TWICE AS NICE : Burtons Aren’t Identical Twins, but It’s Hard to Tell Them Apart

Brad and Mitch Burton are not identical twins, but they have nearly identical personalities.

To say the two San Diego State freshmen football players are close to one another is an understatement. When one answers a question, he looks at his twin for confirmation. The brothers usually agree completely, whether they are talking about sports, music, friends, school or their impressions of the first week of football camp at SDSU.

“They have identical goals and are very compatible,” said Joe Rockhold, their football coach at El Capitan High School. “They are alike in actions and temperament, they are always pulling for one another, they don’t really compete with one another, they have similar size and mobility, a lot of their skills are similar and they’re both intelligent.”

Had enough?

Twins are supposed to be difficult to distinguish physically, but even personalities are not a giveaway in this case. Brad and Mitch are similar visually and verbally.

Now that Brad is growing a mustache and beard, it’s easier to tell them apart. Mitch is one inch shorter at 6-feet 3-inches and 15 pounds lighter at 225, but his clean-shaven face is his most distinguishing feature. Brad wore a perm for a while, and that really made things a lot easier for everyone, including their parents, Molly and Paul Burton. Now, the twins both have straight blond hair.

“Even to me, they look an awful lot alike,” Molly Burton said. “Especially with helmets on. When they played basketball, Brad would commit a foul, and Mitch would get called for it. Mitch never fouled as much, so it saved Brad many times.”

They were the forwards on the El Capitan basketball team when they were not playing tight end and lining up as twin receivers for the football team. They say they even have similar styles when it comes to catching the ball.

Since two players on the same team can’t wear the same number, Brad wore 19 and Mitch wore 91 in high school. They blocked against each other in practices at El Capitan, and sure enough, they’ve spent the past few days facing one another in drills at SDSU.

“I can’t think of anything that is really different between them,” Molly Burton said. “They always played sports against one another, they have the same group of friends, they have a lot of the same interests and their actions are very similar. They were always like that.”

She was really pressing to come up with a difference.

She said, “Well, one difference is that Brad played baseball and Mitch ran track.”

So, they are not exactly alike. A couple other things: Molly Burton was told by her doctor to expect twins. Brad was born five minutes earlier Dec. 13, 1966, and at 7 1/2 pounds, he was a half pound heavier than Mitch. Brad is left-handed and Mitch is right-handed.

Earlier in the summer, Brad thought he would be a sports medicine major and Mitch thought he’d be an English major with a business background. Now, Brad is leaning toward business, but both are thinking about telecommunications.

So much for taking different academic routes.

Back to the similarities. The Burtons, which is what they were known as in high school, shared the same room at home for 18 years.

“It was a huge room and they could have divided it,” Molly Burton said. “Each room would have been nice and big by itself. But they didn’t want separate rooms.”

The Burtons took a deep breath and decided not to room together during the couple weeks of fall football practice at SDSU. But, it’s only temporary. Once the fall semester starts, they’re going to be roommates in a dorm at SDSU.

“Why not?” Brad asked.

“Yeah, why not?” Mitch said.

Brad’s girlfriend’s best friend is Mitch’s girlfriend. Both Pam Crawford and Nicole Birkle will be seniors at El Capitan.

Brad and Mitch made four recruiting trips to the same colleges, and they went together.

“Schools would call us, and when one of us would get off the phone, the other would get on,” Mitch said.

Most of the time, they told the recruiters the same thing.

“We used the same criteria for picking a school,” Mitch said.

Like most student-athletes, they wanted a school that had strong academic and athletic programs. They liked the idea of going to San Diego State because it was close to home, their mother had graduated from there and they were familiar with it.

“We never said we would go to the same school,” Brad said, “but we thought we would.”

Said Mitch: “I knew it would work out that way.”

Rockhold said that at one point he thought Mitch and Brad would attend Arizona. The Burtons also visited Cal and the Colorado. They were scheduled to go to Oregon, but committed to SDSU before they made that trip.

“We probably gave SDSU an even tougher look because it seemed too inviting,” Brad said.

Sometimes, the Burtons seem almost too good to be true. Molly Burton said they always “got along super good and they never fought. Maybe one or two times a year.”

They’re like a tall, husky version of the Hardy Boys.

“Kids don’t usually think the way they do,” Rockhold said. “I don’t think Mitch and Brad were awed by the attention they got in high school. They were very coachable. When you had them do something, you knew they’d do it right.”

SDSU Coach Doug Scovil has had the Burtons in camp for less than a week, but he is already beginning to form a similar opinion.

“In terms of picking things up, they’re both as good as anyone we brought in here,” Scovil said. “They’re intelligent kids.”

Brad and Mitch were both academic All-Americans with 3.7 grade-point averages.

Do the Burtons feel as if they are one person in two bodies? Do they wish they had more individuality?

“We’re our own persons,” Mitch said. “It’s not like we’d have a security problem if we were without the other person. We’d be close no matter where we were.”

Said Brad: “Sometimes other people treat us as one, and I get tired of that. Everyone likes to have their own individuality.”

There are glimpses when Brad appears to be a little more outgoing than Mitch. He appears to be more talkative.

“All in all,” Molly Burton said, “it’s often a first impression that Brad is more outgoing. But one doesn’t take a back seat to the other when they’re with their friends.”

Mitch said some people tell him Brad is the more outgoing of the two, but others tell him he is the more outgoing. No way either one is going to get the edge. At least not from each other.

Another thing the Burtons agree on is their desire to make the SDSU team this year, and to possibly play as freshmen. Brad is being looked at as an offensive lineman and Mitch is at his regular tight end position.

The SDSU football program has a reputation for redshirting most of its freshmen, and Scovil said the Burtons will probably not be exceptions.

The Burtons understand the reality of being a freshman football player at a Division-1 university, but redshirting is still a word Brad and Mitch hope not to hear.

“I’ve made it my goal to make the team this year,” Brad said, “but I won’t be disappointed if I don’t. Everyone would like to play, but there are obvious advantages to redshirting.”

Guess what the second half of the duo said.