. The Super Bowl is played in the hometown of the Rams, Los Angeles, with the public and the weather –unbecoming heat for this time of year– in favor. They’re up against one of the best defenses in the NFL, led by the fearsome Aaron Donald. And in attack they have a veteran and solid quarterback, Matthew Stafford, and two props such as receivers Odell Beckham Jr and, above all, Cooper Kupp, the offensive player of the year in the NFL.
Burrow narrowly missed that state final with his Athens institute in 2014. It was the worst day of his life. “I remember that game all the time”, he has recognized this week. The Super Bowl could be the scene of his redemption. And a reminder to its neighbors that glory can also come to forgotten America.
