Keeping up with Jones: Bulldogs center helped turn season around
When Georgia takes the field to warm up for Saturday's SEC Championship Game against LSU, check out No. 60. He'll be the guy wearing no shoes.
"I started doing it in high school," Ben Jones said of his barefoot approach to pregame warmups. "I would take a nap before the game without shoes on and then just walk out barefoot to get a feel for the grass. I had a good senior year so I just kept on doing it."
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| Jones grew up near Tuscaloosa, Ala., but he chose the Bulldogs over the Crimson Tide. (Getty Images) |
"The big fellas up front have been doing a great job all year for us," said quarterback Aaron Murray, who leads the SEC with 32 touchdown passes this season. "Now Ben, he's a little different. He's also special. He just loves to play football."
Jones grew up not far from Tuscaloosa in Brent, Ala. (population 4,300). His father, Steve, played high school football in Thomasville, Ga. (just a short drive from Tallahassee, Fla.) and later at The Citadel. When injuries cut his football career short, Steve Jones transferred to the University of Georgia to earn his degree in forestry.
Steve and Vickie Jones had two sons, Clay and Ben. Clay was the oldest by three years and loved to play all sports. He was particularly good in baseball. Ben knew at an early age he would be a football player like his dad. Steve Jones took his sons everywhere and taught them everything.
"There is no way I am here today in this position without my dad," Jones said.
Ben was only 10 years old in 1999 when the horrible word came. Steve Jones was surveying his trees when the helicopter crashed. Both he and the pilot were killed instantly and suddenly Vickie Jones had two young boys who would need a lot of help getting to manhood. Vickie's dad pitched in, as did a number of uncles who lived nearby.
But Vickie Jones knew how to handle her two boys.
"There was part of me that wanted to slack off when I lost my dad, but mom wouldn't let me," Jones said. "She knew I had to work in order to keep my weight down and some days I didn't want to work. Every day when I got home she would ask me if I had done my running that day. If I hadn't she would make me run to the mailbox and back. And it was a long, long way -- about a mile -- from our house. She stayed on top of me. I give her a lot of credit."
Clay went to junior college to play baseball and eventually made his way to Alabama and then on to the minor leagues. Ben decided he would blaze his own path. He wasn't highly recruited. In fact, the only offers he had were from Troy and UAB before he attended a summer camp at Georgia. After that camp, Jones received a scholarship offer. He never hesitated.
"I jumped at the chance to go to Georgia because that's where my dad went to school," Jones said. "The funny thing was two days after I got the offer from Georgia, Alabama made me an offer. But I knew that I was always supposed to go to Georgia."
By the fourth game of his freshman season in 2008, Jones was in the starting lineup against Arizona State. The following week he lined up against famed Alabama noseguard Terrence "Mount" Cody. Jones said he was hyperventilating before the game because the "experts" said the freshman was going to get embarrassed on national television. Alabama won the game 41-30 but Jones held his own against the All-American. He has been in the starting lineup at Georgia ever since.
"It was a full night's work going against that guy," Jones said. "But I figured if I could play against him I could play against just about anybody in this league."
When Georgia started 0-2 this season, coach Mark Richt knew he had to rely on his leaders to hold the team together. Jones is what you would call a "forceful" leader. He has been known to call out younger players (and some older ones) and take them behind the (verbal) woodshed if he didn't feel they were pulling their weight in practice. Steve Jones would settle for nothing less than maximum effort. The son came to tolerate nothing less from himself and those around him.
"Things weren't looking too good and a lot of people were down on us," Jones said. "But we just decided that it was up to us to take care of business every week and that is exactly what we did. And look where we are now."
When Jones got to Georgia in 2008, he wanted to wear No. 60, which was his dad's number and the number Jones wore throughout high school. But that number belonged to sophomore Clint Boling, one of Georgia's very best players. So Jones decided he would wait his turn and wear No. 60 as a senior as a tribute to his dad. He put it on for the first time before the opener with Boise State on Sept. 3. The timing was simply perfect.
"This senior year has been amazing," Jones said. "To wear my dad's number and to be in this position is just incredible. I couldn't ask for more."
Actually, Jones admitted, he could ask for more as he prepares to play the biggest football game of his life against "the best defense I have ever seen." His mom will be in the Georgia Dome on Saturday. So will his brother and his grandfather and some aunts and uncles.
"I would love for dad to be there," said Jones. "It is really going to be something. It is going to be an incredible challenge for us. He would have loved this kind of game."
Something tells me that Steve Jones will be watching out for No. 60.
Watch The Tony Barnhart Show on Wednesday at 8 p.m. on The CBS Sports Network.
