Before football, Vince Marrow was a hooper at Youngstown State

Vince Marrow’s status as a former standout player on the football field is well documented at this point. A star at Cardinal Mooney High School, he went on to earn All-Mid-American Conference Second Team honors as a tight end at Toledo. After finishing eighth in the MAC in total receiving yards (554) and fourth in yards per reception (16.3) as a senior, Marrow was then drafted in the 11th round (No. 307 overall) of the 1992 NFL Draft by the Buffalo Bills, where he went on to play four years in the NFL and three additional years of professional football elsewhere.

But did you know he was also a hooper, specifically at Youngstown State — who Kentucky football is set to take on this weekend at Kroger Field?

Now you do.

Prior to his time playing football at Toledo, Marrow spent two years at YSU playing basketball for the Penguins.

“We’ve got a lot of respect for that program,” Marrow said this week. “People don’t know, I played college basketball there too. That’s a little insight. I’m always pulling for them, but not this weekend.”

During his time at Youngstown State (1988-89), Marrow averaged a smooth 7.4 points on 51.0% shooting and 80.4% from the line to go with 2.9 rebounds, 0.7 steals and 0.5 assists in 14.2 minutes per contest.

Not too shabby for a 6-foot-4 forward in the Horizon League.

This comes after an accolade-filled high school basketball career at Cardinal Mooney where he earned Northeast Inland District Class AA Player of the Year and First-Team All-Ohio Class AA honors as a junior (24.9 PPG) to go with All-Ohio Class AA Second-Team honors as a senior (19.7 PPG). He was actually signed on to play at Akron under then-coach Bob Huggins before he flipped his commitment to Youngstown State.

Fast forward 30 years, and now, his former school as a basketball player will be taking on his current school as a football coach. Marrow’s hometown Penguins will be in Lexington — and the guest list will be a long one.

“It started out that maybe 20 of my friends were coming, then it was 40, now it’s 60. That’s just how we are in Youngstown, last-minute,” Marrow said. “Between all of us, we probably have 200, 300 people coming. It’s going to be good. A lot of tradition comes from there, we just have a lot of respect for that program. I watched it grow up.”

Marrow joins Mark and Mike Stoops, along with safeties coach Frank Buffano among coaches on the staff from Youngstown. And that’s just counting those at Kentucky. Elsewhere, Youngstown has produced a long list of successful coaches, namely Bob Stoops, Bo Pelini and Jim Tressel (born in Mentor — 75 miles away — but lives in Youngstown and is the active president of Youngstown State).

How is it that a city with a population of 65K is able to produce so much coaching talent?

“The culture where we come from,” Marrow said. “You will see, when I took a couple friends back when we went up for reunions, guys that graduated in the 60s, 70s and 80s, we’re all close. It don’t matter what color you are. Our parents worked very hard. We’re similar to the people of Kentucky, I relate to a lot of people in Eastern Kentucky because it’s hard work. Our parents — me and Mark, we didn’t grow up with a lot. But if we were poor, we didn’t know that.

“Just the strain, guys doing their work, going the extra mile, it produced good coaches out of there. They all love football, but they’re people persons. You’ve got to be a people person to be successful in football or basketball or baseball. You’ve got to have relationships. I’ve worked for Bo Pelini — we were very successful at Nebraska. Then working for Mark. People who worked for his brother, Bob, everybody I’ve talked to, it’s always been the same.

“They want you to go to your kids’ games, they just treat you — it’s not dog-eat-dog, they treat you like a man. That’s what I love about him, all his brothers and that family.”

Is that how Stoops has able to become Kentucky’s all-time winningest coach during his time in Lexington — with Marrow right by his side from the start?

“100%. It’s totally where we grew up at,” Marrow said. “We don’t back down from nobody, you respect everybody. We have tough people that come out of there. You’ve just got to understand who his dad was. His dad was our high school coach, there were seven kids, mom stayed home in a three-bedroom home. The dad worked 24/7, then coached. That’s who I really admired, I wish people got to know his father. The reason why those boys are who they are, it’s because of their dad. He was a very no-nonsense guy, but he cared about people.

“Me, coming from the inner city, coming to Cardinal Mooney being African-American, I just lost my dad. He replaced that void with me at school. If you guys got to know his dad, you would know — you wouldn’t be shocked they turned out the way they did, the girls and the boys.”

The Youngstown reunion will take place this weekend in Lexington. Bring your football (and basketball).