Editor's note: Steve Doerschuk spent months researching quarterbacks, mostly from Ohio, many from Stark County. The result is three waves of a series, "Year of the Quarterback." The first wave revolves around top-tier high school QBs struggling to find the field in college. This is the first article in the first wave.
From Cleveland St. Ignatius instigator Joe Pickens to Athens Plains prodigy Joe Burrow, the message for super high school quarterbacks spirals through the years.
The air can get cold in college. It's hard to find the field.
Long before "Johnny Football" came to Cleveland as an NFL imposter, Pickens was Joe Football, the real thing.
After Pickens won 1988 and 1989 state championships to launch the Ignatius dynasty, athletic director Dale Gabor presented what amounted to a verbal statue, saying:
"He put us on the map statewide. He put us on national television. He took us to the top rankings, nationwide."
Ohio State football was in a lull . The Buckeyes had fired coach Earle Bruce and were 12-10-1 in their first two years under his replacement.
Pickens was the quarterback who would get the John Cooper era rolling.
Except, "Coop" kept losing to Michigan, and Pickens got stuck behind Kent Graham and Kirk Herbstreit. After two years, Pickens transferred to Duke, sat out a season under the rules of the day, then spent two years behind Spence Fischer.
Pickens never did find the field. Burrow eventually did , but in a disturbing way for Buckeye fans.
In Burrow's fourth year as quarterback at Athens High School, near Ohio University, he was Ohio Mr. Football for 2014. Then he sat for three years at Ohio State.
He might have stayed for a fourth season had Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer pledged to start him but, when that didn't happen coming out of spring practice, he transferred to LSU.
How Burrow got buried in Columbus and then rose to one of the greatest seasons in college football history at LSU is the subject of an article later in this series.
Cameron Blair, Poochie Snyder rewrote Stark County high school football records
As the project heads downfield, the stories of many quarterbacks will spread out. Locally, it starts with two current college QBs, Cameron Blair and Jack "Poochie" Snyder.
Blair set assorted Stark County passing records while starting for four years at Sandy Valley.
Snyder, who was a Canton South freshman in 2020 when Blair was a Sandy Valley senior, broke those records.
Experienced observers think Blair is good enough to play at Ashland University, but through three seasons, he barely has. His story of persistence comes later in the series.
Snyder's opportunity at Sacred Heart University starts now.
"Poochie" dreamed of Ohio State.
For Buckeye purposes, he was too short at 6 feet, too slight at 180 pounds, spread too thin while playing three sports, and, against a catalog of opponents with middling enrollments, too untested.
Snyder knew the score. As he put it during a conversation while sitting in quiet Clyde Brechbuhler Stadium after a 2023 summer practice:
"My favorite school is Ohio State ... but I know the chances of that are slim."
The stadiums filled up. Snyder led Canton South to a 14-1 season . He was an Ohio Mr. Football finalist .
The ride ended in the Division IV state semifinals against Cleveland Glenville on Nov. 24. Ohio State lost at Michigan on Nov. 25. Buckeyes quarterback Kyle McCord vanished into the transfer portal on Dec. 4. Snyder signed with Sacred Heart on Dec. 21 .
Sacred Heart football coach: Poochie Snyder was 'one of our top kids that we wanted'
Sacred Heart isn't big-time football, but there are big things about it.
Snyder is going from the Nimishillen Creek to the Atlantic Ocean. Sacred Heart is in Connecticut's Fairfield County, population about 960,000 (Stark County's is about 373,000).
The Sacred Heart Pioneers play in the Northeast Conference, whose 2023 champion was Pittsburgh-based Duquesne. In the first round of the 2023 FCS playoffs, Duquesne lost 40-7 at Youngstown State.
As champion of the Northeast Conference in 2021, Sacred Heart reached the national playoffs and fell 13-10 to Holy Cross. The Pioneers finished 5-6 in 2022 and 2-9 in 2023.
Sacred Heart offensive coordinator Matt Gardner gave The Repository a quick tour:
"We're the largest private Catholic school in the Northeast. Our academics are top-notch. All the major players in the business world and the medical world are nearby.
"The campus is gorgeous. The facilities are great. You can get to New York City, you can get to New Haven, you can get to Stamford, you can get to the beaches."
Can you get to the field?
Longtime Ohio high school football coach Thom McDaniels can't imagine Sacred Heart not giving Snyder a chance.
"He's the best quarterback I've seen in Stark County in a long time," said McDaniels, who has been watching since he was a young assistant coach on Canton McKinley's 1981 state championship team. "I don't know if the Big Ten would believe in him enough to even give him a chance. He didn't go there, and I'm glad."
Sacred Heart coach Mark Nofri is saying there's a chance.
"He was one of our top kids that we wanted," Nofri said, "and we went after him hard."
Big-time college football quarterbacks can be found at small schools, including Mount Union
Former Canton South, Bowling Green and Cleveland Browns quarterback Mark Miller has followed Snyder closely.
Miller was fast, like Snyder, but he also was three inches taller.
Miller stays in touch with Bowling Green and is in tune with NCAA Division III power Mount Union, where his son Kyle played tight end before making it to the NFL. Kyle coaches at Mount Union now.
Just because someone doesn't want you, Mark Miller concludes, doesn't mean they shouldn't.
He viewed Mount Union's most recent quarterback, Braxton Plunk, as an interesting example of getting put off by Division I recruiters and doing all he could with the opportunity he had.
"Braxton is probably 5-foot-11, not too far from Poochie," Miller said as the 2023 college season unfolded. "He is brilliant. I told Bowling Green's head coach, Scott Loeffler, 'Mount Union's quarterback could start for every school in the MAC.'
"I'm not kidding you. The kid is fabulous. The ball comes out, and it's right on the money. He reads. He checks. He throws on the run. He's a leader.
"But … he's 5-11, 180 pounds."
The four levels of NCAA football are Division III (Mount Union), Division II (Ashland), FCS Division I (Youngstown State, Sacred Heart), and FBS Division I (Bowling Green on up to Ohio State).
Jim Ballard may have been good enough for any of the above, but he wound up at the smallest level, Division III. He was the quarterback on the first of coach Larry Kehres' 11 national championship teams at Mount Union and is in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Now 52, Ballard operates a quarterback academy, through which he counsels pupils plotting a course to college.
"The best advice is, know who loves you, as opposed to who wants to date you but also wants to hang out with other girls, so to speak," Ballard said.
"When they recruit you, do they call you all the time? Do players call? Do alumni members call? How much does the coach want you?
"Even then, maybe they love you, but they have a freshman or sophomore quarterback who started last year and will be tough to beat out.
"Luck becomes involved."
The NCAA transfer portal era of college football
The transfer portal has become a monster.
Starting in 2021, NCAA football players were allowed to transfer without sitting out a year. In June 2024, the NCAA and the United States Department of Justice came to a settlement allowing unlimited transfers without penalty of sitting out.
Burrow transferred to LSU in 2018. That was before the new portal rules, but he was allowed to play immediately because he had earned a degree from Ohio State.
The no-waiting portal has been a career-maker for some quarterbacks and has knocked others for a loop.
"It's a really, really tough time in college football right now," Ballard said. "I absolutely hate it.
"It squeezes the opportunity for high school kids."
Snyder felt the squeeze.
"Of the schools I looked at and hoped might be interested, there were only two or three that took a high school kid," he said.
On the flip side, the system pushes some high school QBs into situations where they are less likely to get lost in a crowd. They take what they can get, but what they get is a program more apt to play them.
"You wouldn't believe how many quarterbacks go into the portal and don't get signed," Ballard said, noting 81 were clogged in the portal at the time of his interview. "From the start, try to figure out where they really want you.
"Don't go to a D1 school and walk on just to say, 'I went to the big place.' You're not going to be Baker Mayfield and walk on and start at two different schools. It's not going to happen.
"You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning 10 times."
Jim Tressel touched all the bases, as a coach's son, as a quarterback at Berea High School and NCAA Division III Baldwin-Wallace, as a coach in the Mid-American Conference (Miami), as head coach of national championship teams at NCAA Division I-AA Youngstown State, as a 10-year head coach at Ohio State, even as a college president at YSU.
He wonders how he would adapt to the era of the transfer portal.
"The days of bringing in a quarterback in each class or maybe three quarterbacks in four classes and developing them … that's not the way things are today," Tressel said. "There are less scholarships for high school kids coming out, especially quarterbacks. It makes it a lot more difficult."
Not that finding a place to play ever was easy.
Perhaps Joe Pickens would have lit up the Mid-American Conference. At Ohio State, he threw five passes in two years and decided he didn't care to spend a third year backing up Kirk Herbstreit.
The Ohio high school legend transferred, sat out a year by NCAA rule, then spent two years at Duke watching Fischer.
Pickens returned to Ohio State for law school. He is a partner at Columbus-based Isaac, Wiles & Burkholder.
Life went on.
Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Year of the Quarterback, Part 1: Ohio State a wakeup call for high school superstars
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