By David McCollum thecabin.net Copyright 2012 The Cabin. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

GREENBRIER — “Cowboy and Indian Day” at the high school Wednesday was a good time to corral a Texas-bound Mustang.

And before a bleacher full of family, friends and fellow students, Neal Burcham, the Greenbrier’s record-setting quarterback, became an SMU Mustang, making good on a commitment he made late in the season.

Burcham, who passed for almost 10,000 in his career, threw 100 touchdown passes and completed 70 percent of his throws, became the first Greenbrier football player to sign with an NCAA Division I school.

“For a high school coach, he’s a once-in-a-lifetime player,” said Greenbrier coach Randy Tribble. “People in Dallas and at SMU will love Neal Burcham after a few years.”

“When I visited, I fell in love with the place and campus; everything just clicked” Burcham said. “Coach (June) Jones has committed to winning. I like the way they coach and treat their players. I just couldn’t say no.

“When I watched film they showed me, a lot of the stuff they do is what we’ve been doing here.”

“Sometimes, when Neal was watching their film, he was making the calls before they ran the plays,” said Jim Burcham, his father. “It seems to be a great fit for him.”

Jones is one of the pioneers in developing the modern spread offense. While he coached at the University of Hawaii, his quarterback, Colt Brennan, became one of the most prolific passers in NCAA history and a Heisman Trophy candidate, leading the Rainbow Warriors to the Sugar Bowl.

“We (Neal and Jones) talked about Colt Brennan a little bit,” Neal Burcham said. “He threw for so many yards and made it look easy. He showed what can be done in that offense. To have a chance to do it is exciting.”

Students and teachers dressed as cowboys and indians flocked into Greenbrier’s Old Gym to do some hootin’ and hollerin’ about Burcham, a player helped invigorate football in the community in leading the Panthers to 27 victories, three playoff appearances and high state rankings.

Flanking him as he signed on a table, decorated with both SMU and Greenbrier gear, was a long table full of plaques and awards along with his framed high school jersey.

Afterwards, he posed with family, friends and fellow students for dozens of photos, both from digital cameras and cell phones. He shook bunches of hands, hugged everyone. Pictures were taken with him with family, all of his teammates, the senior football players and some coeds in costume who added plenty of smiles for about a dozen flashing cameras.

“I want to thank God, for giving me the ability, my family and coach Tribble, who talked me into staying with football,” said Burcham, who was also a standout basketball player in junior high and high school. “I’d like to thank my teammates for blocking, catching, tackling and their defense.”

Before he signed, each of Burcham’s coaches, from peewee on up, gave short tributes and shared stories about the Greenbrier star.

All of them said pretty much the same thing — that Burcham was a tremendously gifted athlete, a wonderful teammate and a great individual, on and off the field.

“He always made us proud in the way he conducted himself on and off the field,” said Stephen Wood, athletic director.

“Anyone who has been around Neal knows what a special kid he is,” said C.R. White, his peewee coach. “He’s a good young man who touched a community. But he was part of something bigger than Neal. This was a great senior class as well as Neal.”

White noted Burcham’s father was more of a basketball fan. “The first or second game he played as a peewee, I leaned over to him and said, ‘You’ve got a football player.’ He told me, ‘Ain’t no way.’”

Todd Langrell, Burcham’s seventh-grade coach and later his offensive coordinator in high school, recalled that Burcham played quarterback, wide receiver, safety, punt returner, placement holder and kickoff returner on the Panthers’ seventh-grade team. He noted that in junior high and high school, Burcham was a quarterback in three different styles of offense, split-back veer, double-slot and spread. “And he was a winner in every offense he’s played,” Langrell said. “I remember in junior high, he was a kick returner and we would have a play that he would turn his back after catching the ball and toss of handoff to players crossing him. I cringed every time he did that, worrying someone would hit him from the back. But that team went 10-0 and the other teams didn’t score much and he didn’t have many opportunities to do that.”

Darrin Logan, Burcham’s junior high coach, described the athlete as “the ultimate team player.”

“When I’d call him to the sideline, he’d calm me down instead of me doing it to him,” Logan said. “There are not many quarterbacks I have allowed to check off at the line of scrimmage. But whether it was first and 10 at the beginning of the game or fourth and 10 with 10 seconds left, his demeanor was the same.”

Tribble added, “When I first came here and we began watching him throw the ball around in the offseason and we went through some passing drills, all the coaches looked at each other and (winking, then clinching a fist and shaking it), we all said, ‘we’ve got a chance with this guy.’ We could see he had some special abilities.

“I remember we went to our first Sonic Air-Raid seven-on-seven tournament in Searcy his sophomore year. I told my family that we’d probably be out of it after pool play and then we’d go to Little Rock and have dinner. It turned out we got to the championship game that began at 6 p.m. Neal and his buddies messed up my family’s date plans.”

He also praised Burcham’s work ethic and noted his ability to make the players around him better.

“It’s been a fun three years,” he said.” After his sophomore year, he weighed about 165 pounds and I asked him if he was ready to go to work. “He was in the weight room at 6:30 a.m. most every day and he put on 16 pounds of muscle. That’s the kind of focus he has.

“It’s been a lot of fun for me to talk to college coaches about him. I talked for an hour the other day to a guy from one of SMU’s web sites (fan boards) and after I talked about him, he said, ‘Man, I can’t wait to watch this guy play.’”

Burcham is two months out of ACL surgery from an injury he sustained in the regular-season finale against Vilonia.

“It’s doing fine,” he said about the knee. “I’ve got about four more months of rehab, then I should be ready to go by this summer,” he said.

Part of his entourage at the signing were his father, Jim, and his mother, Tammy, and brothers Garrett (a sophomore at UCA) and Carter, a seventh-grader at Greenbrier.

His mother wore a crimson jacket, a blue-designed scarf with an SMU necklace.

“This jacket is not exactly SMU red, but it’s the only red I had,” she said with a laugh. “You don’t see much Vilonia red in Greenbrier.”