Alliance's Brendan Zurbrugg home to graduate after exciting spring football game at Oklahoma

Six months after his last game as an Alliance Aviator, quarterback Brendan Zurbrugg ran on the field for the Oklahoma Sooners.

Introducing himself in Oklahoma's spring game, the 6-foot-3 slinger drove the offense to a win over the defense.

A points system was used to play a "game" intended to hold the interest of the 45,681 who showed up in Oklahoma's 86,000-seat stadium.

"I got in toward the end," Zurbrugg told The Canton Repository. "Some of the younger guys and I sort of had a game-winning drive. We were down 58-56. We put together an excellent drive and ended up winning the whole scrimmage.

"For the first time actually stepping out on a D1, Power Five field and seeing all the fans, even if the stadium was maybe half filled … it was truly amazing.

"It was kind of an 'I did it' moment."

Major-college quarterbacks must grow up fast. Sometimes that means spending their "last four months of high school" away at college.

Zurbrugg was as busy as could be as an Alliance High School junior in the 2022-23 school year.

He helped lead the Aviators to an 8-3 football season. He was an all-star on a basketball team that went 9-1 in the Eastern Buckeye Conference. At the Division I state track meet, he placed third in semfinals and fifth in finals in the 300-meter hurdles.

His senior year didn't last long. He played football

He played football in a roller-coaster season that included a 12-7 win at Lake, a 48-46 loss to Central Catholic, a 36-0 rout of Marlington, and a 49-41 loss at West Branch.

He cleaned up requirements for graduation, hung around home through Christmas break, then took off for Norman, Oklahoma.

Diving into campus life more than 1,000 miles from home was an adventure. The football program is big-time, having produced teams ranked in the preseason top 10 in 20 of the last 23 years.

"The game seems 10 times faster," Zurbrugg said. "The attention to details is so high. It's cool to be a part of it.

"There's times when things aren't going as well and you feel down a little bit, but you've got to get yourself right out of that."

Zurbrugg came home this month and will return to Oklahoma early next week.

He walked with Alliance's Class of 2024 in Sunday's graduation.

"It was a good time, definitely," he said. "It's a little different having new friends out there, then coming home and seeing all the guys I grew up with and spent all my years of school with."

Zurbrugg deemed early enrollment at Oklahoma a necessary first step into a program joining the SEC this year.

"It was an adjustment," he said. "I had to find my group of people, and become part of the football team.

"The adjustment took about a month. After that month, I settled in and everything started going well."

He enrolled in his first five classes in pursuit of a degree in environmental design, a step toward a career in architectecture.

"It's important to know I'm not going to be playing football forever," he said. "If I only play football for a little bit after college, if I don't play at all, or even if I have a full career, I'll still have a job I can go back to."

He arrives in head coach Brent Venables' third season, in the era of the transfer portal.

Jackson Arnold is in line to start at quarterback in a 2024 season whose first cluster of opponents is Temple, Houston, Tulane, Tennessee and Auburn.

On Dec. 28, Arnold passed for 361 yards in a 38-24 Alamo Bowl loss to Arizona. He was playing because Dillon Gabriel, the starter through the regular season, opted into the transfer portal on Dec. 4, soon landing at Oregon.

Gabriel came through the portal in the first place, quarterbacking the Sooners in 2022 and '23 after transferring from Central Florida.

New starter Arnold did last year what Zurbrugg did this year, leaving high school to enroll early at Oklahoma.

In another portal story, receiver Deion Burks, who played for Purdue in 2023, had a monster spring game: five catches for 174 yards.

Oklahoma's quarterbacks in the spring game included Arnold, a five-star recruit out of Denton, Texas; fifth-year senior Casey Thompson, who previously played for Texas, Nebraska and Florida Atlantic; Michael Hawkins Jr., who was a high school senior in Dallas last fall, and Zurbrugg.

"I think the high competitiveness of being around guys who are all great quarterbacks really helps me improve," Zurbrugg said. "I have to rise up and progressively get better. I'll keep getting after it.

"I've focused on being patient and getting myself better to be ready for the opportunity when it comes.

"I want to get better as fast as I can so I can play as fast as I can."

Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Oklahoma Sooners football QB Brendan Zurbrugg back home to graduate