Burton instills work ethic at Rutgers

He’s usually one of the first to arrive on a given workday to the Hale Center, arriving before team breakfast and before the day of practice even starts for the Rutgers football team. 

Typically, after practice, he is one of the last to walk off the practice field, leaving after head coach Kyle Flood has already finished his press conference and after all other players requested have gone on to the locker room. 

But that’s just how senior fullback Michael Burton would have it. He has never shied away from hard work and has a work ethic most on the team admire of the fifth-year senior captain. 

And really, his story for the Scarlet Knights started when things were far from guaranteed. Burton arrived at Rutgers in 2010 as a preferred walk-on and subsequently redshirted his first season. 

Burton will play for the last time of his career at High Point Solutions Stadium on Saturday, and will do so as one of the 19 seniors who the Knights will honor for Senior Day.

But Burton doesn’t get caught up in that. 

“My focus right now is to be 1-0, and that’s the honest truth,” Burton said. “The only motivation our team needs right now is the idea of being 1-0. Senior Day and all that is going to be great, but that’s stuff for after the game.”

Having to work hard was instilled in him from the start of his collegiate career. 

It is something that has led some teammates to try to compete with him but has turned into a running joke, as no one can really contest with Burton, according to senior quarterback Gary Nova.

“He’s one of those guys who set the tone, and he’s one of the guys who I try to compete with for who can get here first in the morning,” Nova said. “Or when he is working out, he’ll send me a text saying, ‘Where are you at?’ trying to make me feel bad and make me come in. He’s just one of the hardest working guys that I’ve ever met. He’s going to be successful in anything he does.”

The hard work and work ethic are all well and good, but Burton still has to show up on and perform on game day. 

Burton has done that and then some, allowing Flood to say that Burton is as vital to the team as any other Knight and that he is important to the offense as a whole.

“He does a lot of things that people never, I shouldn’t say they never see, but the casual eye doesn’t really catch all of them,” Flood said. “He plays a big role for us on special teams as well. Mike is probably not going to be somebody we can replace with one person.”

Any praises from teammates and coaches is great to hear for Burton, who knows his hard work is paying off. But the West Morris Central product attributes most of his success to his coaches and teammates that put him in situations to be successful. 

“That’s just the mentality that I’ve always had — first guy in and last guy out,” Burton said. “But we have great coaches. When you have the availability of such great people, it makes it easier to want to work that much harder. When you have a head coach like Flood who you would run through a brick wall for and do anything for, it just makes it that much easier to go the extra mile. When you have teammates who you love, you would do anything for them.”

While Nova called him one of the most valuable players in the Knights’ offense and Flood called him irreplaceable, Burton said he wants to be remembered for something different.

Although there are three, possibly four games left if Rutgers earns a bowl bid, Burton and other Knights have already begun to reflect on his career. 

And what he wants to be remembered for is typical of his time spent at Rutgers.

“When my career is over, I just want to be remembered as a guy who gave it [his] all, gave everything [he] had every single play on the field,” Burton said. “I want to be remembered, more importantly, as a great person off the field, one who is respectful — [that’s] just really [the] type of person I would like to be remembered as — but that’s something to be talked about after the season. Right now, our focus is to finish the rest of the season and be 1-0.”

For updates on the Rutgers football team, follow @TylerKaralewich and @TargumSports on Twitter.