SI spotlights Summerville athlete

Cameron Burnette didn't campaign. No lobbyists were dispatched from Summerville to Sports Illustrated corporate headquarters in New York City.

The kid just sort of happened.

Cameron, the pride of Newington Elementary School, is a 4-foot-9, 85-pound running back featured in this month's "20 Under 20" edition of Sports Illustrated for Kids. Editors of the magazine picked "the next generation of superstar athletes," and Cameron is the lone 10-year-old.

"It's overwhelming," said Cameron's father, Ronnie Burnette.

"We've been trying to limit the publicity as much as possible. We've turned down a couple TV stations. We got an e-mail from somebody saying they heard about Cameron on the Dan Patrick radio show.

"It's amazing how people can find out your phone number."

Of course, it's kind of ridiculous.

Silly, even.

But the Burnette family seems to get it.

"Cameron has handled it pretty well," said Ronnie Burnette, 31. "I don't think he's grasped the concept of what it really means. We keep him pretty grounded. We tell him, 'You are 10 years old. This doesn't mean you're the best athlete in the world. It just means they think you can do good things.' "

So how does one really good 10-year-old football player get more attention than the other really good players his age from San Diego to Cape Cod?

You know, YouTube.

Video fame

Ronnie Burnette posted a video of Cameron dashing and juking his way downfield, and it got instant attention. Then he posted more videos, complete with soundtracks.

"We have family members who live out of state who don't get to see Cameron play," Ronnie Burnette said. "We posted a basketball video and then a couple football videos for them. Then we started getting a lot of hits and comments from people outside of family."

The SI for Kids people caught wind.

"When they first called, I thought it was a prank," Burnette said.

"I called up there and tried to verify it. Not saying Cameron isn't a good football player but you don't think of your son, or any kid, as a top athlete in the world or whatever."

The only other football player in the "20 Under 20" lineup is 18-year-old Matt Barkley, a rising star quarterback at the University of Southern California.

Other SI for Kids star designees include Bryce Harper, 16, a Las Vegas baseball player who hit a 502-foot home run in an all-star game at the Tampa Bay Rays' Tropicana Field; John Tavares, a 16-year-old hockey player projected as the first pick in the 2009 NHL draft; and 14-year-old sprinter Brandon Sanders of Columbia.

Old-school respect

The Burnettes know their son is a marked man.

"We talked about that," Ronnie Burnette said. "We explained to Cameron that with things like this come great responsibility. We told him that every time he plays a football game, he's going to get everybody's best shot. Not only that, he knows that socially he has to deal with people saying, 'You're not that good.' "

Young Cameron likes to read. He is in a gifted and talented program.

You have to love the kid's respect for football tradition. Cameron collects NFL "throwback" jerseys, replicas of those once worn by Hall of Fame running backs. He has Jim Brown's No. 32 Cleveland Browns jersey (see photo) and Earl Campbell's No. 34 Houston Oilers jersey.

"He knows more about the older players than I do," Ronnie Burnette said. "He can tell you where they went to college and all kinds of things about their stats. He just knows all kinds of stuff."

And, as half the world knows, Cameron Burnette is only 10.