When he became a student manager with the football program three seasons ago — which means he’s on the sidelines at every OSU practice and every OSU game — he didn’t just get a job.
He found a savior.
•First off, with his position he’s in the middle of the action on arguably the best team in college football this season and one of the best ever in Ohio State history.
He’s especially in the mix at games, where he wears a headset and listens nonstop to the often intense chatter of the coaches – except, he said with a grin, when Urban Meyer was the boss:
“He’d just scream into it, so I’d flip one side of my headphones off so I wouldn’t get a headache during the game.”
What he would get all game long were the prompts he needed so he could signal each play – like some hyper-kinetic, third-base coach – to quarterback Justin Fields, the receivers and the running backs.
•Being intertwined with the players and coaches – as one of 15 student managers and just four with the prestigious signal-calling chores – also means he is learning the game in a way that could lead to a future position. He graduated last Sunday with a sports management degree and hopes to find a job as a college coach or football operations person, preferably at OSU, but otherwise any school that makes an offer.
•And being on the sideline means the Springboro High School grad is rekindling the best of his childhood memories, when he was on the football sidelines with his dad, Tim Edwards, who was an assistant coach at several Miami Valley high schools, especially Alter, where he spent a decade and was part of the Knights teams that won state crowns in 2008 and 2009 and finished as the runners-up in 2006.
“As a kid I remember idolizing some of the players, guys like Chris Borland and the Bouchers,” Austin said. “I can remember my dad getting on guys on the sidelines, pushing them to do better and I remember the two state championships like the back of my hand.
“I remember celebrating on the field with my dad and I remember crying my eyes out when they lost the title game to Steubenville (34-33) in Massillon.”
Those resurrected memories mean the most to him because they have helped him survive, helped him heal these past three years – although, until a couple of days ago, he had never talked about that publicly.
“I think….he loves being a manager because it makes him closer to his dad out there,” Susanne Edwards, Austin’s mom and Tim’s ex-wife, said in a halting voice the other day before you heard her softly crying over the phone. “With the boys, football and their dad go hand in hand.”
And those are the memories – rather than the last one – that Austin Edwards wants to hold onto these days.
Tim Edwards had been an accomplished athlete at Miamisburg High School and then at Miami University, where he was a baseball player. After that he became a longtime assistant football coach at Middletown, Hamilton, West Carrollton, Alter and finally Bishop Fenwick.
Austin said his parents had split up soon after he entered high school and in the years that followed his dad’s life hit a few bumps. In the spring of 2016, Tim was not taking his medications and was experiencing a rough patch with his girlfriend.
“I got a call from the coroner and after that almost everything is a blur,” Susanne said quietly. “That was the hardest day of my life.”
It was May 8, 2016 and she was told her ex-husband had taken his own life.
He was just 47.
When she hung up with the coroner she said one thing did remain clear:
“At that moment I knew it was not about me and it was not about their dad. It was about my boys. It was about getting through this. But how would I explain it to them? And how would I protect them? How would I get them through the grief of such a devastating situation?”
Along with Austin, she and Tim had a son, Brayden, who is eight years younger than his brother. She also has as an older son, Taylor, from another union.
Austin had just transferred to Ohio State after a freshman year at the University of Kentucky.
Ironically, the idea of being a student manager had been initiated by his dad, Austin said:
“He’d come to a spring practice at Ohio State and saw what the managers were doing and talked to the equipment people about it. He thought it was something I might be interested in and he got the ball rolling.”
Since tryouts are held every winter – beginning soon after the football bowl season ends and culminating with the spring game – Austin would be forced to wait several months until the 2016 football season played out.
He admits he was in “a tough place” then. He had just lost his dad and he was in a new school. It helped that he roomed with his friend Nick Cross, who had played basketball at Springboro, while he played baseball.
“We’ve known each other since we were four,” Austin said.
He and Nick got season tickets to OSU football games and he watched the managers from afar though he really had no clue what their jobs really entailed.
Finally, when it was time for tryouts, he learned there were 15 candidates vying for just four positions.
“I prayed,” Susanne said. “We all prayed and we even had our pastor pray with us. We asked that Austin could get one of the positions.
“I’m a big believer of everything happening for a reason and I thought if it’s God’s will, he’ll get the job. And if it’s not meant to be, then he won’t.
“But at that time I think God knew what Austin needed.“
Busy time for Buckeyes
Along with going to classes, Austin’s found himself immersed in a job where he sometimes works 60 hours a week.
The demands often filled his mind and exhausted his body as he handled the myriad tasks and responsibilities that come with being a manager.
His first year he served as a ball boy on game days, meaning he gave officials new balls to put into play before he retrieved game balls that had flown out of bounds during plays.
Each manager also was paired with a position group and he was tasked with tending to the running backs.
That’s the year J.K. Dobbins entered the backfield and he and Austin formed a bond that lasts today.
A year ago Austin was promoted to the quarterbacks, which first paired him with Dwayne Haskins, who this season pilots the Washington Redskins. This season his prime concern was Fields, the grad transfer from Georgia who finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting.
After he’s sent in the plays this year, Fields has executed them in superb fashion, throwing for 2,953 yards and 40 touchdowns and running for 10 more scores.
Going into the college playoff semifinal against No. 3 Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl next Saturday night Ohio State has the highest scoring offense in the nation, averaging 48.7 points per game.
The Buckeyes leave today for Arizona and in the days leading up to this, Austin and the other managers have worked dawn to dusk.
Along with their regular practice duties and the laundry details that follow the sessions, the managers spent three days loading two semis with gear needed for the coming week of practice and then the high stakes game with the Tigers.
“One of the semis was just for our practices,” Austin said. “We packed ball bags, the big Titans (tackling dummies) that they run through and chutes they run under. Anything you can think of that you’d need in a practice, we put in there.
“We’re taking 106 players and each one has a bag we’ve loaded with their shoulder pads, practice pants, two or three pairs of cleats, their helmet, pads that go into the helmet and practice jerseys.
“The game semi includes a portable JUGS machine that shoots balls. Coach (Brian) Hartline likes those for the games.
“We’ve got a coaches’ clothes trunk, a shoes trunk, a helmet trunk and a field trunk with extra face masks, chinstraps, visors and gloves so we have it all right there on the field and can fix it quick rather than having to run back to the locker room for it.”
Also packed away is the special “Boom Ball,” the silver-painted football that’s become a sideline prop for the Buckeyes this year.
It was used in practice all season long and first appeared on the game-day sideline when the Bucks pushed aside Michigan State, 34-10 at Ohio Stadium on Oct. 5.
“The ball says ‘BOOM’ on the side and whenever there’s a turnover or a big hit, somebody yells to get the Boom Ball and it’s given to the player who did it,” Austin said. “And when they go back on the field the ball goes back in the trunk.”
Someone else has those duties because Austin and another manager – dressed in different color shirts, often one orange and the other green – are tasked with standing near coach Ryan Day and flashing signals to the quarterback.
One manager is actually making the live calls and the other guy is flashing bogus signals to confuse the opposition, who, Austin said, often is trying to steal them.
Susanne’s at every game and as she always watches her son, she claims to know which of the two managers – they switch up each game — is calling the real plays and which is a decoy.
“I always know,” she laughed. “But I’ll never tell. Never!”
‘It helped me cope’
Susanne said Austin and Brayden have grieved differently for their dad.
Because Austin had been away at Kentucky the 2015-16 school year, Brayden had been around their father more that year.
“He had a tighter bond with him than I did,” Austin said.
“My youngest talks about his dad all the time and wants to go to the grave,” Susanne said. “Austin doesn’t like talking about it or bringing it up. He’s very private. He hates attention and doesn’t like talking about himself.”
He said he’s never brought up what happened to the Ohio State players or coaches, not even to Day, whose own father died by suicide when he was nine.
“I don’t like people feeling sorry for me,” Austin said. “People go through stuff all the time. Everybody has something different.”
Susanne said her son had not wanted to do this interview and it took some last-minute coaxing by her for him to sit down with me.
We met at a coffee shop in New Albany, which is where his girlfriend, Liza Lennox, a Tulane University student, lives. He was running errands with her that day and agreed to honor his mom’s wishes.
“I told him his story could help other kids who are having a tough time,” she said. “They could learn about being a manager, which is something most people don’t know about. It also could help parents who are looking for something to get their kids interested in school.”
After we talked a while, Austin quietly shared some thoughts.
He said the manager’s job “helped me a lot. It helped me cope.”
He admitted: “There are still times I’m frustrated and I look up and say, ‘I’m mad you did this!’
“But then I don’t know what was going on in his head.”
He said he tries to focus on the good times with his dad:
“I know he’s there every game looking over me. I think he sees what I’m doing – that I’m trying to follow in his footsteps and get into football – and I think he’d be proud.”
And he should be.
His 22-year-old son has become one of the most trusted, relied upon managers in one of the nation’s very best football programs.
With the Buckeyes, Austin now has gotten three pairs of gold pants – the traditional bauble Buckeye team members are given for a victory over rival Michigan. He has earned two Big Ten championship rings and with two more OSU victories this season, he’d be getting a national championship ring. And through it all, he’s earned his degree.
“I can’t fully explain how proud I am of him,” Susanne said, her voice again breaking and fading into a tearful whisper.
Her son gets two tickets to every game – home and away – and she tries to attend every game.
She messages him on his phone every time she gets to her seats and he turns and searches until he spots her.
Their bond is tight. She said he calls her almost every day and is very protective of her and his younger brother, whom he has taken under his wing.
In turn, he calls his mom: “My rock.”
But she said he’s the one who has shown strength and resilience: “He’s done this all on his own. And it’s not just me who’s proud of him. Our whole community is. Everybody is pullin’ for this kid.”
And no one harder than her: “I’m his biggest supporter. I follow everything he does out there on the field.”
She talked about him throwing with the quarterbacks and receivers before the games and even fielding punts.
And she talked about this year’s game at Michigan and something that really made her smile:
“When they played the Team Up North, we got there early and they had music on and there he was out on the field dancing and laughing,”
That made her feel really good.
It meant her son was having fun. It meant he was healing.
It’s why he said he loves this job.
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