Friend says ex-Jayhawk Brandon Bourbon ‘struggling to figure out who he was’ in final days

Devin Hampton remembers the epic Madden 2K battles with Brandon Bourbon on PlayStation, the two scarfing down spaghetti before making gas station runs for Gatorades and Snickers bars.

There also were faceoffs on “Rapchat,” a smartphone app that provided a background beat and allowed the friends to share their musical performances. Bourbon was always quick to call Hampton’s effort “wack” if it was no good.

“He was genuinely funny,” Hampton said, “and he knew that.”

Nearly 24 hours after learning Bourbon had died in rural Missouri from what authorities are calling a suicide, Hampton was still working to process his friend’s final days as the town of Potosi continued to mourn the former Kansas running back’s death.

“Something was just not right about him,” Hampton said. “He was not his same self that we’ve seen for the rest of his life besides these last week and a half, two weeks.”

Hampton says Bourbon might have been struggling with his spirituality. He also might have been trying to adjust back to life in small-town Potosi after finishing his football career last season at Division II Washburn in Topeka.

“Everybody asked him, ‘When’s the (NFL) Draft? When are you going to do this? When are you going to do that?’ Everybody’s trying to force these plans on him, I felt like,” Hampton said. “Those things may not have completely changed him, but I felt like they did have something to do with his final mind-set and how he viewed the world. He was just struggling to figure out who he was and what he ended up really wanting to do with his life.”

One could understand why Bourbon might have felt pressure.

The 6-foot-1 Bourbon became the pride of the town after breaking his high school’s rushing records. Big-name programs like Stanford recruited the running back from the town of 2,600, and friends say Bourbon had already become a local celebrity, signing autographs and taking pictures with children at Potosi youth camps.

“I don’t want to say he was looked to as a god,” Hampton said, “but he was idolized.”

There were other reasons to like Bourbon as well, Hampton said. He was intelligent, handsome, a good student and respectful of others.

Don Strauser, a barber at Strauser’s Legendary Cuts on Potosi’s main drag, remembers one day when he accidentally cut Bourbon’s hair too short in high school.

“It’ll all grow back, Don,” Bourbon told him with a smile. “I’m sure it’s the first mistake you’ve ever made.”

The response always stuck with Strauser.

“It’s hard to believe he’d have done what he did,” Strauser said, “as much as he had a head on his shoulders.”

Hampton says his friend changed abruptly this month. Bourbon’s personality shifted, perhaps because he was starting to look for his first full-time job after college in a career that wasn’t going to involve playing football.

“I feel like he felt like that didn’t have much of a chance, even though he did,” Hampton said. “He was such a bright individual. He knew that too, but he was fighting something internally.”

Hampton did all he could to spread the word about Bourbon’s disappearance since Bourbon went missing on April 2. He anonymously created the “Find Brandon Bourbon” Facebook page, a group that reached more than 2,000 followers in a week. After seeing some misinformation on the internet, Hampton’s goal was to provide a hub for accurate info about Bourbon’s appearance and vehicle while also coordinating search efforts in the area.

He dedicated himself to the search. Every morning, Hampton woke up at 5 a.m. to commute 70 miles to St. Louis for his work as a medical sales rep, monitoring the Facebook page when he could before making phone calls after he returned to Potosi at night.

Hampton learned of Bourbon’s death when driving home Friday. A friend called to say they’d found Brandon, only not in the condition that they had wanted to. Hampton said he couldn’t speak for almost a minute.

“There’s no words and no particular way to try to get over this,” Hampton said. “Time is the only thing that will help at this point.”

For many, Saturday was the first step in moving past the tragedy. Former KU linebacker Ben Heeney started a GoFundMe account to help the Bourbon family pay for funeral expenses, and within 19 hours, donors had raised more than $9,000 of the $10,000 goal.

The KU football team also played its spring game as scheduled Saturday following a moment of silence.

“It's been a rough 24 hours around here,” KU coach David Beaty said.

Hampton was doing his best to keep his routine as well. Hampton, a 23-year-old who pitched at Arkansas-Fort Smith, drove to Trojan Sports Complex to watch his alma mater Potosi High play in its tournament championship Saturday afternoon.

Sitting on a wooden bench down the third-base line, he vowed to remember Bourbon before his final days — the friend he says was intelligent, vibrant, strong and captivating.

“For something like this to happen in our small town," Hampton said, "is obviously shocking and sad.”

This story was originally published April 9, 2016 at 8:20 PM with the headline "Friend says ex-Jayhawk Brandon Bourbon ‘struggling to figure out who he was’ in final days."