A linebacker and guard, in 1959 Burrell won the Chicago Tribune Silver Football as the MVP of the Big Ten Conference.
Representative of the times, rather than doing desk work that other athletes did, Burrell and other black student-athletes were assigned to pick up trash at Memorial Stadium.
Burrell is among the fabled members of the "cradle of linebackers" that played at Illinois alongside Ray Nitschke and Dick Butkus.
[8] Rejecting the AFL and NFL due to money, he played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League and was that team's nominee for the Schenley Award as Outstanding Lineman in 1960.
Burrell is included in The Pigskin Club of Washington, D.C. National Intercollegiate All-American Football Players Honor Roll.