Luke Fahey may be from California, but the Ohio State Buckeyes’ true freshman quarterback has had ties to Columbus for a long, long time.
If he indeed gets the start at USC on Saturday, Fahey’s path to the starting QB gig for Ohio State will have been a long time coming — going back to the first few decades of the school’s existence.
That’s just one of many subplots as Ohio State hurtles toward its first game without Julian Sayin, who is out “indefinitely” with an injury to his throwing arm.
The Buckeyes still haven’t made official whether Fahey or Tavien St. Clair will start at USC, but it was Fahey who relieved Sayin against Indiana, making him seem like the favorite here.
ESPN’s Jake Trotter put together an awesome story this week in which he examines just how far back the Ohio State ties go for the Fahey family.
Luke Fahey’s Family Ohio State Origins
Trotter writes that in 1898, Fahey’s great-grandfather Edward Gorman enrolled at Ohio State. He met his first wife there, and his first wife’s brother Walter Barrington played QB for the Buckeyes.
Trotter goes on to tell this story:
Gorman later remarried but died when Stephen Fahey’s mother, Rosemary, was only 2. The family’s love for Ohio State endured, with Buckeyes games always playing on the living room radio.
“It was always her dream of going to Ohio State,” (Luke Fahey’s father) Stephen said. “Ohio State was everything to her.”
Rosemary eventually enrolled at Ohio State, where she met Stephen’s father, Robert, who had served in the Korean War. Both worked in the university library.
They married a year later, in 1958. After Robert graduated with an engineering degree, he took a job in California, where Stephen was born.
“But I grew up with it being understood from the earliest days that, yeah, OK, SC, UCLA, that’s great, but Ohio State’s your school, buddy,” Stephen said. “You’re going to watch Ohio State here. That’s your priority.”
Even growing up in California, Luke Fahey was an Ohio State fan, because that’s how he was raised.
Luke Fahey High School
Luke Fahey played at powerhouse Mission Viejo High School in California.
It’s a program that also produced recent QB standouts Josh Rosen and DJ Uiagalelei.
Still, it was a stage on which Fahey led the way to a state championship as a sophomore and threw for more than 7,000 yards as a high school quarterback.
That earned him the attention of Ohio State.
“Despite his lifelong love for the Buckeyes, Stephen hadn’t been to Columbus in decades,” Trotter writes. “Then Ohio State invited Luke and his family for a recruiting visit. While there, they visited the house where Rosemary grew up and a cemetery where several relatives were buried. They also met up with Day at his office. Day told Luke that although he was short for a quarterback and wasn’t a five-star recruit, Ohio State wanted to offer him a scholarship.”
Fahey had offers from Stanford and Indiana.
Once the opportunity came at Ohio State, though, there was no other path he could possibly take. He was born into this.
Ohio State QB Luke Fahey’s Family Ties to Ohio State Date to 1898