MORGANTOWN — He probably won’t play this week.
He probably won’t play this year, although it would not make much sense to bet against him avoiding a redshirt season by playing at least on special teams because, well, he is a freshman who is a special player.
It’s difficult to even figure out a way to characterize Branko Busick, a freshman linebacker out of Steubenville, Ohio, other than to say he is just that ... a character.
After a brief sitdown with him, the best way to describe him is that he is a professional wrestler waiting to happen, which is not surprising, since his father is — or was — Big Bully Busick, one of the baddest of the bad when he came to the professional wrestling circuit.
There are certain images you take out of your first face-to-face meeting with Busick, a 6-foot-1, 215-pound specimen.
The first comes when you ask him about his family.
“There’s me, my dad, my mom, my brother and our pet,” he answers.
Pet?
“Yeah, a 200-pound English mastiff,” he says. “You ought to try wrestling that around.”
Eh, no thanks.
Then there’s the idea that he is going to move from football to coach Craig Turnbull’s wrestling team after the season, and this isn’t just some football player turned wrestler. Turnbull has ideas that he can become something special at that sport, too.
Certainly it’s no gimmick.
Of course, Busick has no idea how he’s going to make it work with overlapping seasons and school work and the like.
“I’m pretty curious to see how it works myself,” he said. “I got in the (wrestling) room a little bit and it felt great. Then football time came around and that now comes first.”
Of course, football and wrestling aren’t enough, either.
His true love is mixed martial arts, which he comes by quite naturally.
His dad, who started out as a policeman in Atlanta, took up professional wrestling, moved back to Weirton and then to Steubenville, worked in security at the Mountaineer Racetrack and Casino and who now has “L.A. Fitness,” a gym and smoothie bar in Pittsburgh, while also promoting mixed martial arts competition, introduced Busick to Brandon Lee Hinkle and Mark Coleman.
“They were real big in my life,” Busick said.
Coleman was a national championship wrestler at Ohio State and now fights mixed martial arts, while Hinkle was a three-time national champion wrestler at Division II and now fights mixed martial arts out of Weirton.
That’s impressive company, but his brother, who is now a state trooper, goes him one better.
His godfather is Hossein Koshrow Ali Varizi.
You may know him under his professional wrestling name of The Iron Sheik.
He ended Bob Backlund’s six-year reign as World Wrestling Federation champion and was the man Hulk Hogan beat to win his first WWF title. He rode that to some quite interesting appearances on the Howard Stern show.
He wasn’t bad as a legitimate wrestler as he won a Pan-American Games medal.
“Wrestling,” said Busick, “is the ultimate sport. It’s like an art. Beautiful. Football is also one of the best sports. How many times do you get to crack someone and not get in trouble?”
Ask Busick what he likes best, and he tells you “I like the gladiator sports,” but then sort of takes a step backward.
“It isn’t that I want to sound like a trained killer. I’m really a great guy, a (Troy) Polamalu type,” he said.
And he is. He’s a nice guy away from the arena but has this engine that turns on be he wrestling or playing football.
He says it all works together — wrestling, mixed martial arts and football.
“It’s all mental toughness,” he says. “Say it’s fourth and three and you’re tired. It’s like overtime in a wrestling match. You have to suck it up. You can’t bend over. You have to bring everything. It’s a gut check.”
And that’s just the kind of football player coach Bill Stewart and his defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel are looking for. They feel all they have to do now is add the refinements and build up some more size.”
“Branko Busick is a good football player. He is getting reps with the twos with certain packages and then he is running with the threes. He has a nose for the football and he is a down-and-go player and he is tough,” Casteel said.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
Bob Herzel
HERTZEL COLUMN: WVU’s Busick a character
- Bob Herzel
-
-
Jones nears milestone as Notre Dame visits WVU
That it is a crucial game in a season that seems to have nothing but, today’s 9 p.m. visit to the Coliseum by a streaking Notre Dame team comes with a historical footnote in the history of West Virginia University basketball.
Kevin Jones enters the game having scored 20 or more points in nine consecutive games. -
WVU source: Battle to join Big 12 nearing conclusion
Indications were growing that West Virginia University’s battle to leave the Big East and join the Big 12 in time for the 2012 season was about to be won, possibly as early as today.
A source within the Mountaineer athletic department said on Tuesday that the matter was nearing a conclusion and also told the Times West Virginian that West Virginia would be reinstating a golf team to compete in the Big 12. -
HERTZEL COLUMN: WVU, Irish strikingly similar
Consider, if you will, that it is Nov. 25 past, that the West Virginia University basketball team is running a routine drill four games into its season, getting ready for the Akron game when Kevin Jones goes down in a heap on the floor, his ACL torn, his season over.
-
WVU source: Battle to join Big 12 nearing conclusion
Indications were growing that West Virginia University’s battle to leave the Big East and join the Big 12 in time for the 2012 season was about to be won, possibly as early as today.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN - Truck drives Mountaineers to needed win
Perhaps it is what has kept him going through a West Virginia basketball career with as many turns as a trip to Pineville down in Wyoming County, but Truck Bryant enjoys being Truck Bryant.
-
WVU finds a way, wins in overtime
Truck Bryant made the headline plays, including a 3-point shot with 3.3 seconds left to play, as West Virginia saved its season with an 87-84 overtime victory at Providence, but the subheads had to be reserved for Deniz Kilicli and a pair of freshman guards.
-
Mountaineers face critical test today at Providence
The schedule tells you it’s another game in the marathon run that is the Big East season, a trip to Providence to play a team with only two conference victories, but somehow everyone connected with the West Virginia University program knows today’s noon meeting with the Friars is much more than that.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Jones on the brink of WVU history
On the one hand there is yesterday’s Warren Baker, who entered the WVU Athletic Hall of Fame in the latest class for the work he did from 1973 to 1976, and on the other hand there is today’s star Kevin Jones, who has emerged from the shadows of the likes of Joe Alexander and Da’Sean Butler this year to carve his own niche in Mountaineer basketball history.
-
WVU backs out of Florida State game
West Virginia University has canceled its Sept. 8 football game at Florida State.
Once again, as they have done with virtually everything since announcing they planned to move from the Big East to the Big 12, they did it behind closed doors, without any announcement or statement. -
WVU women upset Louisville
It is foolhardy to put it up there with the Baylors and Notre Dames of the women’s world just yet, but really if you look closely and see potential, much of which came out Saturday afternoon when the Mountaineers upset No. 12/14 Louisville, 66-50, you realize that this team is closer to greatness than it is to mediocrity.
- More Bob Herzel Headlines
-
Jones nears milestone as Notre Dame visits WVU
