NO LONGER UNKNOWN
Buckeyes QB Cardale Jones has come a long way from Glenville to Columbus.
COLUMBUS — If nothing else, popularity and acclaim are a little easier on the pocketbook of Cardale Jones. Tyvis Powell, the Ohio State safety who is the roommate and good pal of the Ohio State quarterback, recounted a story Tuesday afternoon from a couple of years ago.
Back then, Jones wasn’t the starter, simply an unknown Buckeyes backup.
“We were in the mall — Nordstrom at the Easton Mall, I think,” Powell said. “Cardale tried to get people’s attention, but nobody would help us. He was saying ‘What? Nobody’s gonna help?’
“Nobody knew who he was. He wasn’t the Cardale Jones he is now.
“And that’s when he reached into his wallet, took $200 out and threw it in the air. Oooh they came running then. He eventually got everyone’s attention. Everybody noticed him then.”
These days in Columbus the clamor around Jones is the same, but it doesn’t cost him a dime.
“He’s a VERY known guy now and it’s funny,” said Powell. “I mean, we wear helmets, so people don’t really know your face. But everybody knows him. “Somebody like J.T. (Barrett), he’s not really that tall, so you might be: ‘That sorta looks like JT.’ But when you see this big, 6-foot-5, 240 pound dude, you’re like, ‘That’s gotta be Cardale Jones!’
“I’m like, ‘Here comes Hollywood.’ He’s Hollywood Jones to me.”
And what was he before that, back
when he was a nobody at Nordstrom’s?
“He was 12,” Powell said with a grin. “Just 12.”
That’s Jones’ uniform number and back them he simply was a scarletand-gray sub lost on a roster of some 100 players.
Then came the Nov. 29 game against Michigan when Barrett — who had quarterbacked the Buckeyes so gloriously all season after returning starter Braxton Miller, twice the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year, had been lost to a season- ending injury in August — suffered a broken ankle.
Jones came into the game in the fourth quarter and put the finishing touches on a 42-28 romp over the Wolverines. The next weekend he stunned the college football world when he threw three touchdown passes and orchestrated a 59-0 rout of Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game.
And yet all that was prelude to his Herculean performance in a 4235 upset of No. 1 Alabama in Thursday’s Sugar Bowl matchup that served as national championship semifinal.
And Monday, Jones again will be the starting quarterback as the Bucks face Oregon in the inaugural national championship game in Arlington, Texas.
Along the way he’s been on the cover of Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine and Tuesday afternoon he was surrounded by a crush of state and national media who showed up at the OSU indoor practice facility for the team’s on-campus media day.
Although he certainly hasn’t acted this way in the field, Jones admitted he’s still a little overwhelmed by all the attention and glory.
Being an SI cover boy, he said, “was one of the biggest deals. It’s something you dream about as a kid. The cover of Sports Illustrated — that’s just amazing.”
He said he bought 10 copies of SI and another 10 of the ESPN magazine.
“It’s all pretty strange, it’s weird, it’s like unreal,” he said. “You watch ESPN and they’re talking about you.”
He smiled and in barely a whisper added: “The last time I was on ESPN, it was something bad.”
Some tough lessons
He was talking about that infamous tweet he sent out in 2012:
“Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL. We ain’t come to play SCHOOL”
That ill-conceived dispatch made him the butt of jokes in the national media and around many quarters of the campus.
But there was one corner of the OSU confines — the office of coach Urban Meyer — where he said no one was laughing.
“I was so immature, (at first) I didn’t even know,” Jones said. “I had been like, ‘It’s no big deal.’ Then I see it on ESPN and in USA Today and I’m like, ‘oooh.’ ”
Summoned to the coach’s office, he said he could think of just one thing on the way to meet Meyer: “He’s gonna kill me.
“He was just so shocked. He knew I was an intelligent guy even though I didn’t always act that way. He was like, ‘Dude, that’s the dumbest thing I ever seen!’
“And that meeting was just part of it. I had other uncomfortable talks with Coach Herman (offensive coordinator Tom Herman). At first it was like when anyone tells you something you don’t want to hear. You try to let it go in one ear and out the other. But some of it started to sink in. And sometimes I’d revert back to the old ways and Coach Herman would have another get together.
“That incident was a major turning point for me and Coach Herman really helped me with it.”
He said Herman has taught him how to compartmentalize, whether it’s been with setting aside the pressure and enormity of the moment on the football field and just playing the game he’s played his whole life, or in more serious matters off the field.
He mentioned his longtime girlfriend — OSU nursing student Jeaney Durand — giving birth to their daughter, Chloe, in early November: “I’m still in the growing-up process but I know now all my decisions affect her.”
Now he’s dealing with his uncle Audie Murphy, who he said is in the last stages of liver cancer.
He sent out a tweet a couple of days ago saying his uncle has just two weeks to live.
“We knew about the cancer, but we didn’t know it would hit that fast,” Jones said. “I was told he watched our whole Alabama game. He still understands what’s going on with my situation and Ohio State’s.
“Coach Herman has been helping me with all these situations the last couple of months, but this one is a little tougher.”
Plenty of mentors
Jones grew up in the tough Glenville section of Cleveland and said he easily could have “been a statistic” the way many of his friends and family members have been.
Tuesday, Meyer touched on this and talked about the guardian angel mentors Jones had growing up.
One was Ted Ginn Sr., the Glenville High School football coach and father of former Buckeye Ted Ginn Jr. He runs the Ginn Academy for boys facing special challenges in life.
And it was Ginn — at the urging of the family of Christian Bryant, another Ginn player who’s now in the NFL — who lined Jones up with Michelle Nash, who works in the office of the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Courts.
She became Jones’ guiding force and eventually his surrogate parent when he came to live with her.
She means so much to him that his daughter’s middle name is Michelle.
“I think about all that a lot,” he said. “I could have been a statistic because of the environment I grew up in and the culture of that environment — but I’m not.”
And now that he’s making the most of his opportunity, he said he senses communal pride back home.
“It means a lot, not just for me but the Glenville community,” he said. “I come from a community where they don’t have much to look up to. Now they can pat themselves on the back and say I’m a product of the community.
“I think it means a lot to them. And to me. They all know me. Know where I’ve come from and what I’m doing now. It feels good when that happens.”
Popularity and acclaim have made Cardale Jones richer in more ways than one.