SATURDAy, NOVEMbER 9 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ sU D3
revolutionary surgery. “To mmy
John surgery used to be: ‘oh, my
goodness. Can that guy ever
pitch again?’ ” Danielson said.
“Now they say, ‘You can come
back even stronger.’ ”
While some still find the
procedure unproven, Saban
sounded like an orthopedist
when he cautioned that he’s “no
doctor” but said: “This is a
ligament issue, you know, the
two bones, where they come
together in your ankle, there’s a
ligament that holds them
together, and that stretches. So
when you tie it together, the
ligament actually has a chance to
heal because one of the biggest
issues is it’s a rotation injury, so
every time you turn a little bit on
your foot, all right, those bones
move, so it affects healing. So if
you hold the bones together, the
healing process is much quicker.”
Twenty years earlier,
something kept bugging a young
surgical resident across the
ocean. “I was learning
arthroscopic surgery,” Thornes
said, “and I realized that the
standard treatment of putting in
a screw usually necessitated two
operations. And for a very simple
injury and surgery, why did you
have to bring someone back in [a
second time]?” He kept reading
all the literature about all the
variables related to the screws.
Then, finally: “I kind of
scratched my head and thought,
‘The problem is the screw, not
the permutations of it,’ ” he said.
Now he finds himself in
discussions of American football,
this guy who learned of the game
only as did so many on the right
side of the Atlantic — through
NfL highlights in the 1980s on
Britain’s Channel 4, thus through
the Chicago Bears of Walter
Payton and especially William
“The refrigerator” Perry. Well,
he has seen the Seahawks in
Seattle. He has even been to
Alabama, in 1993, while on a
medical elective in meridian,
miss.
He just never could have
foreseen this when he had a
“brain wave” while, he said, “I
was in bed. Nothing more
exciting than that. Just one of
those things you think about
when you can’t get to sleep and
you’re trying to solve all the
problems of the world.”
[email protected]then-No. 13 Wisconsin. Young is
one of only two defensive players
to be named a semifinalist for the
maxwell Award, given a nnually t o
the nation’s best college football
player, and is regarded to be in the
running for the Heisman Trophy,
which has been awarded to only
one d efensive player.
“He’s become such a complete
player,” maryland Coach michael
Locksley said of Young before it
was known the player would not
be active Saturday. “His size, his
speed, his athleticism and his
power a re a ll t he things that make
him a great player. It’ll be a tough
opponent for us, and they do a
good job again of trying to create
the matchups. What we’ve got to
do, obviously, when we game plan
and week to week, it’s how to take
away t he guys t hat can wreck your
game plan. You can bet that he’ll
have our full attention in how we
protect and turn the protection
and help make sure that we don’t
allow him to disrupt what we want
to do t o try to move t he f ootball.”
ohio State will travel to 2-7
rutgers after the maryland game
and w ill close t he regular season a t
home against No. 4 Penn State and
on the road a t No. 14 michigan.
The Buckeyes (8-0) are No. 1 in
the first College football Playoff
rankings, which were released
this week. No team that was No. 1
in the initial CfP rankings has
ever won the national champion-
ship.
[email protected]emily giambalvo contributed to this
report.BY MATT BONESTEELohio State announced friday
morning that standout defensive
end Chase Young will miss Satur-
day’s game against maryland as
the school’s athletic department
investigates “a possible NCAA is-
sue from 2018” that may affect his
eligibility.
After the school’s announce-
ment, Young wrote o n Twitter t hat
he “made a mistake last year by
accepting a loan from a family
friend I’ve known since the sum-
mer before my freshman year at
oSU.”
“I repaid it in full last summer
and I’m working with the Univer-
sity and NCAA to get back on the
field as soon as possible,” Young
added.
Tim Nevius, a lawyer and for-
mer NCAA investigator who is
representing Young as he deals
with the NCAA, wrote friday on
Twitter that “Chase took a small
loan from a close family friend l ast
year to cover basic life expenses”
and that the loan was repaid
“months a go a nd w e’re working t o
restore his e ligibility.”
“Unfair and outdated @NCAA
rules punish athletes for making
ends meet while enriching every-
one e lse,” he added.
According to the NCAA Divi-
sion I manual, student-athletes
may receive a loan from a n “estab-
lished family friend” a s long as it’s
not given because of that person’s
athletic ability or reputation, as
long as the person providing the
loan “is not considered a represen-
tative of the institution’s athletics
interests” and as long as the “rela-
tionship between the individual
providing the loan and the stu-
dent-athlete existed prior to the
initiation of the student-athlete’s
recruitment.”
At least one college football in-
sider, Bruce feldman of fox
Sports, suggested the suspension
might last only one game.
Young, a junior who attended
Dematha Catholic High near the
maryland campus, has 13^1 / 2 sacks
this season, which l ead the nation,
are one away from the Buckeyes’
single-season record and a re more
than what 31 NCAA teams have
compiled. H e has recorded at l east
a half sack in 10 consecutive
games, and he had four sacks two
weeks ago in a dominant win overOhio State’s Young
won’t play vs. U-Md.
cHArles rex ArBogAsT/AssocIATed Press
ohio state is investigating
Chase Young, who says he took
a loan from a family friend.college football chatter because
of how Alabama players have
found recovery hastened relative
to the primitive days of yore.
If maestro quarterback Tua
Ta govailoa plays and thrives for
Alabama on Saturday, the major
variable in the game’s l oud run-
up, the shape of the entire
national college football season
would have derived at least
something from that cruel
incident on that Irish lake. As the
country’s football-minded
amateur orthopedic surgeons
know, Ta govailoa surely has
become among the first to twice
undergo the Tightrope
procedure, which involves tying
things together rather than
bolting things with screws. He
had it last December for his right
high-ankle sprain and last month
for his left high-ankle sprain.
Concerning the right side, he
rebounded from a game injury
Dec. 1 to game activity Dec. 28.
Concerning the left, he has
rebounded from a game injury
oct. 19 to a game-time decision
Saturday. In the process, he has
helped usher the football-
minded to reading such phrases
as “syndesmotic ligament,”
“flexible stitch” and “sturdy
suture.”
While Thornes, still just 49,
had not heard Ta govailoa’s name
before and had heard only
ripples of chatter about the
injury, he pronounces himself
“shocked” t o see athletes return
in three or four weeks from an
injury long known to require
double that.
“It’s very humbling,” he said.
“When you’re a surgeon, you can
see what you do for patients that
are in front of you. But when
you’ve invented something and
thousands of people around the
on footbAll from D1
ON FOOTBALL
Tagovailoa,
Irish doctor
are forever
tied together
college football
robinson might have been one
of the first guys to get it,
probably three or four years ago.
I mean, he got a high-ankle
sprain in the Te nnessee game
and played LSU in two weeks,
and you know, he played every
play in the game. Little different
for an offensive lineman as it
might be for a skill guy, but it
really has enhanced the ability of
our guys to come back, and they
haven’t had any issues or
problems in the future. So I
mean, it’s amazing to me all the
things that they can do in
medicine now that I know back
when I played, none of these
things were available.”
An ankle sprain ailed
Danielson in the first six or
seven games of his senior year of
high school, but he persisted
while mindful of college
recruiters who might be looking.
He wonders whether this
innovation might end up
resembling anotherwent from what he saw to the
ball being released without any
inhibitions in between. It was
just automatic. Nothing clouded
his thought processes
whatsoever.”
He believes Ta govailoa views
space more keenly than other
quarterbacks: “I think people see
barriers. They see the picket
fence. And these guys see the
open spaces between the fence.”
And he spots Ta govailoa’s
“innate ability to handle
situations,” s aying that with
these rare quarterbacks, “The
more stimuli they get, the better
they seem to be calmed by it.”
Alabama should need all of
that given LSU’s caliber, so it’s
significant that Danielson and
Alabama Coach Nick Saban, two
former players born seven weeks
apart in 1951, can marvel at life
in the year 2019.
As Saban told reporters in
Tuscaloosa, “maybe [Jacksonville
Jaguars offensive tackle] Camthe high-level play from the
quarterback. They’re not built to
have a game manager,” e specially
while LSU is freshly built to
outscore one, and the Crimson
Tide is buttressed with a
fearsome quartet of wide
receivers: Devonta Smith
(43 catches, nine touchdowns),
Jerry Jeudy (52, eight), Henry
ruggs III (26, six), Jaylen Waddle
(21, one).
When Danielson studies
Ta govailoa, the sensation who
flattered Alabama by seeking it
out all the way from Honolulu,
he sees rarefied qualities. He
mentions Joe montana, To m
Brady, Aaron rodgers and Drew
Brees when he says, “I believe
that there are some God-given
talents that some quarterback
have that are unteachable.” He
recalls his days with the
Cleveland Browns, when
teammate Bernie Kosar would
report from having worked with
Dan marino and saying, “Danworld use it, you don’t see it until
these stories coming out. It gives
me great pride.”
In turn, it gives Alabamians
great hope.
As former NfL quarterback
and CBS analyst Gary Danielson
described, Alabama can beat all
but five or 10 college football
teams with any of its
quarterbacks. It bulldozed
Arkansas, 48-7, on oct. 26 with
mac Jones at the helm and
Ta govailoa as a knowledgeable
spectator.
“It’s with those five to
10 teams that can play with
Alabama,” Danielson said,
“where Tua can make a
difference.”
That list includes LSU,
especially with its passing game
revved up this autumn from the
19th century to the 21st.
“This Alabama team is built
around the skills of how Tua
plays quarterback,” Danielson
said, soon adding, “They needVAsHA HUnT/AssocIATed Press
thanks to an innovative procedure, tua tagovailoa’s high-ankle sprain might be healed for saturday’s Alabama-lsu clash in tuscaloosa.before he became an ohio State
quarterback (in scarlet and gray)
before he graduated from ohio
State in may 2018 and then trans-
ferred because the Buckeyes pre-
pared to go with Dwayne
Haskins, nowadays of the Wash-
ington redskins. That’s the same
Joe Burrow who finds himself as
the nation’s third-rated passer
and a lead actor in the annual
LSU-vs.-Alabama colossus com-
ing Saturday and who gets obvi-
ous questions about whether
that’s bigger than the ohio State-
vs.-michigan colossus that comes
annually.
“I think that’s a question for
me in two years when I look back
and reflect on it,” he told Louisi-
ana reporters this week.
meanwhile, up here, let’s ride
around this neighborhood where
Burrow grew up, where a short,
understated LSU banner on a
metal stand seems to be a must-
have. There’s a house with one
next to a Halloween sign, then a
house with two short LSU ban-
ners in the flower beds and a
large “Geaux Jeaux” sign on a
metal fence. Then, skipping a few
houses here and there: an ohio
Bobcats banner next to an LSU,
another ohio Bobcats next to an
LSU, then another, then an LSU
and a “Happy fall,” t hen, round-
ing a curve, an LSU on the left
and LSU soon on the right, then
an LSU banner near one about
voting for libraries, another
curve, an LSU wreath and a short
banner, then another LSU-ohio
combo, then another LSU.
oh wait, there’s another LSU.
“There’s w atch parties all over,”
said Travis Brand, who owns
Gigi’s. “It’s hard to say you feel
much when driving through the
town because that’s the quietest
hour, when everybody’s in their
homes watching the game. There
may be garage parties going on,
which I know there are several in
The Plains especially, where peo-
ple are gathering to watch the
games, but as you pass the town
you don’t see much, because ev-
erybody’s in front of the televi-
sion. So when you really get the
LSU feel is all week long, game
days, coming up to the game
because that’s when everybody’s
rocking their LSU gear and
they’re out grabbing finger foods
from the stores.”
And: “We’ll get a hundred LSU
shirts per week in here, people
lsu from D1 route 33 the 90 minutes to Co-
lumbus on fridays, and they’re
flying off to Nashville or the
teeming way station of Atlanta to
connect toward Louisiana, or
they’re driving as more than
200 locals did when LSU played
in Nashville. Now Jimmy will
drive to Birmingham and robin
will fly there, and they will see the
game in Tuscaloosa, then go to
Jimmy’s parents’ place in Amory,
miss., then robin will fly back
and Jimmy will stay and collect
robin the following friday in
memphis for the mississippi
game.
Who wouldn’t?
Life pointed the Burrows to-
ward LSU partly because Tigers
Coach Ed orgeron had hired
former Nebraska assistant Bill
Busch to help Dave Aranda with
the defense, and the Burrows
have long since known and trust-
ed Busch. And then it all became
a sensation this year after LSU
hired Joe Brady, then 29, from the
New orleans Saints in January to
coordinate its freshly gaudy pass-
ing game, whereupon Joe Burrow
got a call from one of his closest
friends, former ohio State team-
mate and Saints quarterback J.T.
Barrett, extolling Brady.
Now the LSU fans ask Jimmy
and robin Burrow for photos,
and Joe teases them about their
conspicuousness in their purple-
and-gold No. 9 jerseys. Now Jim-
my, who eschewed media last fall
because it wasn’t fair to the ohio
football program, appears weekly
on a Baton rouge radio show,
appeared in the CBS rV for an
interview when LSU played at
mississippi State. Now Joe Bur-
row’s parents hold a routine LSU
tailgate, with Joe’s two brothers
and Jimmy’s sister and robin’s
brothers all gathered in a way
they never could while Jimmy
coached — in from Houston, in
from Nebraska.
meanwhile, around here, a
small cluster of souls in purple
and gold turned up inside Lucky’s
Sports Bar in the pretty ohio
college town of Athens on oct. 26.
There, both TVs above the bar
played the Auburn-LSU game.
Everyone understood.
“There are no schools in Ath-
ens that are purple and gold, so
there’s no confusion,” bartender
Jennifer Cochran said. “Every-
body knows if you see purple and
gold around here, they’re a Joey
supporter.”
[email protected]
with hats, shirts. I mean, literally,
everybody that comes in here is
an LSU fan now. We’re an hour
from ohio State, right? Every-
body bleeds scarlet and gray
down here. I mean, like crazy. So
to see people wearing purple and
gold, you know it’s a big deal.
People take ohio State so serious-
ly. So seriously. I mean, it’s almost
obnoxious how serious our ohio
State fans are. But now I under-
stand because I’m an obnoxious
Louisiana State fan.”
The walls of Gigi’s have kept
up. There’s a plaque in the shape
of Louisiana. There’s an LSU
wreath. There’s an LSU sign.
Here’s a man at the counter who
says he doesn’t know Joe Burrow
but thinks he’s the best thing to
hit the town in a while. Soon the
newly edited Gigi’s menus will
include a western omelet called
the Burrow, which Joe typically
orders when in town with double
hash browns.
How unforeseeable, all of it.
“This is The Plains,” said Jim-
my Burrow, who is Joe’s father, a
former player at Nebraska, with
the Green Bay Packers and in the
Canadian football League and a
longtime assistant coach at Ne-
braska, Washington State, Iowa
State, North Dakota State and
ohio. “This is where we live, Joe
lives [since third grade], and
ohio University is five, six miles
away. That’s where I coached for
14 y ears [2005-19]. Now it’s a little
confusing because Athens High
School is just right up the road.
Athens High is in The Plains.
Sometimes you’ll see Joe is listed
as ‘Plains High School’ or some-
thing like that. But Athens High
is in The Plains. It’s more of atownship. We have a post office.
We don’t have a mayor.”
Now Jimmy Burrow’s whole
life with his wife, robin, has gone
purple and gold, unforeseen for a
mississippi-raised coach who had
never seen a game in LSU’s famed
Tiger Stadium until Aug. 31, even
though his son also quarter-
backed LSU last year. (The coach-
ing job is “never-ending,” of
course.) In february, he drove to
the football office at ohio, sat in
the parking lot for an hour while
thinking and thinking, then went
in and told longtime boss frank
Solich about his decision to re-
tire, whereupon they laughed
about Solich being almost a de-
cade the older of the two.
Now he’s living a different and
dreamy fall.
“I struggled last year during
the season,” he said. “my wife, she
went to every game. She’s a prin-
cipal at an elementary school
here, about 30 miles away. So
she’d get done on friday, go to
Columbus, fly to wherever,
flight’s delayed. I know she got
into Baton rouge one time at 3 in
the morning,” and subsequently
got her car towed from their son’s
apartment parking lot.
“I’m thinking,” Jimmy said,
“that’s not probably right to have
her doing those type things and
me not being part of it and the joy
and the, sometimes, frustration,
like the late-night trip and get-
ting towed and I’m not there to
help.”
further, he said at one point:
“How could you possibly maybe
go Joe’s whole career and never
watch him play in Tiger Stadi-
um?”
Now they’re off up U.S.cHUcK cUlPePPer/THe WAsHIngTon PosT
Gigi’s Country Kitchen in the Plains, ohio, salutes Joe burrow, the
lsu quarterback who played high school football in the area.To support Burrow, Ohio town is now Cajun country