Marshall University Athletics
BOGACZYK: Litton Finds Brother's Success an Inspiration
2/3/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
By JACK BOGACZYK
HERDZONE.COM COLUMNIST
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Chase Litton has a blueprint for football success at Marshall University.
It’s written in black and white.
Litton, a quarterback in the Thundering Herd recruiting class that will become official on Wednesday -- National Signing Day. He’s one of several early enrollees in the group, having started classes three weeks ago after graduating at Wharton High in Tampa, Fla., in May.
The 6-foot-5, 206-pounder brings plenty of promise to the Herd through his high school statistics – about 8,000 passing yards -- and strong-armed collegiate potential, but he also arrives in Coach Doc Holliday’s program with a relationship that provides the QB with a brotherly template for getting to where the Marshall program wants to go.
Litton’s adopted older brother, Shawn Vanzant, played for Butler’s basketball Final Four teams that reached consecutive NCAA title games in 2010 and ’11. Vanzant was a Bulldogs’ starting guard on the latter.
The rest of the story?
Litton is white. Vanzant is black, and was given a home by Jeff and Lisa Litton when the Herd QB was in the fourth grade and Vanzant was entering his senior year of high school as a Division I hoops prospect.
Wharton basketball coach Tommy Tonelli played a role with Vanzant, too, and the Littons became Vanzant’s legal guardians. His mother had died when he was an infant, and Vanzant’s father, a diabetic, was ill enough he couldn’t care for Shawn. Vanzant’s brother had legal trouble and was in jail.
Litton said Vanzant’s other option was to move to Cleveland to live with his grandmother, but the young man who became his adopted brother didn’t want to do that and perhaps jeopardize his hoops future. So, a story right out of a true-to-life movie, “The Blind Side,” was realized again.
The 19-year-old Litton recognizes the common circumstances of Butler hoops then and Herd football now – mid-majors, so to speak, that seek to find a spot among the best in the sport as an upstart. It’s only part of what Litton brings to the MU program.
“You look at someone like Shawn, who at one point didn’t know what he was going to do with his life,” Litton said while waiting Monday for a winter conditioning session with strength coach Scott Sinclair in the Dunfee Weight room. “He didn’t have a home. And everyone in life deserves opportunities, second chances, and he was given one and he took it and ran.
“Look at the Butler years prior to those two national title years, and no one outside the state of Indiana really knew who they were. When my brother committed to Butler, I’m not going to lie to you, I didn’t know where it was. For what he did in his four years there, from making it to the tournament all four years, back-to-back national title games, that’s not something you can just make up.
“Then, when you look here at Marshall, the 10-4 season (2013), the 13-1 season last year, you can sit there and say it’s a mirror image, but they didn’t finish. And I hate to say that, but we’re in here every day to take the next step. Every day, we’re either in the indoor (facility) throwing and catching routes, working out, busting our tail in here, or in the classroom.
“We want to finish, be the team that people look past and then have to play us in a bowl game. That’s our mentality, to be the best, and when Coach Sinclair tells us to ‘Attack the day,’ well, that’s what we do.”
Litton said his family had just moved to Tampa from Orlando and was checking out “the best high school” for older brother Josh to attend when they first met Vanzant, now 26.
“People have so many different stories about it,” Litton said. “I was in the fourth grade, and I’ll never forget what happened. They showed us around Wharton High School, because my brother was a big football and basketball player and my parents wanted the best high school in Tampa for him. So, we walk to the football field, and they showed us, and we’re walking back.
“It’s about 8 or 9 at night, and there’s a gold car sitting in the parking lot, and my mom walks past and sees someone sleeping in it. So, she taps on the glass. The guy rolled down the window. ‘You OK?’ … ‘Yes, ma’am.’ … ‘You sure?’ … ‘Yes, ma’am, I’m just waiting for someone.’ … ‘OK, have a good night.’ And we walk away.
“But as soon as we get into the car, my mom goes, ‘Something just doesn’t feel right.’ So, she tells my dad to turn the car around. She goes back to the other car and says, ‘Come with us,’ and he says, ‘No, it’s fine; it’s fine.’ She goes, ‘Honey, what’s your name?’ He says, ‘Shawn.’ My mom says, ‘Just come spend the night with us.’
“Shawn gets in the car and one night turned into two weeks, two weeks turned into two months. I don’t know exactly when we adopted him, the date. I do know we asked him if he wanted to keep his last name and he said he wanted to be Litton-hyphen-Vanzant.
“My mom didn’t want him to do that. She wanted him to keep his own identity, build his own legacy. And he’s definitely part of the Litton family, but he’s Vanzant. My mother thought that was big-time, where he came from and what he’s done for his family.”
Now, Litton has an opportunity to make his own name in major college athletics, but he grasps he’s only on the first rung on the ladder to success. He spent his months since high school home in Tampa, working out with a trainer four days a week and throwing three days a week.
He originally committed to USF, then backed away, and after visiting Marshall last spring, said he knew he’d made the right decision.
Why Marshall?
“Why not Marshall?” Litton said. “I can sit here and tell you we have the best coaching staff in the world from our head coach to offensive coordinator and quarterback coach (Bill Legg) to our strength coach, and I can sound like a broken record.
“Everybody’s going to say that, but I truly mean it. These athletes, these players here, are second to none in the way they go about things. You can see these guys want to win; they want to be champions, want go back and repeat (for a Conference USA title).
“What I heard when I visited the first time, with my mom in March last year, helped me decide. I finally took my official (visit) with my whole family for the Middle Tennessee game (Oct. 11), and the looks on their faces, the love they felt, the friendship, the way the coaching staff interacted with them, you can’t get any better than that.”
Litton signed the MU Institutional Financial Aid Agreement on Aug. 26. And with the close of record-setting Rakeem Cato’s career at quarterback, Litton would seem to be arriving in the program at an optimum time, but returnees Gunnar Holcombe (No. 2 last season), Cole Garvin and James Madison transfer Michael Birdsong provide a strong competitive group.
“There are three other quarterbacks here who could start for Marshall University tomorrow,” Litton said. “That’s how I look at it, and for me it’s not coming in here as, ‘I hope he does bad so I get a shot.’ We all want to start; we all want to play, we all want to do what Cato did, what (Chad) Pennington’s done, what (Byron) Leftwich has done, but we can’t look at it as, ‘I hope he messes up so I get a shot.’
“I’ve got to come in and bust my tail in the weight room, bust my tail in the indoor, watch film and learn … I’ve got to focus on myself, but I’m going to be supportive 100 percent of the way. If a guy goes in there, breaks every record in the book, I’ll be out there tackling him, going insane for him. That’s just how I am.
“We all want the same thing. Going in, I assume I’m the lowest one on the depth chart, No. 4 … I haven’t done anything yet. High school, you can’t use those accolades and assume you’re going to do anything in college. But I feel confident going into this. I feel I’ve got a shot and I’m going to do everything I can to work for it.”
Litton, the youngest of four brothers in the family with the addition of Vanzant, said the one drawback to arriving at college is he’s away from his mother. Lisa Litton’s health issues have taken their toll, but her youngest son says like him and his brothers, she battles her issues.
“My mom’s had breast cancer twice and she’s beat it both times,” Litton said. “She still goes two or three times a week for checkups, and she also has lupus (an inflammatory disease), and it really can get to her.
“She’s weak, but she will never show it. There’s always a positive attitude, but physically she can’t do everything she wants to do. It’s tough to be away from her right now, but she knows I’m here, I’m happy and I’m doing what I love and that means a lot to her.”
Litton said he wore jersey No. 14 throughout high school – honoring his dad, who works in auto sales in Tampa -- but he hopes to switch to No. 3 for the Herd. The reason, he said, is rooted in a personal reminder to overcome any obstacles that come his way.
“My dad wore no. 14 when he played and when I told him I didn’t think I’d wear 14, he was kind of bummed about it,” Litton said. “But I decided if I was going to make a change, now was the time to do it. Is 3 special? Well, yes and no. To be honest, it’s kind of a personal thing.
“I don’t want to say I was passed upon in high school, I don’t want to come off cocky or arrogant because that’s nowhere near who I am. But I was ranked a three-star (prospect by website recruiting services), and I believe when I went to camps or when there were times I had to throw at camps or Elite 11s, things like that, I felt I was looked past. As an individual, I thought I was better than that.
“You have to go in with the mindset that if I go in and be upbeat and go in to prove I’m the best… so 3 is to remind me of that, every time I look down, it will remind me.”
And if No. 3 doesn’t provide Litton that push, he said Vanzant will. The former Butler guard is averaging 11.5 points and 4.9 assists for the Moncton Miracles in Canada’s National Basketball League, after pro stints in Finland and the NBA’s D-League.
“How he looks at it is, it’s expected,” Litton said when asked about Vanzant and Butler providing an example for the Herd. “He’s not one who is going to settle. He didn’t get where he is in his life that way.
“I could go out there my first game and have 500 yards and 10 touchdowns and he’s going to look at me and ask, ‘Why didn’t you have 11?’ That’s just who he is, and I respect him for that, love him for that. He’s not one who’s going to settle or accept a certain level of greatness.
“So, when I go off to college, it’s not, ‘OK, man, good luck, hope you can play in a couple of years.’ It’s like, ‘You better go win the job, compete and win every single game.’ That’s who he is. That’s why he’s gotten where he is.
“It’s the mentality all of us have. We all want to go to the NFL. We all want to win championships here, win bowl games. I feel like you have to start with that to win the team awards, to get to the BCS-type of game, whatever that is now. Shawn’s one who is going to push me and never let me settle.”
