Ex-Marine Jacob East soaking up final moments of his playing career
Jacob East’s football career will likely come to a quiet end this weekend.
A reserve tight end at Bakersfield College, East enters today’s season finale against College of the Canyons with one career reception for zero yards in two seasons with the Renegades.
But stats hardly tell the full story. Like most of his teammates, East is a local product looking for an opportunity to live out his dream of playing college football. But in a locker room filled with 18 and 19-yearolds hoping desperately to catch the attention of four-year programs, East stands out.
While most BC players came straight from the high school ranks, East, now a 25-year-old married man, took a circuitous route to BC, one that on multiple occasions put him in the company of the world’s most powerful men.
So even if his production doesn’t leap off the stat sheet, East says simply being able to take the field has been a welcome surprise and a highlight of a recent return home.
“I think I honestly was able to enjoy doing it more as an adult versus being a young man just coming out of high school because I wasn’t held back by any social pressures or anything like that,” he said. “I was able to just go out there and play as hard as I could and just have fun with it.”
Looking for a new challenge following his 2012 graduation from Bakersfield High School, East found what he was looking for in the military. During his senior year at BHS, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, reporting for Basic Training in San Diego six months after high school.
Quickly taking a shine to security, East’s work ethic caught the attention of commanding offers, who selected him for the Presidential Support Program in Washington, D.C., a three-year training program that helped him earn Top-Secret Security Clearance and eventually led to him working security for two United States presidents.
At just 20 years old, East was called to duty when then-President Barack Obama attended a summer parade at Marine Barracks in D.C. in 2014. Three years later, he was assigned to a similar event when Donald Trump paid a visit to Camp David.
Though he didn’t meet either president, East says it was a surreal honor to be trusted in such a high-pressure situation.
“Being a Bakersfield kid and going to Washington D.C. and actually getting to stand security and to see with my own two eyes congressmen, senators and even the president was amazing,” he said. “At the time, I was (so young), and being able to do that job for my country was a huge honor and very memorable.”
His accomplishments helped land him an instructor role with the Marines, which he calls “the best job I ever had.” That position proved beneficial by the time he reentered a football locker room, where he was surrounded by teenagers with vastly different life experiences.
When his time in the Marines wrapped, East returned home. With help from the GI Bill, which helps cover educational costs for military members, he enrolled at Bakersfield College in 2018, majoring in business.
Once at BC, he earned a spot on the Renegade football team following a seven-year layoff from the sport. While it took time to readjust to the physical demands of football, East says fitting in with younger players was much easier than he might have expected, thanks to his experiences over the previous six years.
“I’m pretty used to hanging around younger guys in the Marine Corps, especially when I got to the instructor level,” he said. “It’s still a team, it’s still working together. I think that camaraderie is similar, and that’s what I like about football.”
His steady presence and strong personality have caught the attention of teammates like 19-year-old freshman Luke Soto, a fellow tight end who quickly bonded with East over their shared devotion to Christianity.
“He’s kind of like a coach where we respect him and he’s worthy of that respect,” Soto said. “He takes charge and when he talks, he has something to say and everybody wants to hear what he has to say.”
Today’s game will be significant to East for two reasons. Aside from being his last in a BC uniform, it will also feature the Patriotic American Salute, where fellow Marine vet and former BC player Mike Sable will be an honorary captain for the coin toss.
Veterans will also form a tunnel around Renegade players as they enter the field before the game.
“It means a lot,” East said of the veteran-themed event. “I think that my generation has a hard time relating to past generations. It was more common to know a veteran or to be related to a veteran in past generations.
“And I think for today’s day in age, to just educate the younger generation, promoting patriotism, promoting that sense of pride in being an American is a pretty important thing.”
Though he’ll soon be finished with football, East isn’t ready to be done with school, planning to earn a bachelor’s degree at Cal State Bakersfield.
Eventually, he also hopes to make a return to the military. An aspiring Officer, he says he wants to fulfill that dream in the Marines, Coast Guard or Air Force.
For now, his goal is to soak up his last opportunity to take the field with his teammates, a path he never expected, but one he was more than willing to take.
“It means a lot to me to get to realize a childhood dream to play college football and to play at Bakersfield College, who I grew up watching,” East said.