Ex-Lumberjacks settling in, playing well for Hogs in camp

(NOTE: This story first appeared in The Eagle-Democrat in Warren on Aug. 21)

FAYETTEVILLE — Former Warren players Treylon Burks and Marcus Miller are settling in just fine as they were winding down summer classes and player-led workouts for Arkansas football.

The question about how they were liking Fayetteville as they were sitting down for an interview in the last days before fall camp starts was almost in stereo with identical answers.

“I like it,” they both said, grinning.

It was the last opportunity to talk with both players before the Razorbacks’ season-opening game August 31 against Portland State at Razorback Stadium. Coach Chad Morris doesn’t let freshmen talk to the media until after they’ve played in a game.

Neither one cares. They are not really big in the self-promoting online world of Twitter, Facebook and other sites.

“Not into social media,” Miller said.

“My mother does some stuff on mine,” Burks added.

They are part of Morris’ second recruiting class, but the first from Southeast Arkansas, which is actually where football started in the state back in 1904 when the Clary Training School in Fordyce became the first prep program in the state, just a few short miles from Warren.

Former New Yorker Tom Meddick started it all with a weirdly-shaped ball, noted by former Arkansas Gazette Fordyce correspondent J. Willard Clary, the grandson of the founder of the school that started things before Fordyce High School.

It was in the Gazette in 1956 when Clary explained what he thought was the key to the success of players from the area.

“South Arkansas is covered with pine thickets and the main sport of the boys is rabbit hunting,” he wrote. “When they go out rabbit hunting, the fast boys sidestep and dodge through the pine saplings.

“They make good backfield men. The slower boys run over the pines. They make good linemen.”

It is probably as good of a description of Burks and Miller as you’ll find, although their sport of choice is fishing, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

The former Lumberjacks have gotten the attention of coaches and fellow players in the first week of the fall camp as the Hogs try to put a 2-10 season to forget in the rear-view mirror.

It was Tuesday in the fourth practice when Morris talked about a catch Burks made in the practice earlier.

“It was unbelievable,” was how Morris described it later. “I saw Treylon Burks make a one-handed catch out there today that I don’t know that I’ve seen a kid make.”

A lot of folks in Warren may have wondered how much film he looked at because he made a lot of those catches routinely. A video was put out on social media from the university Thursday of a one-handed catch reaching back for the ball that Burks made routinely for the Lumberjacks.

That wasn’t the one Morris was talking about.

“At first we thought he didn’t catch it, but we watched it on another video and a better angle and he grabbed it in,” safety Joe Foucha said a day later.

“He’s just powerful,” Morris said about Burks. “Very much attention to detail. He wants to do everything perfect. But again, that comes with being a young guy and coming out and making plays.”

Foucha spent a lot of time watching former Alabama receiver Julie Jones, who is now a veteran with Atlanta.

“He reminds me of (Jones) with his size and his ease and how he can catch a ball in any position,” he said. “I have only seen Julio do something like that and (Burks) is a freshman. He is going to do some big things.”

Miller has also gotten the attention of teammates.

“You can tell Marcus Miller is rising to the top,” senior defensive tackle McTelvin Agim said. “You can really tell he’s been working hard.”

None of it comes as a surprise in Warren.

Both started in YMCA football, which is when kids start playing in Warren in any sort of organized fashion.

“We played in the backyard a little, but that was about it,” Miller said.

Miller was headed for football all along, but Burks needed a little encouraging back then.

That’s when Brent Higgins and Chet Brown, both coaching at the YMCA, got involved.

“I saw Treylon playing baseball and had my son bring him over and asked him if he wanted to play football and he said, ‘yes sir,’ so we got him on the field,” said Higgins, who is the chief cook and bottle-washer at Molly’s Diner in downtown Warren these days.

“They got both of us playing football,” Burks said, laughing about Higgins’ encouragement.

“I always played football at school and on the playground,” he said. “It was about the ninth grade when I really got into football. It was all baseball before then and I didn’t football that seriously.”

Being at the high school games in junior high is when it hit him how big football is around Warren.

“Football is a big deal,” Burks said. “It became a dream of mine in junior high. I just wanted to play in front of that crowd and the excitement.”

As youngsters, both stood out early because of their size. They were bigger than everybody else.

“We couldn’t play Treylon at quarterback in the fourth grade because he was too big,” Higgins said, chuckling. “There was a rule that if you were over a certain size you couldn’t take a snap or receive a handoff.

“We moved him to tight end to get him the ball.”

Miller had to take the ball away from the other team’s offense.

“He was always the biggest kid on the field,” Higgins said. “He was the most happy, laid-back guy and you never saw him without that smile.”

Miller managed to score from the defensive side … a lot.

“He scored a touchdown in every game he played through the sixth grade on defensive turnovers,” Higgins said. “In one game he hadn’t scored and we caught him dropping back in pass coverage.”

Higgins shares a common thought with Miller’s current position coach with the Hogs, Kenny Ingram.

“We want to get him a little more aggressive,” Ingram said at the Media & Coaches Golf Tournament in late July before training camp started. “But you just fall in love with the kid.”

“Marcus couldn’t be blocked if he had a mean streak,” Higgins said.

It didn’t take long over the summer for Arkansas coaches to figure out the pair’s passions weren’t really complicated.

“Treylon doesn’t care about nothin’ but fishing’ and playing football,” wide receivers coach Justin Stepp said in July.

For Burks, fishing is something he got from his grandfather, going to Lake Wallace.

“First time I went, I caught a big ol’ bass, took him home and cooked it and I’ve loved doing that every since,” Burks said.

They both started fishing young and it’s still a passion … along with playing football.

Playing for the Razorbacks is something that has a long string of names from the Lumberjacks over the last century. The list is too long to even start because somebody will be forgotten.

But since two-platoon football started in the mid-1960’s, Miller is the only defensive tackle from Warren to play for the Hogs.

“I started talking to Arkansas when I was in the ninth grade,” he said. “I always wanted to play there. It means a lot because we never had a defensive lineman go anywhere.”

The choice wasn’t quite that quick for Burks, who said Clemson had always been his favorite. Anderson, a coach at the YMCA, was always a big LSU fan and the Tigers were in the picture, too.

“I’ve been close to him,” Burks said.

Staying home, though, finally won out. He was a waterboy on the Lumberjack teams with future Hogs Jarius Wright, Greg Childs and Chris Gragg. He saw first-hand the impact they had on the folks down in Bradley County.

“It’s a big encouragement for my friends, family and the people in Warren to see me perform well here,” Burks said.

They’ve settled in with the college life, even finding a chicken place owned and operated by former Razorback Keith Kidd, from Crossett. His father was a pastor who served at churches in Warren and Bradley County a few decades back.

Now they are becoming key players — even as freshmen — for what Morris and fans is hoping turns out to be a fast-moving path up the ladder in the SEC.