Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow might be a Comeback Player of the Year who already appeared in a Super Bowl.
But there was a time he thought banking was his career path.
Back in 2018, long before the Heisman Trophy for one of the best college quarterback seasons ever and the national championship with LSU that featured all those cigars, Burrow had eyes on an investment banker career path while stuck deep on the depth chart at Ohio State.
Burrow told NBC Sports’ Chris Simms that he was putting his all into the football career path but that things with the Buckeyes just didn’t have the rosiest outlook.
“I was putting in the same work that I always put in and wasn’t playing,” Burrow said. “Of course, there was self-doubt in that moment. I mean, when you don’t pay for three years, and you’re putting in the work and you feel like you’re practicing really well and you feel like you can go out there and make plays and do what you’ve always done but you’re not getting the opportunity to show what you can do, it’s frustrating. And there were times when I started updating that resume, thinking about being an investment banker or something like that.”
Of course, fans know now that Burrow wound up graduating and going to LSU. Injuries and the presence of other great passers prevented him from getting that starting gig with the Buckeyes, but he didn’t need long to get acclimated with the Tigers.
The rest, as they say, is history. Had that opportunity at LSU not opened up, Burrow might not have enjoyed one of the most meteoric rises in modern college football history and it would be nearly impossible to say where the Bengals would be at right now.
