My Celebrity Crush: Joe Burrow
I ruminate on why the former LSU QB appeals to me more than any other celebrity ever has.
I hope subscribers and readers will indulge me this week on a non-baseball topic—my celebrity crush on Joe Burrow. This is what has been going through my mind a lot this week.
And if this annoys you, I hope you’ll forgive me. And I’d ask you to direct your anger not at me, but at Rob Manfred and the baseball owners, who are apparently bound and determined to keep us from having new baseball topics to write about.
It started after the AFC Championship Game. I had to watch the interview after the game with Joe Burrow, to see what he said about the Bengals win. And then I’ve kept finding Joe Burrow media to consume over the past two weeks.
I’ve been searching for articles about Burrow, his family, his hometown, his play as a quarterback, and his fashion choices. I’ve been searching for videos from football analysts about keys to the Super Bowl and what the narratives are (and could be) for Burrow. And I’ve searched for Xs-and-Os focused NFL podcasts to move beyond the usual pop-psychology/narrative model of most TV sports analysis.
And at some point in this process, I’ve come to a realization: I have a celebrity crush, and it’s on Joe Burrow.
And thinking back, this is my first major celebrity crush I think that I have ever had. My behavior and thinking is unusual for me. There is no athlete, musician, or actor who has captured my attention like Burrow. And that includes Astros like Jose Cruz, Kevin Bass, Craig Biggio, Jose Altuve, and Carlos Correa. Or Houston legends like Hakeem Olajuwon. I’m more interested and fascinated by Burrow than any of these previous players.
So I’m writing this week in some ways to explain to myself how this happened, and in other ways to meditate on the nature of fandom. Why do we like certain players and what is it about them that we like and glom on to.?
My affection for Joe Burrow does not start recently. I’m an LSU fan. And Burrow was the star of the Tiger’s remarkable 2019 national championship team, and the only LSU player to win the Heisman Trophy in my lifetime.
But 2019 doesn’t just represent a good season to my fellow LSU fans. It was a fever dream of a season in which LSU—known for years as a plodding team focused on defense—blitzkrieged college football with the greatest offensive explosion the sport has ever seen. And at the center of it was Burrow.
LSU has a great history at basically every position on the field, except quarterback. So Burrow appears to an LSU fan as a oasis must to those wandering in the desert. I kept looking at Burrow in 2019 and thinking “Wow, that guy is our quarterback.” And as Burrow has continued his success in the NFL—and as LSU’s quarterback play over the last two seasons has returned to, um, traditional, levels, I keep thinking the same thing.
But it’s not just an LSU thing. For example, my favorite major league team—the one I’ve dedicate an entire Substack to—has an LSU alum as one of its stars. And I love Alex Bregman as a baseball player, and I feel like I understand his personality and how he clicks. And the relationship is not the same for me with Bregman as it is with Burrow.
I have a greater emotional connection to Burrow, and I am cheering for him as a person to win, not the team. Perhaps that’s a key to the differences in my attitude toward Burrow and Bregman. Bregman is helping the Astros—my team, the entity that I want to win. I have no emotional attachment to the Bengals, and am not cheering intrinsically for the black and orange stripes the way that I am for the orange and blue star.
But some of this also stems from my relationship to the two different sports here. Baseball has always appealed to my intellectual side—to my brain. It’s the sport that I have taken on, despite my playing abilities topping out in about sixth grade. I think of baseball from a very analytical and sabermetric standpoint. That perspective tends to focus on how to build and develop a team that wins a lot of games.
In that context, Bregman is a component—and an important one—to the ability of my team to win games. As an LSU fan, I’ve been following Bregman’s career since he was a freshman in college, and feel I understand his contributions to the Astros well in large part because of my long history of following him as a player and a personality. But that’s only slightly different than my relationship to the Astros other star players.
Football tends to appeal more to my emotional side. It’s a once a week sport. My LSU fandom is inherited and is highly associated with my family. The most important people in my life are LSU fans, and cheering for the Baton Rouge based team tethers me to the city where I was born and where my parents grew up.
I played football throughout high school and at my small liberal arts college in southern California. So I understand the emotions of playing the game better having lived it. But over my adult years, I’ve thought less and less about the sport and mostly focus my attention on the games themselves every Saturday.
In that context, it’s easier to attach myself emotionally to a football player like Burrow than a baseball player like Bregman. My brain is working at a different level for football than baseball.
My attachment to Burrow starts with the positive emotional associations I have with his magical 2019 season in Baton Rouge, but a celebrity crush is more than just liking his football skills.
I love Burrow’s personality and style. And this is the most surprising element to me of having a crush. I usually care little about these factors for celebrities. There are certain things that put me off on pubic personas, but usually I do not focus much attention on celebrities or the personalities of musicians or actors. Some of this is that my favorite musicians—Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, Jason Isbell—aren’t really all that famous. And some is that I see their personalities as a component of their songwriting and music, rather than the package itself.
For athletes, I’ll think about their personalities as a component of how they go about their work of winning games. But for the most part, I tend to avoid psychologically based explanations of how players perform as a combination of bad measurement, focusing on results over process, and selective data points.
So why do I like Burrow’s personality so much? For me, I think it starts with the fact that while Burrow will show his personality—waving goodbye to Texas fans after 3rd-and-17, pointing at his ring finger after the final touchdown against Clemson in the natty, saying I make too much money to have fake diamonds after the AFC title victory—it always comes after he has won a game. Before that, Burrow seems laser focused on winning the game, and his high levels of preparation shown through for the 2019 Tigers and the 2021 Bengals.
As such, Burrow’s demonstrations of personality never seem to be where his mind focuses. He’s not trying to show off; he’s trying to win—and to celebrate his victory. And thus, Burrow does not seem to be seeking out attention or planning out his personality. It’s a reflection of what he actually thinks. He’s excited that he’s finally achieved the goal he’s been seeking, rather than the celebration itself being his focus. This was the case with LSU in 2019, and continues to be the case in 2021.
And this fits in with a description of Burrow that comes up again and again in discussions of his personality and celebrity. He’s not working to put himself out there; he’s just being himself. Burrow’s style and celebrations are not an act designed to win clicks and eyeballs, but something he pulls off without trying.
This is a difficult act for all of us, because once we are conscious that others are paying attention to our behavior, it is difficult to determine how to put that out of your mind when you do something. So do we wear clothes, or post memes, or do anything because it is what we want to do, or to please others? It is difficult for any of us to tell sometimes. Maybe Burrow does plan all this stuff out. But man, he sure doesn’t seem like.
Another element of my affection for Burrow became apparent to me yesterday, as I saw this tweet from Ben Shpigel of the New York Times, linking to his article on Burrow’s style and cool.
It made me realize as much as anything else of large amount of Joe Burrow content that I’ve consumed this week how big Burrow has become as a celebrity. He’s bigger than college football. He’s bigger than LSU and the embrace LSU fandom has made of their guy.
And in that sense, cheering for Burrow at LSU in 2019 is like seeing the Beatles in Hamburg in 1960, or seeing Nirvana touring on the Bleach album. I was in on the ground floor. He went big, but all of the elements we see today—the pinpoint passing accuracy driven the high level football intelligence, the effortless cool, the easy confidence and ability to elevate his teammates—they were present in 2019.
That season, I kept watching Burrow throw touchdown after touchdown (he recorded 65 touchdowns on the year; an LSU website created a March Madness bracket to determine the best one). And I kept thinking “Wow, I can’t believe that guy is our quarterback.” And as Burrow has grown into a star in the NFL, I’ve kept asking that question.
So I’ve pulled out my LSU gear for the day, as has my wife and son. Today, we will watch the Super Bowl, eat a ton of chips and queso and chicken and sausage creole, just like we do every year for the Super Bowl. But this year, we’re cheering hard for one guy—our guy: Joe Burrow. The man who is my first celebrity crush.