Opinion | Right Field: Cardale Jones' rapid rise to college football fame is worth cheering for
In the space of just three games, college quarterback Cardale Jones has managed to find a place in the public consciousness
Welcome to the lexicon, Cardale Jones. You managed to indelibly etch your name in US college football lore despite the fact that your career officially consists of three games started and less than 100 passes thrown.
Yeah, it's going to take some time to digest the legend of quarterback Cardale. No one has done it faster or better on a huge national stage. No one. A mere three games ago Cardale was a back-up to a back-up who had been elevated into the starting role for the Ohio State Buckeyes after their injury-racked roster all but doomed their national championship hopes. Up to that point if you had heard the name Cardale Jones, it was because of a tweet, not a touchdown.
Cardale would more or less raise himself and, admittedly, he didn't do a great job
It was as a freshman a few years back that Cardale tweeted: "Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain't come to play school, classes are pointless." There have been 143,000 tweets per second and trillions upon trillions in the fledgling history of Twitter. But no tweet has ever been as forthright or concise as Cardale's.
Naturally, the powers that be at Ohio State were not in a celebratory mood and both Cardale and the tweet quickly disappeared when he was suspended. Cardale was described as immature. He will have to learn the right way, we were told, even though Cardale understands that student athletes reap untold billions for their schools, the NCAA and Las Vegas betting books while getting little in return.
A few years later, and presumably properly rehabilitated, there was Cardale standing on the sidelines watching his college career go by. Despite the fact that he is a physical behemoth who can chuck a football almost the entire length of the field and is bigger than pretty much everybody on the defence and faster as well, the two quarterbacks in front of him were apparently better. But first one prized stud got hurt and then another. Next thing you know it's finally Cardale's time and his first start is only the Big Ten Championship that will ultimately determine your team's fate.
A 59-0 win over Wisconsin, with Cardale throwing three touchdowns and running the offence like a surgeon, helped Ohio State earn a berth in the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Day against number one Alabama with the winners advancing to the national championship game.
