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Huskies Offer St. Louis Safety Who Doesn't Need a Stand-In

Marvin Burks has shown the football world there's really only one of him.
Dan Raley|
Huskies Offer St. Louis Safety Who Doesn't Need a Stand-In
Huskies Offer St. Louis Safety Who Doesn't Need a Stand-In

Marvin Burks is a 6-foot-2, 195-pound safety for Cardinal Ritter College Prep in St. Louis, a junior who notably sticks out in the secondary because of his size.

A 4-star recruit, he currently holds 21 scholarship offers, the latest coming on Wednesday from the University of Washington.

Among his other pursuers are Missouri, USC, Arkansas, Florida, Miami, Wisconsin, Iowa State and Louisville.

Everyone sees a tall, swift defensive back who collected 33 tackles and an interception this past season for Cardinal Ritter who earned second-team All-Metro honors.

He's one of nearly a half-dozen Missouri prospects who have been offered by the Huskies.

Although none of his doing, Burks for one game only was a 5-foot-10, 190-pound Cardinal Ritter running back in a bizarre situation that received nationwide attention.

Burks was a freshman who wasn't going to play in the 2019 season opener against Nazareth Academy, so a teammate named Bill Jackson assumed his identity and wore his jersey number.

Jackson was supposed to sit out the contest because he'd been ejected in the state championship game the year before. Instead he rushed for 109 yards, breaking a 56-yard run, in a 32-21 victory by using a football alias.

Marvin Burks.

In the aftermath, Cardinal Ritter coaching staff was fired, the athletic director quietly retired, Jackson was pilloried for taking part in the deception — he now plays for the University of Tulsa — and the school canceled its football season.

For Burks, he lost his freshman year because of the actions of others. His sophomore season largely was wiped out by the pandemic. 

Finally, he got a chance to show what he could do this past fall and the scholarship offers have been rolling in.

Looking back at what happened, it seems all the more ludicrous now that those departed high school coaches tried to pass off someone else as the young safety.

There's only one Marvin Burks.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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