Video: Joe Burrow 2014 state championship game highlights Projected top pick in his final high school game.
The 21-19 halftime score didn't indicate anything historical was about to happen.
The 56-52 final said otherwise.
In the 2014 Ohio High School Athletic Association Division III football state championship,
Central Catholic (Toledo) cleared a hurdle Georgia, Notre Dame, USC, Texas, Michigan, Auburn and Wisconsin couldn't.
The bad taste tattooed that December Thursday night inside Ohio Stadium has led to Burrow's coronation tonight in the 2020 NFL Draft. Projected to go No. 1 to the in-state Cincinnati Bengals, his homecoming rivals 2003 when LeBron James went No. 1 in the NBA Draft to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Jersey sales could set records.
The
Athens (The Plains) graduate is coming off the greatest season in college football history. Throwing an NCAA record 60 touchdowns en route to winning the Heisman Trophy, Burrow led LSU to a 15-0 record and the national championship in January.
"This is easily the worst feeling in the world," Burrow told reporters in 2014 after losing to Central Catholic. "This is the worst day of my life. There's not much more to say."
Joe Burrow in the 2014 Ohio Division III state championship game at Ohio Stadium.
Photo by Jamie Burlovich
The record books recount it differently. So do the 10,713 in attendance that night and the thousands that watched on TV.
The game featured 12 lead changes (10 in the second half), 50 first downs (25 each), two Mr. Footballs and 14 championship game records. Central Catholic survived on an eight-yard run by quarterback Marcus Winters on fourth-and-one at the Athens 8-yardline with 15 seconds left. The Irish converted three fourth downs on the game-winning drive.
Burrow finished 26 of 45 for 446 yards and six touchdowns. The entire stat line set D-III championship game records. Burrow was named Ohio's Mr. Football the day before.
Central Catholic set records for rushing (501) and total yards (654).
The teams' combined 1,217 total yards is an all-divisions record and the 108 combined points ranks second. Ohio has held championships for 48 years.
"I know a guy who couldn't go to that game, so he watched it in a sports bar in Toledo," Central Catholic head coach Greg Dempsey told the Toledo Blade recently. "He told me that there were at least 25 televisions in the place and, at the start of the night, our game was on two of them. By the end of the night, it was on every TV but two."
Central Catholic had no ordinary hammer.
Then-sophomore running back
Michael Warren led the Irish with 194 yards rushing and two touchdowns, while Winters had 134 yards and three TDs. Tre'Von Wade ran for 158 yards and a TD. Winters also passed for 153 yards and two TDs.
Warren, Ohio's 2016 Mr. Football, finished his prep career with three 2,000-yard rushing seasons, 7,619 rushing yards (seventh most in Ohio history) and 105 touchdowns.
After a three-year run at the University of Cincinnati where he scored a single season record 19 rushing touchdowns as a sophomore (in 2018), Warren declared for the NFL Draft in January and is expected to be selected in the fourth round or higher. His 34 career rushing touchdowns rank second at Cincinnati.
Burrow accounted for 275 touchdowns at Athens, LSU and Ohio State, where he spent three seasons (2015-17) before migrating to Baton Rouge as a graduate transfer. Burrow's freshman season with the Buckeyes he shared the quarterback room with Braxton Miller, J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones.
Burrow finished his high school career with 11,416 passing yards and 157 touchdowns. He also rushed for 2,067 yards and 27 touchdowns en route to leading Athens to a 37-4 record, three straight playoff appearances and the program's first seven postseason wins. The 861 points Athens scored in 2014 is the most by any team in Ohio history.
The Bengals haven't won a NFL playoff game since beating the Houston Oilers on Jan. 6, 1991. Burrow was born nearly six years later.
"Joe was special, and he had different-level stuff," Dempsey said. "Who could have foreseen that he was going to win the Heisman? But, I had a pretty good idea that night how good he was. That was a year after I was coaching DeShone Kizer, and that's what NFL quarterbacks look like when they're in high school. Joe's poise is still something very rare to see. He was a cool cucumber. He elevated his game, and he elevated the games of the guys around him.
"We gave up 52 in a game, but when you see him put up all those points on teams like Alabama and Clemson, I guess we did pretty well."
