NEW YORK — The best college football player in America stands in the heart of a rainy Times Square waiting to see a billboard of his own face. He doesn’t want to do it. No, Joe Burrow hates these things. But 29 hours before he takes home the Heisman Trophy, Burrow has to be the center of the sports media world.
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ESPN’s Holly Rowe is pre-recording interviews for the ceremony. For Burrow, she wants to do it in front of the large Times Square billboard LSU purchased to promote the LSU quarterback with the flashing words “Burrow” and “Heisman.” One problem: It isn’t coming up.
So they wait in the New York rain for the billboard to play. Fans and random pedestrians are screaming “Joe! Joe!” as they notice who it is. Rowe and company are sure the billboard is coming. It’s played nonstop for the past five days. Why would it stop?
Burrow stands, unamused, hands in the pockets of his blue, block L LSU letterman jacket, waiting to get another media obligation over with. Rowe makes small talk as they wait. Burrow forces a smile and paces back and forth, his hands never leaving his pockets. They wait for upwards of 10 to 12 minutes.
The billboard never plays. By some fluke scheduling mishap, the billboard didn’t run for the one hour of the week they needed it. Rowe does the interview anyway.
A few minutes later, Burrow and his massive contingent of LSU communications staffers steering him through a long week of awards and interviews ride the elevator up to the Marriott Marquis lobby for yet another media spot. Burrow looks up from his phone and confirms he at least did see the billboard once earlier. Still, everyone frustratedly laughs at the situation.
“What are the odds of that?” asks Brandon Berrio, LSU’s associate director of creative and digital content.
Everybody shakes their heads.
“Well, about the same as Joe winning the Heisman.”
Burrow won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night. An LSU quarterback, of all positions, took home the most prestigious award in college football. He did it by the biggest landslide in the award’s 85-year history. He did it in New York with 59 people from LSU in attendance to see it, plus his parents, siblings, cousins and so on.
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By now, the story of Burrow is known: How he transferred from Ohio State to the bayou in 2018, became LSU’s starting quarterback, led the Tigers to a 10-3 Fiesta Bowl season despite a middling performance, returned for his senior year and became the best offensive player in school history. How he led LSU to a 13-0 start this season, its first win against Alabama in eight years, an SEC title and the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff while seemingly breaking every major passing record in SEC history.
And Burrow has spent the entire season saying the only goal was a national championship. He downplayed nearly every question about accolades and records. He kicked the Heisman topic down the road every week he could. “That’s something to worry about later,” he’d say.
But this is not a story about Burrow, his path and what he’s accomplished. This is a story about the Heisman no longer being something to worry about later. It’s about the Heisman finally being here. It’s about two days in New York, the whirlwind week that took Burrow away from football and how a normally stoic football guy finally broke down emotionally on national television.
This is the story of Burrow’s Heisman weekend.
Thirty hours until his name is announced, Burrow enters Marriott Marquis Broadway Lounge, hands in his pockets, gliding toward a sea of media members set up at four tables ready to ask him questions he’s already been answering for weeks. He’s wearing the LSU letterman jacket, jeans, white sneakers and his hair set up with that one loose curl poking out front that he claims does it on its own. By his side are the other three finalists: Oklahoma’s Jalen Hurts and Ohio State’s Chase Young and Justin Fields.
This may be where the story begins, but it’s by no means where Burrow’s week starts. He’s already exhausted. On Wednesday, he was in Baltimore to receive the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award. On Thursday, he was in Atlanta to take home the Davey O’Brien and Maxwell awards. Friday morning, he was on a flight to New York for the most draining of them all.
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“It’s been a long week,” Burrow says along with a sigh, “waking up early and going to these awards, but it’s a blessing.”
The media session is set up with four tables for four finalists. Each finalist spends five minutes at each table. Each table is a mirror image of the last, a glimpse into the media life of a high-profile athlete, the same questions asked in the same way on repeat. There are the Ohio State questions at one table. There are the transfer questions. There are the Billy Cannon questions. There are even multiple playful questions about why he always wears the same Fiesta Bowl sweatshirt everywhere. Each question receives the same answer. Table after table.
Burrow does not love participating in media functions. The problem is he’s quite good at it. He gives funny answers and intriguing insights and is often engaging. But Burrow is one of those guys who simply wants to be locked in a dark film room studying tape or on the field perfecting timing with his receivers. He doesn’t go out much. He jokes he only knows three locations in Baton Rouge. He has few concerns other than football, which is part of why his weekly Monday media setting was cut in half to just one combined news conference because it was all just too much for him.
Imagine him spending a whole week going city to city, interview to interview, public event to public event for four days straight. He perseveres. He knows he has no right to complain about winning awards. He may be good at it, but in brief moments, the strain in his eyes is evident.
One reporter asks Burrow how he handles the newfound fame. “It’s pretty easy to deal with during the season,” he says, “because you have practice every day, games on Saturday, go home, go to bed, do the same thing the next week.”
By that, he means, it’s tougher to deal with this week.
He gets just a short 45 minutes or so to himself Friday afternoon. He gets up to his hotel room and immediately lays down. An exhausted Burrow tells his girlfriend, Olivia Holzmacher, “Olivia, I can’t talk anymore.”
The finalists move from one obligation to another, from interviews to signing footballs to recording segments for ESPN. As they ride the elevator down to the first floor, they run into 1995 Heisman winner and former Ohio State running back Eddie George.
George says a few words to each of them, and then they decide to take a picture of George with the Ohio State finalists. Burrow and Hurts move off to the side.
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Then it occurs to everyone: Burrow was an Ohio State guy.
“Wait, Joe, you want in?” George asks.
Burrow and everybody around laughs. Burrow politely declines as to not interfere. The next stop is walking out to the center of Times Square with Rowe to pose for pictures with the trophy. It’s around this time it begins to rain. They hold an umbrella over the trophy.
Burrow and his fellow finalists take turns talking to Rowe and waiting in the rain. Everybody in America understands Burrow is going to win, and by a landslide, so it makes for an interesting dynamic. The other three are seeming more relaxed and enjoying the trip while Burrow has a greater weight on his shoulders and more responsibilities.
It’s a slow evolution of people realizing who’s walking by. Eventually, people are shouting at Burrow. One guy does an impression of Ed Orgeron. They yell things like, “You’ve got it in the bag. Heisman’s yours,” and, “Good luck, Joe!” One group of four 20-something women repeatedly shouts at Burrow. None appears to be football fans. They just understand somebody famous is involved. They jokingly taunt the finalists, and when Burrow doesn’t turn around, one of them says, “Oh, are you feeling yourself today?”
That gets a laugh out of Burrow. He turns around, breaks a sly grin and nods his head.
Cannon died May 20, 2018. He was LSU’s only Heisman winner, taking home the trophy in 1959.
Burrow officially signed the paperwork to play football at LSU on May 20, 2018.
Cannon is the most revered player in LSU history. He’s the proprietor of the legendary “Halloween Run” against Ole Miss, the man who took LSU to its first national title in 1958 and its only Heisman winner for six decades.
Burrow has gotten to know the Cannons this week. He met with Cannon’s widow, Dot, on Tuesday. Then, the Cannon family wrote Burrow a letter that he read on the flight to New York. Burrow wanted to keep the contents of the letter private. He did disclose a conversation he had with Cannon’s daughter, Bunnie.
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“She said he would be so happy looking down on me, and that means so much to me,” Burrow says. “They said he was a tough guy just like me, said we would have been best friends.”
Sixty years after Cannon received the Heisman Trophy from then-Vice President Richard Nixon, Burrow sat in (more) interviews Saturday afternoon when he was asked about the significance of May 20, 2018. Does he believe there’s a greater power at play making those things happen?
“I’m a kind of superstitious guy, and so there’s too many things like that in football to not believe in something,” Burrow says. “I don’t know if you believe in God or a football God or anything like that, but there are too many things like that in life to just have coincidences like that.”
Finally, Burrow could relax, at least a little. He had one brief obligation Saturday morning. Then, he was free until the ceremony. The family said he could spend the day however he pleased.
Burrow and Holzmacher stayed in. Burrow’s mother, Robin, said the two ordered food to their room and did very little until Burrow had to leap back into public figure mode.
“I think I took three naps today,” he says. “The last few days have been pretty exhausting.”
It’s been an exhausting week for nearly everyone involved. His father, Jimmy, the recently retired Ohio defensive coordinator and now de facto public relations head for the Burrow family, spent the entire day distributing tickets to the large number of family members in town for the ceremony. Even Robin joked, “It’s been a long week, and we’re not even the ones doing interviews.”
One of the consistent threads in Burrow’s interviews during the week has been whether he’d truly enjoy the moment. He always discusses having just one goal — winning a championship — and rarely leans into those sorts of things, but the two days were purely about him and his upcoming honor. How would he balance the College Football Playoff semifinal in two weeks with also attempting to be present for this weekend?
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“I try to put that off until next week,” he said Friday. “I’m just trying to enjoy this week right now. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I can focus on that Monday when I get back.”
And in the hours leading up to the ceremony, he still seemed stoic. He still seemed worn down and unsentimental.
Would Burrow really take the moment in?
The four finalists leave the final pre-ceremony interviews, hop on some escalators and head downstairs to finally walk to the PlayStation Theater for the main event. A large crowd sits at the bottom of the Marriott Marquis escalator as the players ride down. Burrow stands in front.
An Ohio State contingent begins loudly yelling, “O-H!” — “I-O!” Burrow, an Ohio native, can’t help but smirk, recognizing that awaits him before the biggest achievement of his life so far.
The Heisman organizers have each player walk across the street to the theater one at a time with their family and a security detail. Burrow, the first alphabetically, goes first. Hundreds of fans yell for autographs and scream for the attention of the LSU quarterback. At one point, a confused woman turns to a friend and asks, “Is that the President?”
The Burrow clan walks up to the PlayStation Theater entrance and stops before the main hallway. A long group of fans lines both sides of the path. As they wait for the signal to walk in, Burrow and his father turn to each other. Jimmy says a little something and they both start laughing together.
Then, Burrow gets the go-ahead. He walks down the hallway and into the theater. The next time he walks through that hall, he’ll be the Heisman Trophy winner.
Jamie Burrow admits the men of the Burrow family are not emotional. Jamie, Joe’s eldest brother, has seen their father cry just twice in Jamie’s 41 years. Joe, Jamie and Dan are the same way. They’re stoic. They’re tough. They do not let their emotions overtake them.
Burrow is unable to speak, grabbing his eyes, his voice squeaking as he tries to put into words the meaning of a Heisman Trophy with his name engraved on it sitting to his right. It takes him nearly 40 seconds to compose a sentence. At one point, he can only laugh at the unfamiliar feeling, a moment of complete vulnerability on the largest stage.
He needs to compose himself speaking of his hometown in Southeast Ohio. The poverty rate is nearly two times the national average. He spoke of people without food on the table. He said he’s doing it for them.
He earns laughs talking about how Louisiana has taken him in, how he’s “learned to love crawfish and gumbo.”
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But then Burrow needs his longest break to regather himself when speaking of Orgeron. His eyes get red and his voice sinks into his throat.
“You have no idea what you mean to my family,” Burrow says.
As he thanks Orgeron for taking a chance on a three-year backup and handing him the keys to LSU’s offense, even Orgeron turns red as he struggles to contain his tears. Jimmy, sitting next to Orgeron, has his arms around him. And right as Burrow becomes his most emotional, he quips, “I sure hope they give him a lifetime contract. He deserves it.”
After a season of downplaying it, after an exhausting week he wanted over, after his family seeing him emotional so rarely in life, Burrow broke down as he won the Heisman Trophy while giving a speech national reporters are already calling one of the best ever.
“That’s the most I’ve cried in my 23 years of living,” Burrow said later.
Burrow was raised in Ohio, but he finished growing up in Louisiana. It was at LSU where he finally learned how to cook, do laundry and service his car. It’s where he finally became a starting Division I quarterback. It’s where he went from an average SEC quarterback to one of the best in conference history. It’s where he became the man who can give that speech, let himself feel every second of the moment and embrace one of the most important moments of his life.
And sure, he’ll fly back to Baton Rouge on Sunday and begin preparing for Oklahoma. He’ll try to reduce the memory and refocus on a national title. He’ll go back to what he always says was the No. 1 goal.
But no matter what he does the rest of his life, Burrow will also be remembered for this night, this season, this award. He’ll be “Heisman winner Joe Burrow” in most descriptions. His life will never quite be the same.
As the ceremony ended, the first thing Burrow did was take the trophy back into the heart of Times Square. He lifted it up to his chin and smiled.
In the background was a billboard. It read, “Joe Burrow: Heisman.” Now, he can enjoy it.
(Top photo: Adam Hunger / Getty Images)