Unfortunately the same amount it means to ponte verde, boynton beach, and allan texas, nothing. and since he never played for Ohio it means the same (nothing) to us (or osu) financially just as murray’s meant nothing to texas a&m. it’s too bad the Kevin Bacon game does not work here. Now had he worn an Ohio jersey saturday night and endlessly gushed about the campus and town....

of course the bigger story re: $$$$ is that the top three vote getters were all (in one form or other) transfers. Even more incentive for kids to jump schools.

For anyone who watched his speech (if you could see through wet eyes), the Athens area and by default OU received more positive attention and continues and will continue to receive that attention for months if not years to come. If Joe ends up being the first draft pick it will just ramp up again. In interviews after the cermony, he said that he plans to do as much for the area as he can. And finally, in any mention of his father, there is a reference to Jimmy's 14 years as an assitant coach at OU. All good things if you ask me.

I’m just not sure how Athens being in such a impoverished area helps Ohio. Maybe people will feel sorry and donate money?

LOL - We need to separate blurbs and notices across the bottom of ESPN about OUr bowl game start time from dedicated spots promoting the game, previews, and the 3 hour game itself - just as we need to separate a few words in a 3,000 word article, from a dedicated article about him growing up in Athens - great story about his gym class efforts.

Having made my living in marketing and advertising, I can testify that trying to calculate the value of the game time start blurb is an exercise by many of my brethren to self-fulfill value - again the focused preview - $$$

As far as the Instagram I think its great - but generated more because his father is part of the Ohio family and he loves his hometown - versus OU being his third favorite school.

Really appreciate his dedication to his home area. He can bring a lot of focus to the trials of the region - which can only do good. Need more people like that. I know that Zeus White hopes to do the same for Scotland County, NC if he can attain even a portion of the on field success as Joey did. There are good young men out there.

Beyond the LOLs - still contend the larger national $$$$ story is the transfers leaving their original schools in search of playing time and then finishing 1,2,3 in the voting. Players see and pay attention to that.

"There's no such thing as bad publicity" is often associated with Phineas T. Barnum, the 19th century American showman and circus owner. Of course, Athens, Ohio is known for the Currier sisters and their collective attempt to put a stop to The Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad Company coming through Athens back in the day. Being born and bred in Athens, Joe Burrow is a welcome, touching, and inspiring phenomena. Sadly, that may come at the cost of exposing one of the Country's best kept secrets, which is Athens County. Will Ohio benefit from this, damn straight they will. If it weren't for Frank Solich and Ohio Football, there would be no Joe Burrow in Southeastern Ohio; therefore, the connection is unavoidable and likely good for all sides involved.

While some of my childhood friends have been able to find success in Athens, many others have needed to leave the region to fill their personal coffers. Therefore, the idea of $$$$ and Athens going hand and hand are questionable, unless one were to discover gold in them rolling hills. Should Joe Burrow's success be found to be linked to the drinking of Hocking River water: well then, all bets are off.

Unfortunately, not as many people will make the connection between Joe Burrow and Ohio than will be wondering "What was Urban Meyer thinking?" Still, it's great that a kid who grew up in Appalachia, who was rated only 3-stars by Rival, who got only five offers (just two from "P" schools) out of high school, and who sat the bench for two years at O$U wound up as best in the nation (beating out two O$U players to boot). Athens has and will get great publicity from it. Ohio will get some collateral publicity. But who cares. You gotta love what he's done.

$217k as of 5:00 pm Monday.

It's Christmas time and he specifically mentioned poverty in the area. So it's a natural spur-of-the-moment flood of donations. In his acceptance speech he mentioned LSU, O$U, Athens and southeast Ohio. His dad's former employer was not mentioned. It's great that the foodbanks are getting such a great bump. But I don't expect our alma mater to get much benefit out of it.

Can he fund an 18 hole golf course too? Just kidding. Pretty cool to see this kid choose to remember where he came from even though he has hit the big time and could have easily just not said anything about Athens and nobody in the media would have been any the wiser.

Ohio is getting mileage for this, every time the name is mentioned, the founders of the GoFundMe are OHIO Grads, and local.