Remembering My Friend, Jacoby Jones
by Ted Kluck
The spatting of shoes – by which I mean wrapping white tape around cleats – was both an art and a science for Jacoby Jones, he of the Super Bowl ring, the two Super Bowl touchdowns and the legendary NFL career. Jacoby was an alum of Lane College, where we both coached – he coached the wide receivers and returners…I was the low man on the totem pole, in that I worked with long snappers a couple of times a week. I barely show up, on Wednesday for practice and Saturday, for the games. I run the sprints with my guys because I enjoy suffering in the heat. “Hey Coach!” Jacoby would shout, before embracing me in a hug. A big dip in the lip because Jacoby Jones was both “country” and “city.”
You smooth the tape, and wrap it around the arch of the foot. And then the ankle. Smooth it. Smooth, white tape. Jacoby would do this before each game that he coached as though he were still a player. And then he would pull on his gloves. And sometimes a Lane College jersey. He loved our new Nike jerseys and grabbed his number immediately. He wore it to practice, the game jersey. Jacoby Jones loved playing football. He would tuck himself in behind our kick and punt returners in practice and sort of return the kick behind them, without a ball. He would tell them where to go. And then he would bust the return, right up the rails, to the end zone, because he saw things the rest of us didn’t see, and he could do things the rest of us couldn’t do.
He was better than the rest of us, innately. He had a gift…like a great piano player, or a great actor. He was taller. More magnificent. Faster. He knew what the rest of us didn’t know: that there was a right way to play football, and that he had figured it out. He had unlocked it. He had made it beautiful. The rest of us were just trying to keep up, and happy to be along for the ride.
I respected this because, secretly, I have never stopped playing football. That sick, brutal, mistress. So interesting. So painful. I have been chasing a perfect game since…forever. Jacoby unlocked it. He had the perfect game, in a Super Bowl, against San Francisco. It wasn’t enough, ultimately, to save his life.
Sadly, not enough people care about Lane College football. We are Division 2. HBCU. We play in a crumbling, antique stadium in Jackson, Tennessee, in front of 500 people, on a good day. I love it, dearly. But to Jacoby, every Saturday was the Super Bowl. He would arrive early to the stadium. He would spat his cleats. He would pull on his red gloves. He would dance to whatever hip hop was blaring through the stacks of speakers on the track around the field. “Is this Sinatra?” I would ask, rhetorically, because I was the dorky white guy and it was expected, but also because being around Jacoby made everybody (even me) feel 30% cooler. He would laugh, politely, because he was nice. He’d offer me some dip, and I’d refuse.
Three hours before gametime I’d be throwing sideline passes to my twelve-year-old – my painfully shy, introverted twelve-year-old – before the game. Maxim would pump his arms and cradle the ball in, along the sideline. Toes in bounds. In the sun, in the music. We had no idea that these were the greatest moments of our lives. Jacoby pulled him aside and showed him his Super Bowl ring because he was Jacoby Jones. Charismatic. Wildly talented. Kind. Reader of people and situations. Maxim loved him. Maxim felt tall, and seen, and loved.
I invited him to my classroom once…my classroom at a very Baptist, very Christian college, where I’m a journalism professor. I wanted to give my students a chance to interview a real, live Super Bowl Champ. They loved him, and I loved that they loved him. He loved that they loved him. They asked him questions. He dropped like fifteen f-bombs in an hour and they were scandalized and intrigued and they loved him because he was nice and charismatic and…Jacoby Jones.
He will be forgotten, because we all are.
“He is an ESPN crawl,” said my dad, when we talked about him, today. “That’s more than most of us are,” I replied. This is cruel. The world is cruel. Life is cruel. Death is a reminder of sin in the world, and the fall of mankind. I really hope Jacoby Jones knew Christ. I hope this for his mother, whom he loved very much. And his son, who will grow older without his father.
I think of my sons, who I love so much, and the football we have shared. Gosh, it’s been good. And better, because we knew Jacoby. Rest in Peace, my friend.