For Texas Tech football and Oregon, hometown guys made good | Wiliams
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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — When the Texas Tech football team matches up with Oregon on New Year’s Day in the Orange Bowl, hard-hitting linebackers John Curry and Bryce Boettcher might know better than most what the game means to the Red Raiders, to the Ducks and to themselves personally.
Curry was born and raised in Lubbock, a son of two Texas Tech athletes. Boettcher grew up in Eugene, Oregon, his parents with season tickets at Autzen Stadium from the time he was 4. Each dreamed of playing only for his hometown school, not that there were a lot of compelling alternatives.
“I think my brother told me the other day, ‘Hey, do you realize you were the lowest-rated scholarship recruit that we recruited in your class?'” Curry said during Orange Bowl media day on Tuesday, Dec. 30. “I was like, ‘No, I had no idea.’ I never really paid attention to that stuff. To me, I was just on the same level as everyone else, so that just helped me propel to get where I am.”
At least Curry was a scholarship signee right out of high school at Coronado. Boettcher was a two-sport walk-on at Oregon — first in baseball, later in football — from South Eugene High School.
Why’d he not gain more recruiting traction?
“Great question,” Boettcher said, reasoning that he was neither on a good high-school team nor in a hotbed for recruiting in Oregon. “There aren’t as many athletes come out of those areas compared to California, and I’m sure Texas, so maybe that had something to do with it. Maybe that I was playing quarterback at the time.”
Now look at these guys.
Boettcher, a 6-foot-2, 232-pound senior, is the second-leading tackler in the Big Ten. Curry, a 6-2, 235-pound sophomore, is the fourth-leading tackler on the Tech team, and it’s not hard to envision him being one of the Big 12’s top linebackers the next two years.
That’s not where the similarities end. Boettcher was a 13th-round draft choice by the Houston Astros last year after he started 54 games for the Oregon baseball team, hit 12 home runs and won an ABCA/Rawlings Gold Glove after not committing an error as the Ducks’ center fielder and having six outfield assists. Curry, an outfielder himself, was a second-team all-state baseball player.
And they’ve grown as they’ve grown into their roles. Boettcher’s recruiting profile showed him as 6-2 and 185 pounds. Curry was a lean 187 when he committed four years ago around this time. November 2021 was Joey McGuire’s first month in charge at Texas Tech and the new staff shrewdly sized up Curry as a projectable talent in its own backyard.
Now he’s a hoss, pulling his weight alongside unanimous all-American Jacob Rodriguez and Ben Roberts in Tech’s highly regarded linebacker corps.
Boettcher’s a hoss, too. He has 113 tackles this season. Last year, he led the Ducks with 94 tackles and won the Burlsworth Trophy, which goes to the nation’s most outstanding player who began his career as a walk-on.
“I was actually recruited probably a little more for football,” Boettcher said, “but never actually landed an official offer. I committed to Oregon as a walk-on for baseball. I only had one scholarship offer, which was the University of Utah for baseball, and I walked on at Oregon just because I loved the Ducks.
“Then a couple years later, (Dan) Lanning got the job on the football squad, and I figured I’d give it my best shot to try football out, and so I walked on to the football team and five years later, here we are.”
If Boettcher doesn’t get a call on NFL draft weekend this spring, he says he’ll “be out there playing baseball for the Astros.”
Oregon and Tech played two years ago in Lubbock, the Ducks winning 38-30. There are 13 Ducks and eight Red Raiders left who played in that game. Boettcher, the kid who used to root for Marcus Mariota, might be the last Oregon player you’d expect to see team-hopping.
“I’ll be a Duck fan my entire life,” he said, “so entering the portal’s never really crossed my mind.”
No one expects Curry to jump ship either. We said earlier he had few compelling options coming out of Coronado, but that’s not entirely true. The Northwestern staff wanted to bring him up for visit before deciding whether to come across with a scholarship. The service academies were interested in him, too.
“Tech had already offered me at the time,” Curry said, “and I (said), ‘Respectfully, I’m going to go to Tech before I go to any other schools.’ “
He stayed. Boettcher stayed. And no one can argue it hasn’t worked out for the best for both.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Hometown players standout for Texas Tech, Oregon football | Wiliams
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