The Story of the Greatest Walk-On in College Football History

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Always good. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Burlesworth Trophy is awarded every year to the most outstanding Division I college football player who began his career as a walk-on. Previous recipients include Tampa Bay's quarterback, Baker Mayfield, and Stetson Bennett of the LA Rams. It's named after Brandon Burlesworth, a truly remarkable person on and off the field. Here to get us started with the story is Tommy Tice, Brandon's high school coach.

Take it away, Tommy. Brandon Burlesworth's the best person I ever met in my life. My name is Tommy Tice and I was Brandon's high school coach. I first came in to meet Brandon when he was a seventh grader and he entered our program and started his journey from there through the high school.

And I remember being called by the junior high coach at that time, a man named Inky Williams, and Inky wanted me to come look at this young man. He said he's really going to be something special. So I was paying a little bit closer attention to Brandon as he got to be a ninth grader because he's one step away from coming into our high school program. And I looked at him and Brandon was a great kid. Certainly everybody was proud to see him, but I didn't see anything special.

I kind of thought that Coach Williams might've been maybe imbibing in the spirits a little bit when he made that evaluation, but he was right. The thing that became very apparent to me about Brandon was you weren't going to run him off. He was going to be there every day. He was going to be early. He's going to be one of the last ones to leave. Sometimes with tears in his eyes or maybe a bloody nose and sometimes maybe both, but he'd be back the next day. And that told you an awful lot about him because we constantly told our kids, if you stay, you'll play. Just stay.

Just dig in tough, grit your teeth, and you know, it's all going to be okay. Now his senior year, he really blossomed into an outstanding player. But you know, when you're around kids every day, you don't notice them growing. And by the time I think he came in his senior year, he was probably about six foot tall, maybe 215, 220 pounds. But that spring of his senior year, after going through the season, after he'd made Allstate, played in the high school All-Star game, he was about 6'2", 235 pounds. And he was much, much stronger.

Again, never took a day off. And one thing he did his senior year, one of his goals, and he was a tremendous goal setter. You know, we'd talk about goals, and we'd tell him that goals are only dreams unless you write them down and put them someplace in your room where you can see them every day. And he'd repeat that to me. And I know, I never went in his room, but I know they were there somewhere. So one of his goals his senior year was to beat me to work every morning.

And I get there pretty early, about six o'clock every morning. And every morning, sometimes in the dark, sitting by the door, was Brandon. And every now and then, he didn't say a whole lot, but if I was late, he might say, sleep in today, coach. And I'd say, Burlesworth, don't quit your day job.

You're not that funny. And so his senior year, we won the conference championship. And he was, like I said, an Allstate player. He wanted to be a college player. And he continued to work, continued to work. And that spring, he went to a couple of basically tryout situations at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia and at Arkansas Tech in Russellville. He comes back. First, I get a call from the coach at Arkadelphia. And he said, when did you become a liar?

I said, I didn't know I'd ever quit. He said, well, you told me this Burlesworth kid was this tall, this weight, this strong, this fast. He said, he's bigger, he's stronger, he's faster. Are the Razorbacks not interested in him? Because we don't want to offer him if the Razorbacks are interested.

I said, they're not interested. So they were going to offer. Same thing from coach at Arkansas Tech, Brooks Hollingsworth at the time. And on Monday, after he got back from those places, I called him into the office and I was real excited that he was going to get an opportunity to play college football. And I was telling him, I said, man, this is great. You're going to get a chance to play, continue your career playing.

You're going to help your mama out because I know that financial situation, this is going to be a really big deal for you. Well, quickly I figured out I'm the only guy in the room that's excited. He's not excited. He's sitting there and he's looking at the floor and he looks up at me and this is one thing that I learned about Brandon and all kids, be careful what you say to them because it may come back at you at any time. And he told me, he said, coach, you told me and the rest of the team, it didn't matter what anybody else said, it only mattered what we thought. And I'm going, oh, I'm trapped. Coach, I want to be a Razorback and I'm going to be a Razorback.

What are you going to do? I had Danny Ford's number at the university and we knew each other. And I called him and I said, please take one more look at this kid.

He's bigger, he's stronger, he's faster. He said, I'll have Harold Horton as head of recruiting at the time. I'll have Harold look at him. I said, no, I don't want Harold to look at him. Harold's already looked at him, he's already ruled him out as a favor I'd like for you to look at.

And after seeing the new statistics and new little tapes that we'd done some things with him running through ropes and stuff like this, he said, Tommy, we don't have any scholarships. We'll make him a preferred walk-on. I said, what's a preferred walk-on?

He said, nothing. It just sounds good. You know, it's, it's a walk-on situation. If anybody knows what a walk-on is, it's not a real good life.

You get the hand-me-down equipment. You may get a few reps, but you ain't going to get much. And you'll be a tackling dummy. And, you know, and you're already told from the beginning, you're not good enough. And the coaches are not really wanting you because if you come and you make it, it makes them look bad because they didn't recruit you in the first place. And you've been listening to Tommy Tice, the thing that became apparent about Brandon, you couldn't run him off. He wanted to be a Razorback. That is, of course, an Arkansas Razorback in the SEC. They don't have scholarships, he was told.

That did not deter Brandon. More of this remarkable story, the story of Brandon Burlesworth, here on Our American Story. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star in the American people, and we do it all from the heart of the South, Oxford, Mississippi.

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Cryptocurrency services are provided to U.S. and U.S. territory customers by Payword Ventures, Inc. DBA Kraken. And we continue with our American stories and the story of Brandon Burlesworth. When we last left off, Brandon's high school coach Tommy Tice was telling us about Brandon's career leading up to receiving preferred walk-on status at the University of Arkansas. Here to tell us now about the start of Brandon's life is his brother Marty and Marty's wife Vicki. Take it away, Marty. Now when Brandon was born, you know, that's kind of, that's really strange for me.

You know, I'm 15 at the time, would turn 16 a couple months, but having a baby in the house, wow. You know, 15 year old, I'm trying to be cool. You know, I don't know what to do with this. He's not going with me. You know, I'm not taking him anywhere.

I'm not, that's not cool. I'm not hanging out with a two-year-old or whatever, three-year-old, but he was fun. When he got a little bit older, when he, you know, got out of the baby, baby stage and I could mess with him, have him do silly things and play pretend baseball in the living room and have him sliding head first on the carpet and all kinds of things like that.

It was, you know, it was a lot of fun. But, you know, as a kid, eight or nine, ten years old, there was no indication that you were looking at a future All-American and an NFL player. Nothing. Just the same as everybody else.

Trying to figure it out. Just a normal kid, loved sports. He didn't have any choice because, you know, he's going to be with me, you know, that we're going to be balling in some way, whether it's football, basketball, baseball, really into baseball. But, you know, he was just like everybody else. Loved to play ball. I coached baseball at junior high age. Brandon was eight or nine years old, ten years old. He wanted to come out and be at practice, so I'd always bring him to baseball practice with my team.

The main reason, he just shagged balls and, you know, just helped me out. And he wasn't very good. He just wasn't naturally gifted. It certainly didn't show it at that age.

But I knew that we would run sprints at the end of practice. And he was kind of chunky. I always felt like he was kind of chunky.

Always felt like, hey, man, you need to get after. Here he is. You know, you look back on it and you say, the kid's nine or ten years old and you're trying to make him act like he's 16 or 17, you know. But he would run sprints with, and always did, but I was trying to get some of that weight off of him. And it wasn't like he's an unhealthy, you know, fat kid.

He wasn't just kind of chunky. And he'd like to lay around and watch that TV. He wore out a Star Wars VHS.

I don't know how many times I'd come over to the house and he's watching that again. But when he got older, he got 13 years old. Now he's old enough to be in our league on our team. And so he was playing on my team.

And at that time told him, all right, here's the deal. There's rules in the league. And I'm saying it much more formal than he and I talked about it, but rules in the league. Everybody bats once, regardless how good or bad you are.

Everybody bats at least once during the game and plays two innings in the field. That's the rules. That does not apply to you.

Because this is family. If I want to bench and not play at all, that's what I'm going to do. And the only reason I said that is we're going to set a goal. I want you to lose two pounds every week. You lose those two pounds, we're good to go.

You're going to play. He lost those two pounds every week. All season long.

Never failed. Put him on the scales. He lost those two pounds. The Burlesworth family is a very small family.

There's very few of us. And so we were together all the time. And so Brandon lived with his mom. Dad was not around that much, an alcoholic.

He had kind of battled it, had gotten control of it. But he still wasn't in the picture much. We loved him and tried to keep him around as much. But that's why he and Marty, I think, developed such a bond. Brandon and Marty were together a lot. Whatever we were doing, we would take him with us.

Mom was working or Brandon just wanted to be with us. He really looked up to Marty. A lot of people would say that Marty was the father figure. And we don't like saying that because he had a dad that had some issues but was still the dad.

But they were just really, really tight brothers. And I didn't. I wasn't very fond of being called dad. I said, oh, your boys played a good game.

That's not my son. And that happened a lot. It even happened senior year in high school, which was strange. It happened last week. Yeah, it did, didn't it? It happened a lot, and it still happened. Now it makes a little more sense, maybe, as years go by. But when we've got like a two-year-old, and I'm being congratulated on my son, who's my brother, I wasn't crazy about that.

Finally, just like, fine, whatever. They were really, really close. It was just a tight bond, the whole family.

We called ourselves the inner circle because we just all knew that we had each other's back and that whatever happened, it always seemed to be the same little core people anyway. He was fun to be around. Now, he wouldn't talk much.

If he wanted to start something, he'd get Marty to start it, not him. Tremendous attitude. Everything was yes, sir.

No, sir. If you wanted any more words out of his mouth, you're going to have to drag him out most of the time. But he wasn't holier than thou. He set a really good example. Most of the things that Brandon did, Marty and I found out after the accident.

One of my favorite stories is humbleness. Brandon gets those silly, gosh-awful looking glasses, and he's at the house one day, and while he was playing, I said, what are you doing getting those glasses? You look like Drew Carey, you know? He said, oh, coach, they just feel good on my head. I said, really?

I said, let me look at them. Well, we talked a little bit about his goal setting, okay? So one of his goals his senior year was to be All-American.

If you look at the nosepiece right here in the middle, it's etched All-American. He kept it right in front of his eyes the whole time he was practicing and playing, and I said, I know why you got those glasses. You did it to get publicity. Oh, no, coach, oh, no, no, that's no, I wouldn't do that.

I don't, you know me, I don't want to draw attention to myself. I wouldn't do that, and that's when I figured it out. Right there it was. I tossed him back to him.

I said, I understand where this is at. That's the way it was. One of my favorite stories is one of my favorite stories about Brandon in his college years, and we didn't know this until after the accident passed away, but a couple of the Razorbacks called. They were telling us that they had gone to his room, and Brandon was in his room studying, which he did. He was, you know, as well as a great football player, he was a great scholar, but he was recopying his notes, which he did all the time. His writing was tiny, but very pretty writing.

He just had, but he was, so from the day's notes, he was recopying them, and the Razorbacks said, girls, how do you do it? You're a great athlete, great scholar. You're just a good person. How do you, what are you doing?

What's your secret? And they said, Brandon never looked up, that he reached his hand up, grabbed his Bible from a shelf that's there, pointed at him, didn't say a word, put it back in the, on his shelf, and went on. Never said a word, but he said everything, and that, Marty and I are both driven, hard-driven people. We want Brandon's story to be known everywhere, but Brandon had it figured out.

He knew where his success was, and what had gotten him there. He ended my playing career. In my days as a coach, every now and then, I would ask for a helmet for one of the younger kids, and show them how to perform a technique. So I was going to show this sophomore how to perform this defensive line technique, where he would engage a blocker, and then get off a blocker, and make a tackle. I said, give me that helmet. I put that helmet on, and I turned around and looked, and he was in front of the line, and usually I'd perform these techniques on sophomores, and they would always let me win. So I knew there wasn't any way to get out of this, you know, and I'm thinking, well yeah, Brandon will probably, you know, he'll probably take it easy on me.

No. When we came together, bells were ringing, and birds are singing, and I knew I had to get up, and I got up, ripped that helmet off, threw it to that young man I got it from, I turned to Burrowsworth, and I said, now don't you ever make me have to show you how to do that again. And I went off, I said, okay, everybody get a drink, and oh man, you know, one assistant comes to come over and says, you all right?

Yeah, I'm good. After practice, to Brandon's credit, he did come by and check on me, but he put me, he put, that was the end of my playing career, never did that again, so it was a good thing. My wife was tickled to hear it, that I wouldn't play it anymore. And you're listening to Brandon Burrowsworth's brother, Marty, and Marty's wife, Vicki. Talk about the young Brandon, and how he matured, and Marty ended up being sort of a dad-like or father-like figure. I didn't like being called that, but there was adversity in young Brandon's life, adversity he overcame.

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Here again is Marty. Every boy growing up, myself included, boy, to be a Razorback. That'd be like saying, I want to be Kansas City Chief.

Well, this is how it happened, like Coach Tice was saying. He had scholarship offers from some smaller schools that, boy, I wanted him. You know, in smaller schools, I learned, the Vision I school, you get a scholarship, it's covered. The smaller, I'll call it the Vision II, there's very little to, there's very few full scholarships.

They're partial scholarships. We had a coach, he called me back, hey, I got him books. Oh, that's a good coach. Call back a week or so later, I got, I've got it, it's still more room covered.

So finally had a complete full ride for a division. A friend of mine said, call Harold Horton at the university. That's what we call it here, the university. In this state, you say the university, no one says, of Arkansas, the university.

That's all you need to know. So we call, I call Harold Horton, the recruiting coordinator. They didn't call us, but I called him. Coach Horton says, yeah, come on over for the game. So we came over for a recruiting visit with all the other players that were in that probably didn't call.

They called them. And I can remember being in the north end zone patio area. That's all been torn down and rebuilt now, but there's a patio area that looked down on the field, right where the players come out, standing there with Brandon. We're looking down the offensive line would come out for Arkansas. I'm looking down at them, looking at him and you can tell he's like, this is it.

I said, what do you think? He goes, that's big words there for Brandon. It's a lot of talk. So when these other schools are calling and saying, we've got him books, we've got him, you know, I knew that probably not going to happen because he wanted to be a Razorback. So continued over the winter, we'd go back over for visits during basketball season. Coach Horton started to warm up a little bit to them. Yeah.

You know, I'm cracking how many scholarships are still available. So Brandon and I were going over to a basketball game. Coach Horton told us where to find him. So Brandon, I said, okay, this is what we're going to do. I said, we get over there. I want you to stand as tall as you can, you know, stand close to him and stand up good and tall. He said, okay. So we had to, you know, we planned this out. So Brandon is standing there.

I'd love to see a video of that cause it'd have to be funny. And I'm talking to coach Horton and Brandon standing right beside him. And cause I've been telling him, he's still growing. He's still growing.

He's just 17 years old. Coach Horton looks up at Brandon, looks at me, he said, well, he is growing, isn't it? Yeah, he is coach. He's still growing, you know, so we're trying to, we're still working it. So things like that on and on, over the months, talk to coach Horton one time, we get right down to the wire. Can we get a scholarship coach?

We're just not going to, I don't think we're going to be able to do that. And I said, coach, he, what he wants is to have his name announced at graduation, walk across that stage with a athletic scholarship to the University of Arkansas. He said, well, it's, it's pride. It's pride.

And I said, yeah, pride in a good way. He said, no good way. And that's the time that he said those words that I'll never forget on the phone, coach Horton says, well, we're going to make this work.

I've talked to some coaches at these other schools that he's going to pass on, but when he gets here, if it doesn't work, he'll be able to go to those. But when he gets here, we'll know, and he'll know. I said, okay, coach.

Yeah, but he's not going down, which, you know, to the lower level. He said, when he gets here, we'll know, he repeats it and he'll know. I said, coach, listen, he's not going down. He said, all right. I said, he'll show you. And he did a walk on.

That's not enough. I remember calling after that first year, January after that first season, which he was just scout team red shirt. He dressed for a couple of games, which is cool for us.

I took pictures of him with his jersey on with his name on the back. I'm like done. That's awesome. Hey man, I've got this for your kids one day. You can show them this. Nope, that ain't enough. Now I didn't think it was either, but if that would have been me, yeah, I'm probably pretty happy right now. You know, if I don't get to play, okay, I've made the team.

I've got a locker, got my name on the back of a Razorback jersey. This is, you know, forever, but that just wasn't enough for him nor should it have been. And so he just kept working toward that.

And we showed up over at the university in August for two a days and they still were at that time, two a days, about 300 pounds, even over some, you know, it's been exaggerated in places, but anyway, it's way too heavy. And August in Arkansas on the old Astra turf, it was borderline dangerous for him. You know, his face was so red, but you know, he's not going to quit. He's going to keep going, but they took all that weight off of him pretty quickly because they saw the person they had better yet the personality they had that this guy's going to get it done, that he's not going to quit, that he's going to go hard every day. And the coaches stayed around after practice to work with him.

And then he got coach Bender and it was all great from there. Did I think he was ever going to play? No, but I knew he would be there. When he was a junior, you know, they played in Fedville, played at Auburn and they lost and I'd never been to the dressing room before, but I felt like I had to go that day. I knew that he would be terribly upset. Of course, by this time he's on scholarship and he's already been all SEC academic, you know, at this time and he makes all SEC two years and then he goes on to All-American.

The last game he played was in the Citrus Bowl against Tom Brady, Michigan. Then he gets drafted 63rd by the Colts. I mean, this is all, this is unbelievable. I mean, that's why people look, they see the movie and say, well, that couldn't be that way.

Well, it was that way. So I go to that dressing room. I asked where Brandon's locker was and they told me where it was. I turned the corner and I see him sitting in his locker and he's got blood dripping off the end of his nose. He's real sweaty.

He's real muddy because it rained that day. He sees me in true Burlesworth style. He jumps to his feet, comes right at me. We throw our arms around each other and I look at him and I say, Brandon, have I told you I loved you lately? And he said, no, coach, you haven't, but I sure could use it today. And I said, well, Brandon, I love you.

We embraced one more time and I left. Being a Razorback is such a big deal. In this state, we have no pro teams. I don't think they could compete really with Razorbacks. There's no second place to be a Razorback.

Razorback. And I think Brandon had the confidence. I mean, I had the confidence in him too, even though sometimes it's portrayed that I was surprised. I wasn't surprised. You talk about instant celebrity.

Oh my goodness. You know, here in town, in Harrison, you know, he come back into town, you know, we go to Walmart or something, you know, and, and never did he, never did he say to me, I don't want to go, you know, he was kind of shy, obviously, but he never tried to not go somewhere in case somebody would see him. He would all, you know, we'd go to Walmart or ball fields or a football game or a baseball game or our kids little league game, our oldest little league game.

He just felt like he was one of the normals. And what a story you're hearing here about Brandon Burlesworth. My goodness, he goes from walk-on to second year scholarship and starter. That's crazy in the SEC, which is a semi-professional football league. He's all SEC in 97 and 98 and in 98 he's also all American. That's just an unbelievable progression and all American was inscribed on those thick glasses. Now we know why he wore them.

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Here again is Brandon's brother, Marty. His senior year, we started getting calls from agents, which I thought was really neat. I interviewed a lot of agents and after a while, a lot of it flew into Harrison, I mean from Pittsburgh and California. And I mean, it's pretty big time agents. And he and I talked about it and he said, why don't we do it ourselves?

I've not learned anything from them. That's not basically business one-on-one and I've been in business for a long time. If you want to do that, so I went through about a year long process and became NFL certified, which was not easy. One thing they have to accept you. And I think most of them are probably, well, not most, but at least half of them are probably attorneys, you know, people like that. I'm a photographer, you know, studio photographer. So I didn't know if I'd even get a shot at it, but they took our money.

So our money's as good as anybody else's, I guess, the way I look at it. Got a phone call from the, from Indianapolis, you know, tell me I was a news member of the Indianapolis Colts. He laughs like the rest of us at the Drew Carey comparisons.

He prefers the ones that Colts use. The scouting reports all say, like Steve McKinney, like Steve McKinney. So if you can get another like that, we're happy. We'll take all of the Steve McKinney's we can get. A lot of people say good things like that. And that's all good, you know, but you know, you've got to prove yourself still.

And that's the way I look at it. The way the Colts look at it is that Burlesworth is a soon to be starter. Peyton Manning, their quarterback needs protection. The kind Burlesworth provided for quarterback Clint Sturner at Arkansas.

Burlesworth says it'll happen in time. I talked to the offensive line coach and he told me, you know, that they definitely expect me to play, you know, right away. And you know, I think that they expect me to start at some point.

And I think it's something that I'll have to, you know, work into, you know, through training camp. Well, you know, we were really focusing, like you say, on a defensive guy in that third round pick. But Burlesworth was a, an offensive lineman who we had rated higher than any of the defensive players that we had up there. Our scouts liked him, our coaches liked him, and he graded out real high at the Indy Combine.

So he, we just felt like he was somebody that we couldn't pass up at that point. What kinds of things does he do? I mean, he didn't allow the sack in the last couple of years.

Yeah, like that. Well, he's very athletic. You know, he's got good feet. He, he's got good skills, you know, athletic skills for a big man. He's 300 and some, 308, 309 pounds strong. Had one of the best scores as far as the lift in the weights at the combine and all the other little skill tests that they did, he graded out very highly. Great work ethic, smart, good kid, you know, football's important to him, all those things. He's already got his master's degree. So he's an impressive young man.

And he looks like Drew Carey too, huh? I know, I know, I know that. Well, we'll fast forward a little bit to the day of the wreck. Okay, so I'm in Fayetteville seeing some friends, stopped by the university to see Dean Weber and Coach Houston Nutt at that time. And they were going to have, they wanted me to stay over for a big championship celebration they were having for winning the west of the SEC, the ring ceremony.

I couldn't do it. I had to get back home. So I had left and done a couple other things before I took off.

I got, there's a little town out here called Carrollton. And back, I came up on a long line of cars sitting still. And I'm in this line of cars. I'm sitting right beside Fultz's Dairy, which is a mile, about a mile back from where the wreck took place. And I was sitting there in the car and I'm thinking, thoughts are going through my head about we had our upcoming banquet, sports banquet. And I knew, you know, Brandon made All-American.

I thought, well, how can I utilize him as part of this, you know, this celebration for us? Because I knew they were celebrating in Fedville. Well, I was there an hour before they got the scene cleared. Turned out it was a wreck.

Came by, did not recognize the car. And I get home and our principal at the time was a man named Danny Gilbert. And Danny called me and said, Burlesworth has died. And I said, how? And he said, I said, I just left him in Fedville not an hour ago. He said, he's died in a car wreck.

And then the light comes on. You were just there. And he said, I said, how did it happen?

He said, I don't know how it happened, but think about it. It's Wednesday. He's on his way home. Take his mama to church, as he did on every Wednesday night. Or they met at a roadside park on Wednesday and had devotionals and things like that. And so this was, that was important to Brandon.

And he had left the ceremony early. Family was, that was really, really important. So that night, when I got home, I got off the phone. My wife's sitting there and I'm, I'm upset and I'm teared up and things of this nature. I said, I can't, she said, you've got to go to that house. I said, I can not go to that house.

I said, I can't do that. She said, you have to do it. So I went, and I've never been involved in a scene like that before in my life. And it was just so sad. And of course, gloom came over the entire state of Arkansas, especially Harrison. Everybody knew Brandon. Everybody knew the story. Everybody knew the story. And so when the media people came into Harrison, there were a lot of them. And Marty asked me to talk with them. And so we gathered them all in a room at the high school at the junior high at that time, at the junior high. And I got them in a room and I told them, I said, I know you've come to cover this story. I know that some of you will not, are probably not believing the things you've heard about this young man.

I said, but here's the deal. The family wants you to look everywhere you want to look. Everything will be an open book for you. Ask questions you want to ask, go see what you want to see and see if you can find anything that what's been told is not true.

They couldn't find anything. And so then I spoke at the funeral. That was probably one of the hardest things I've done in my lifetime. He's been gone longer than we had him. And see my memories, my memories are not like that. I think of what our boys have done over the years, like the little league. I mean, he wasn't even here then when they were. He was here 22 years, but in our, in my mind, he's still 22. I mean, we see him, the photographs that we do every day, we talk about him every day. We share him with people and he just, once in a while it'll hit Marty and I, he's gone.

You know, you know, you just, and that, and that horrible grief that we had when we found out the accident in that first year, we were just walking in mud and we decided that we were either going to sink or swim because this was absolutely taking our family down. And we just knew that the Lord could take something horrible and make something good. You know, Marty and I say all the time, if you took the faith out of Brandon's story, there's no story because it was absolutely based on everything and our foundation has been the same way. You know, I love talking about Brandon.

I love talking about Marty and Vicki. I remember, you know, and said, we're going to, we're going to put this foundation together. You know, we're going to do this. In fact, our football camps, he and I talked about doing those, having kids at NFL games. And it was NFL games.

After his accident, I talked to coach Burrells actually at the, what would have been Brandon's first game. We were in the owner's box and the first thing we're going to do, we're going to have a football camp. You're going to run it. And I'm going, I said, really? Yeah. I said, really? He said, yeah, mama says you're going. Okay. Yeah.

Ms. Burrellsworth says that I'm doing it. And so I'm here in the first camp we had, it was awful. It was hot. It just rained. And we had hundreds of kids out there and oh my gosh.

And we did some, we've got it now where it's a fine tune machine, but that first one, oh my gosh. You know, but those kids that come to those camps, you know, of course they come to see those Razorbacks and they always come back. Never been done before. I don't know if anyone else has ever done it.

Having similar to NFL, where you have kids attend a game that wouldn't have that opportunity. You know, they just keep coming back, you know, because of Brandon. When we say, why does it matter?

I've got my one simple answer is selfishly, and I'll just admit it. I don't want him forgotten ever, ever. And it, to this day, it hurts my feelings.

If someone in Wyoming or Nebraska doesn't know about him, they don't know who that is. I don't like that. I got to fix that. So that's what we're, that's why we live it. I mean, that's not why we live it.

That's my internal motivation. And what a story you just heard. And my goodness, the role faith played in his life. It was a quiet faith, but it was there. It was the peril of his life. And indeed he left that championship ring ceremony earlier, and it's a big deal to win the Western division of the SEC to take his mom to church and en route.

Well, that's how he died. The story of Brandon Bolesworth here on Our American Stories. Learn more at avocadosfrommexico.com. Introducing Uber teen accounts. If you have a teenager, you probably drive them around a lot.

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