Sometimes, Bengals rookie wide receiver Colbie Young felt like he was going nowhere in his city tucked obscurely into New York State's Southern Tier. He was always something special. But just that it was hard to get to somewhere else.
The Chenango River bumps and runs into Binghamton before it snags the Susquehanna on a go route into northern Pennsylvania. The NFL, which hasn't had a player from Binghamton High School since its most famous alum, iconic Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, was still in college in 1947, doesn't exactly run through it.
That's back when the post-war boom put 70,000 people in the city. When Young's family stayed home for the draft party last month, they were among about 46,000
"I went to the Clemson camp and dominated," Young says. "Western Carolina had a camp. I dominated. They offered me. Furman. Then I go back north … nothing."
You have to go another 35 minutes into Pennsylvania before you hit Scranton to find where Young finally got discovered.
Lackawanna College. The junior college route.
"Full circle story. Ups and downs," Young says. "The hardest part is not a lot of people make it out of there … It's a great town. Everybody knows everybody. Very peaceful at times … There's just not a lot of exposure."
It sounds like Serling is at it again with another unconventional road map of a script even 50 years after his death.
Young, unknown five years ago, takes the Paycor Stadium field Friday morning at Bengals rookie minicamp as Joe Burrow's newest target. Suddenly, two of the most recognizable receivers in the world, Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, are mentors. After big-time stints at Miami and Georgia, Young has morphed into a highly-anticipated fourth-round draft pick and gifted 6-4, 215-pound high-point playmaker.
Serling's first job out of college was also in Cincinnati, at WLW Radio. Young's first assignment is learning at the hands of the Pro Bowler Higgins in a Twilight Zone type of twist.
Higgins, in his seventh year out of Clemson, was at that camp as a true star, probably about 2018 or 2019, when Young was about to turn 16 or 17 and desperately seeking a Division I offer.
After a 7-on-7 drill apparently named after Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney ("Swinney Ball," is what Young remembers), he found himself suddenly taking a snap-and-go picture with Higgins, the player whose strikingly similar game caught his eye.
Young doubts Higgins remembers any of it. "Just a quick moment." Yet Higgins reached out the day after the draft.
"It was just good vibes with future teammates," Young says. "He was being open, willing to talk if I had any questions about the playbook."
Even though Young fell off the radar into the arms of Lackawanna only because offensive coordinator Ray Dayton ventured into Binghamton High School following a tip, former Lackawanna head man Mark Duda predicts a long run for him in the pros.
"If Coach Ray doesn't find him, I don't think he ever gets found," says Duda, recently retired from a career that began with 55 NFL games at defensive tackle for the old St. Louis Cardinals of the mid-1980s.
"He saw that Greek god looking son of a gun. He didn't look like a normal person. Quite a physique. … Such a wingspan and a huge catch radius. He won't be overwhelmed by the NFL.
"Coach Dayton asked him, 'Where do you want to go to college?' He said, 'I don't know.' Which is just what we're looking for. They're going to love this guy out there. Did everything that we asked. I call him and he still picks up on the first ring. Good kid."
Young knew where he didn't want to go. Western Carolina. Furman. He thinks COVID saved him instead of hurt him when it wiped out his senior season. He thinks it slowed the process, so he didn't jump at Albany's offer. Only the FCS wanted him and he wanted the FBS.
"He had interest up and down the East Coast," says Vaughn Labor, his high school wide receivers coach. "But it wasn't at the level (he wanted).
"A hard worker. That never was his problem. He lived in the weight room. He kept growing. Never shy about the work."
He chose to wait for one season at Lackawanna that included the YouTube favorite of him at West Point knifing in the air between two defenders in the last minute to beat the Army JV on a bomb, "his recruiting went from 0 to 60," Duda says. "Everybody wanted him."
It was Labor, now the Binghamton head coach, who heard shortly after the draft that Young was coming into the building for a visit. He was headed back to Athens and the University of Georgia before taking off for Cincinnati, and wanted to see some of the teachers who had an influence on him. Plus, take a photo with his niece, a star for the girls' flag football team at the school.
Suddenly, Labor, a ninth grade global teacher, saw an excited throng outside his room. He let some of the football players in, and the PR person got a three-minute interview for the school website.
"He was always ware that he had people looking up to him," Labor says.
An honest-to-goodness event. After all, the last of three Binghamton alums in the NFL played 79 years ago, when quarterback John Ksionzyk threw seven passes for the '47 Rams. How long ago? That was the year after the Rams joined Paul Brown's Cleveland team to integrate the game.
"I loved every part of growing up there," Young says of the patch between Syracuse and Scranton. "It's such a small city that everybody knows everybody. Just the connections. Just enjoying the little things. Embracing that. I got the best out of it."
Dr. Sonny Spera stayed.
After growing up in nearby Endicott, where he played for the basketball powerhouse Union-Endicott of the '70s and '80s, he moved to the Pearl Washington Orangemen at Syracuse. He came back to start Progressive Dental, and has five offices in the Binghamton area. His "Big East Rewind," podcast takes you back. He coached his girls at Maine-Endwell. His friends have built Binghamton University into an American East power by recruiting local talent.
In certain sports.
The suburbs, with their marvelous feeder programs and sprawling districts, have, in pockets, dwarfed the Binghamtons and Elmiras.
"We've had runs here in the area in basketball, and you'd have to say statewide, it's a hotbed for baseball," Spera says. "Football has been hit and miss. There are good players and they go to good small schools like Colgate. But it's rare. (Former Alabama coach) Nick Saban and (current Rutgers coach) Greg Schiano aren't coming through. Not a lot of 6-5, 300-pound offensive linemen. Solid players, but …"
In the 21st century, there have been three NFL players of note from what they call the Triple Cities of Binghamton, Endicott, and Johnson City. The Jones brothers, Chandler and Arthur, defensive linemen from Union-Endicott, and Johnson City's DaQuan Jones (no relation), also a defensive lineman.
But an explosive skill player from Binghamton High? The school at the intersection of Oak and Main Street? The spot has been re-named "NYS Champions Way 2025," for the basketball team's state championship, the third in the school's history. The lone football title came more than 40 years ago.
But they knew they had something special in the back of the end zone. That's where Young made his coming- out catch in Elmira as a sophomore. A one-hand- behind-the back job that the ref missed and called him out of bounds.
"Go back to the film and you can see him get his foot in," Labor says. "You've got to have an innate, internal thing to make a play like he did there … He was good enough that sometimes we'd put him at quarterback. I joked with him. Call him 'Teddy Bridgewater.' … If there was a necessary down to get something, he made it happen."
He and his seven brothers and parents made it happen. Their dad is a truck driver, and his mother, as of her son's rookie minicamp, is in her 27th year working at the Bridgewater Nursing Home.
There may have been no Binghamton players in the pros, but watching his older brother by five years, running back Devin Young, move on to play at the University of Maine was inspiration enough. They were serious about it all, Labor recalls.
"Those were two guys you never had to worry about missing a practice," Labor says. "No matter what they had going on, they were there."
He also watched another brother, older by 10 years, linebacker Kareem Leaver, whose shot at Delaware State was derailed by injury. Devin and Kareem played on Binghamton's best teams of the most recent vintage with a spate of sectional titles, a run that ended when Colbie's teams struggled to finish over 500.
"Growing up, sports was electric there," Young says. "They'll tell you. I was the inside kid, staying in playing video games. They were on the concrete playing. When I saw what they were doing, I got out there. The most fun days were playing flag football on Sundays at the high school with my brothers and their friends."
Maybe that's one of the reasons he had the draft day at his home in Binghamton, rather than Athens. It's definitely one of the reasons that, yes, he'd like to do something like King Rice has done for his hometown.
"Everyone around here knows the name King Rice," Young says. "If you don't …"
Rice is Binghamton's most famous athlete. A point guard for the two-time state champion Patriots in the mid-1980s before heading to North Carolina to play the point for Dean Smith.
Now he's Monmouth University's long-time head basketball coach who comes back at least once a year with his foundation to fix up the courts where he used to play. Right across the way from where he grew up on Carroll Street. The city re-named them the King Rice Courts, but Young isn't looking for any naming rights.
"Maybe something like a Girls' and Boys' club," Young says. "I've thought about doing camps. Helping kids get the exposure."
First things first, of course
"I've got to get my career going," says Young, who is quite definitely a somebody from somewhere.
