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Weekday Update: Emporia Legend Jerel Morrow Gets One Last Crack at Childhood Love K-State

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If history is any indication, the Emporia Gazette will be well-represented at Boone Pickens Stadium on Saturday.

Emporia is a city of 25,000 people in central Kansas, which screeches sleepiness and wheat fields. It is one of the state’s largest cities by population, and is known for Jerel Morrow and two other major landmarks.

“It’s either Emporia State or a gas station,” Morrow said. “That’s the only reason you come to Emporia.”

When Morrow was in high school, a writer at the Gazette wrote a story titled ‘There’s no two morrows,’ in which it reads, “I don’t believe I’d been on the job even a week when someone, not knowing I was new to town, asked me if I’d heard anything about where Jerel was going to play college football.”

Imagine being so well-known and coveted as an icon in your hometown that people would have the audacity to go up to complete strangers and ask about you. That was Morrow, and that was Emporia.

And while that mojo hasn’t changed back home, it certainly has for Morrow in Stillwater.

He was a four-star football player, according to 24/7 Sports, and the No. 1 player in Kansas, who was a state record-holding long jumper to match. And at Oklahoma State, his most glamorous duty has come this season as the No. 3 safety.

All good by Morrow.

“I hope I can be remembered for stepping in whenever they needed me,” Morrow said. “I didn’t really come in here expecting a spot. I worked my way up, and I just wanted to do what was best for the team.”

Still, the cloud of his former self follows closer than a shadow. The Gazette chased him to Manhattan, Kansas, for OSU’s late-season stadium-crasher last year when Jordan Sterns came down with the game-clinching interception with only seconds left.

After the game, the Gazette‘s reporter asked coach Mike Gundy about Morrow, what he saw in him and what he added to the team. Gundy gushed.

“I’ve got three sons, and if they could grow up like him, it would be a heck of a deal,” Gundy said. “He’s first class.”

In Morrow’s five years in Stillwater, I’m convinced there hasn’t been a negative word said about him outside of a football field, and honestly, I’m not sure whether anyone has ever criticized him for anything on it either.

He has been a fine player for the Cowboys, earning OSU’s Outstanding Special Teams Player award for the past two years and stacking up 50 tackles in his career.

So in comes Saturday for the perfect concoction of a story. Tre Flowers is suspended for the first half after earning a targeting penalty in the second half against Iowa State. That means Morrow is stepping in and will start against Kansas State, the team he grew up loving.

“In Kansas, it’s really just sports,” Morrow said. “That’s really all we have, so it’s something that I’m looking forward to.”

Morrow said there is obviously a little bit added to games against the Kansas teams, and luckily for him, those are the Cowboys’ final pair of games in their regular season and Morrow’s career.

After OSU walked out of Manhattan last year with a win, only the Cowboys’ second road win against Bill Snyder, Morrow told the Gazette getting a victory against K-State meant a lot to him.

“We haven’t won here since I think 2010,” Morrow told the Gazette. “It just puts the cherry on top of everything.”

Had he known he would start in the 2017 rendition, he probably would have deemed this one the cherry. Nonetheless, one thing is for certain – it will be for the Emporia Gazette and all those back home who have been watching all this time.

 

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