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Still alive through the eyes of underprivileged children seeing better with eye glasses from his Brandon Burlsworth Foundation, and also via kids attending Arkansas Razorbacks football games and football camps through the foundation, the late Brandon Burlsworth now also lives on through a trophy.
The Brandon Burlsworth Trophy was announced Monday at the University of Arkansas’ A-Club as a national award annually recognizing each football season’s outstanding player who began his career as a walk-on.
The trophy’s winner, coming from a maximum one nominee each from each Division 1 football school, will be announced in December. The winner will be honored at a February banquet.
Burlsworth of Harrison walked on to the UA in 1994 as an average student/obese offensive lineman with only small college offers.
He graduated the UA an Academic All-American, with a master’s degree achieved before playing his last game as a four-year letterman, three-year starter and 1998 first-team All-American drafted in 1999 by the Indianapolis Colts.
Burlsworth was killed in an automobile accident later that 1999 spring. Yet just in mini-camps Burlsworth so impacted the Colts that retired longtime Colts offensive line coach Howard Mudd is on the Brandon Burlsworth Trophy Selection Committee.
So are former Razorbacks head football coaches Frank Broyles, Ken Hatfield and Danny Ford and former Razorbacks player and former UA Board of Trustees member Jim Lindsey.
Broyles, Hatfield, Ford and Lindsey all spoke during Monday’s press conference as did Marty Burlsworth, Brandon’s brother and the head of the Brandon Burlsworth Foundation starting after Brandon’s death.
“His story,” said Broyles, Arkansas’ athletics director from 1973-2007, “gives hope and assurance that extraordinary determination and unending hard work will pay huge dividends. What an inspiration this will be to help young people.”
Hatfield said of the Burlsworth Trophy: “Brandon is going to give high school kids who do get passed up a great inspiration. His life will continue to live on.”
Ford was Arkansas’ head coach for the 1994-97 portion of Burlsworth’s tenure. He’s the head coach credited with taking Burlsworth from the start but doesn’t take it.
Harold Horton, Ford’s former recruiting coordinator and current Razorback Foundation executive director, Harrison coach Tommy Tice and Marty Burlsworth, deserve all that, Ford said.
“I wish I could say I was the brains that said I saw all this,” Ford said. “But I would be telling a fib. Harold Horton, Tommy Tice and his brother are responsible.”
And even they couldn’t have dreamed the full result.
“Nobody saw that he would be an All-American and great student,” Ford said. “You just can’t see that because you can’t see into his heart.”
Ford admitted coaches don’t look that deep into walk-ons unless walk-ons give them cause.
“We got him to hold blocking dummies,” Ford said. “That’s how smart we were. What he did was throw the dummy down and proceeded to whip everybody we had. It wasn’t ‘did you want to give him a scholarship?,’ he was going to get one or take it from me and beat my fanny up, too.”
Except that wasn’t the “Burls way.” Burlsworth was as shy and self-effacing off the field as he was dominant on it.
“Brandon would not have this had he lived,” Ford said of Monday’s press conference. “He would not have people making a fuss over him.”
Ford had returned from his Clemson, S.C. home to Harrison for Burlsworth’s funeral in 1999. However at the UA, Monday marked, “the first time I’ve been back since they showed me how to get to South Carolina.”
Ford said it smiling, triggering uproarious laughter.
Broyles, the AD who had fired him, laughed too.
“We did all we could here,” Ford said of inheriting a rock bottom, undisciplined 3-7-1 program toughening it through 5-5-1, 4-7, 8-5, 4-7, 4-7 campaigns. “It was time.”
He expressed pride the players he left, including All-American Burlsworth, went 9-3 for Houston Nutt in 1998.
“It was great to see those Arkansas kids grow,” Ford said. “They got whipped enough to fight back.”
Especially that walk-on who “threw the dummy down and whipped everybody we had.”
Still alive through the eyes of underprivileged children seeing better with eye glasses from his Brandon Burlsworth Foundation, and also via kids attending Arkansas Razorbacks football games and football camps through the foundation, the late Brandon Burlsworth now also lives on through a trophy.
The Brandon Burlsworth Trophy was announced Monday at the University of Arkansas’ A-Club as a national award annually recognizing each football season’s outstanding player who began his career as a walk-on.
The trophy’s winner, coming from a maximum one nominee each from each Division 1 football school, will be announced in December. The winner will be honored at a February banquet.
Burlsworth of Harrison walked on to the UA in 1994 as an average student/obese offensive lineman with only small college offers.
He graduated the UA an Academic All-American, with a master’s degree achieved before playing his last game as a four-year letterman, three-year starter and 1998 first-team All-American drafted in 1999 by the Indianapolis Colts.
Burlsworth was killed in an automobile accident later that 1999 spring. Yet just in mini-camps Burlsworth so impacted the Colts that retired longtime Colts offensive line coach Howard Mudd is on the Brandon Burlsworth Trophy Selection Committee.
So are former Razorbacks head football coaches Frank Broyles, Ken Hatfield and Danny Ford and former Razorbacks player and former UA Board of Trustees member Jim Lindsey.
Broyles, Hatfield, Ford and Lindsey all spoke during Monday’s press conference as did Marty Burlsworth, Brandon’s brother and the head of the Brandon Burlsworth Foundation starting after Brandon’s death.
“His story,” said Broyles, Arkansas’ athletics director from 1973-2007, “gives hope and assurance that extraordinary determination and unending hard work will pay huge dividends. What an inspiration this will be to help young people.”
Hatfield said of the Burlsworth Trophy: “Brandon is going to give high school kids who do get passed up a great inspiration. His life will continue to live on.”
Ford was Arkansas’ head coach for the 1994-97 portion of Burlsworth’s tenure. He’s the head coach credited with taking Burlsworth from the start but doesn’t take it.
Harold Horton, Ford’s former recruiting coordinator and current Razorback Foundation executive director, Harrison coach Tommy Tice and Marty Burlsworth, deserve all that, Ford said.
“I wish I could say I was the brains that said I saw all this,” Ford said. “But I would be telling a fib. Harold Horton, Tommy Tice and his brother are responsible.”
And even they couldn’t have dreamed the full result.
“Nobody saw that he would be an All-American and great student,” Ford said. “You just can’t see that because you can’t see into his heart.”
Ford admitted coaches don’t look that deep into walk-ons unless walk-ons give them cause.
“We got him to hold blocking dummies,” Ford said. “That’s how smart we were. What he did was throw the dummy down and proceeded to whip everybody we had. It wasn’t ‘did you want to give him a scholarship?,’ he was going to get one or take it from me and beat my fanny up, too.”
Except that wasn’t the “Burls way.” Burlsworth was as shy and self-effacing off the field as he was dominant on it.
“Brandon would not have this had he lived,” Ford said of Monday’s press conference. “He would not have people making a fuss over him.”
Ford had returned from his Clemson, S.C. home to Harrison for Burlsworth’s funeral in 1999. However at the UA, Monday marked, “the first time I’ve been back since they showed me how to get to South Carolina.”
Ford said it smiling, triggering uproarious laughter.
Broyles, the AD who had fired him, laughed too.
“We did all we could here,” Ford said of inheriting a rock bottom, undisciplined 3-7-1 program toughening it through 5-5-1, 4-7, 8-5, 4-7, 4-7 campaigns. “It was time.”
He expressed pride the players he left, including All-American Burlsworth, went 9-3 for Houston Nutt in 1998.
“It was great to see those Arkansas kids grow,” Ford said. “They got whipped enough to fight back.”
Especially that walk-on who “threw the dummy down and whipped everybody we had.”
