As famous Bengals fan boy Dan Hurley looks to join the Wizard of Westwood Monday night in college basketball annals with a third national title in four years, Bengaldom has adopted his Connecticut Huskies for the evening in their showdown with Michigan.

Jimmy Burrow, for one, has one eye on the Joe Burrow Foundation and the other on Hurley when the festivities begin in Indianapolis. As he made calls riding from New Orleans to Baton Rouge Monday morning, he pondered what to text Hurley on the brink.

"I'm sure he only got about 10,000 today. At least he'll know one of these days," Jimmy Burrow says. "It'll be something like, 'Good luck, win another one.' He doesn't need any motivation or advice. He knows how to do it."

You know Hurley appreciates the gesture whenever he sees it. This is the guy who told Bengals.com days before he was Ruler of the Jungle for the 2024 opener at Paycor Stadium celebrating back-to-back titles: "For me, minus just winning it, minus cutting down the nets, for me, it's better than going to the White House, or anything."

Along the way, Hurley has struck up a texting relationship with Jimmy Burrow. Burrow reached out to him after he saw the video of Hurley going crazy wearing Joe Burrow’s No. 9 when Evan McPherson kicked the Bengals into the Super Bowl.

Hurley looked pretty much like he did when Braylon Mullins went Joey B and cooly swished the Huskies to Indy with the 40-footer that caught Duke at the buzzer.

Nuts.

"I love how he really doesn't have ties to the Bengals, but from my understanding, he grew up liking the striped helmets and continued to follow them and root for them," Jimmy Burrow says.

They don't text all that often, but there is almost always a response. There's a kinship between the old Ohio University defensive coordinator and the blood-and-guts Jersey point guard.

"Looks to me like he'd be a really good defensive football coach," Jimmy Burrow says. "The mark of a good coach is to get your players to play hard and fast and play together and play smart and they foot the bill when it comes to that. They love to play for him. It's fun to watch."

Jimmy Burrow would love to get Hurley to the fourth annual Joe Burrow Foundation Golf Outing on May 29, as well as to a pregame tailgate when he comes back for a game. But the schedules have just been hard to mesh.

"With all these championships, he's been busy, and he might get another one," Burrow says. "One year we thought we had a shot to get it done, but it didn't happen. He's just pulled in so many different directions."

So are the Burrows these days. With the golf tourney looming in Cincinnati, they are on a media junket covering the Louisiana portion of their son's foundation that is committed "to provide resources and support to the underprivileged and underserved."

"We've got a separate advisory board in Ohio and one in Louisiana," Burrow says. "If you want to donate, then the money stays there."

Jimmy Burrow has a long day Monday, but he'll make sure he'll watch the game. It may be at someone's home or an establishment, but he'll tune in to see if Hurley can match John Wooden's dynastic UCLA teams.

"I love watching his team and watching him coach because he really coaches hard and they play hard," Burrow says. "You can tell they've got a lot of good chemistry between coaches and players."

A defensive coach? Asked which position he'd put Hurley, Jimmy Burrow says, "I think he could be any kind of coach he wanted to be. Whatever, his players would be tough, that's for sure."

More Dugger

Last week's signing of Steelers safety Kyle Dugger gives the Bengals secondary some rich seasoning after he played under two of the league's most respected defensive head coaches. Dugger broke in with Bill Belichick's Patriots when he was the league's longest-tenured coach. He got traded to Mike Tomlin's Steelers last mid-season when he was the longest-tenured.

Here's Dugger's take on both.

Tomlin: "The biggest thing I took from him was his consistency of showing up. Live the standard, be the standard. Always prepared and came with the same energy. Not a guy who wasted a lot of words. Didn't keep beating a dead horse. All about action with him, which I appreciated as a player."

Belichick: "His attention to detail. Attention to fundamentals. Knowledge of the game. Awareness was a big thing I took from him. Gaining information presnap and it allows you to play faster, eliminates some things, play smarter."

Slants and Screens

With pro days for the college prospects pretty much done, the Bengals started their final series of draft meetings Monday with the first round in 17 days …

Local Day at Paycor Stadium is set for April 14, where draft prospects who played their college or high school ball in the Greater Cincinnati area are eligible …

The latest Labor Day can be (Sept. 7) meant a tweak to head coach Zac Taylor’s spring sked. The mandatory minicamp is a week later, from June 16-18 …

Players don't hit the field until June 1 for Organized Team Activities (OTAs) …

The start of the offseason program is April 20 …

Rookie minicamp is two weeks after the draft on May 8-9…