Wiedmer: Baylor grad Colton Jumper now a scholarship Vol

Colton Jumper (53) from Baylor School and Cortez McDowell (20) get ready to play defense in Tennessee's Orange/White spring football game last April 16 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville.
Colton Jumper (53) from Baylor School and Cortez McDowell (20) get ready to play defense in Tennessee's Orange/White spring football game last April 16 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville.

KNOXVILLE - His exams finished, his car packed, Tennessee junior linebacker Colton Jumper was asked to stop by head coach Butch Jones's office on his way home to Chattanooga this past May.

"He told me I was on scholarship," Jumper said as he sat in the Volunteers' locker room inside Neyland Stadium on Friday afternoon. "He said, 'You earned this; it's well deserved. But it doesn't mean you can quit working.'"

Jumper hadn't quit working for this since graduating from Baylor School in the spring of 2013.

Having originally committed to the Naval Academy, Jumper switched gears after a kidney ailment closed that opportunity. Offered scholarships at FCS programs such as Furman and Wofford, he instead opted for a post-grad year at the Hun School in Princeton, hopeful one last autumn of secondary school football might increase his college options.

"I'd always wanted to come to UT," he said. "My great uncle, Tom Jumper, played on the 1951 national championship team. But I thought UT might be too big a fish to catch."

Nor did his one season at the Hun School figure to help much after he was injured early in it.

"I did start getting some mid-major offers, though," Jumper recalled. "Western Kentucky, UNC Charlotte. I was going to get a chance to play somewhere."

Then Tennessee linebackers coach Tommy Thigpen called. The Vols wanted Jumper to become a preferred walk-on.

"I was either going to commit to Western Kentucky or walk on at Tennessee," he said. "I decided on a Saturday and reported on a Monday."

And by the opening game of his sophomore season, though still a walk-on, he was starting against Bowling Green at LP Field in Nashville.

"It was surreal," Jumper recalled of that 59-30 Big Orange blowout win. "I couldn't sleep (the night before)."

Anyone going from playing in one total game as a freshman to starting the very first game his sophomore year might be similarly nervous and excited. But Jumper had been a fan of the Vols all his life.

"Whenever we couldn't go to games, we'd listen to John Ward on the radio," he said. "I always loved tailgating and going to the Kappa Sig house with my dad to visit with his fraternity brothers."

Jumper was such a fan, and such a good fan with a great perspective, that when asked how upset he could become after a loss, he simply smiled and said, "Not much. I'll always love my team."

The coaching staff's love for Jumper as a starter didn't last. After taking the field with such defensive giants as Derek Barnett, Jalen Reeves-Maybin and Cam Sutton for the first three games of the season, Jumper became a backup to the gifted rookie Darrin Kirkland Jr. He finished the year with 10 total tackles, including one for a loss against Oklahoma.

Nearly a year later he remains a backup to Kirkland for new UT defensive coordinator Bob Shoop, who recently said of Jumper, "He's got a high football IQ, he plays hard and he always plays with a chip on his shoulder."

But it is how Jumper apparently hid that chip off the field after his demotion last season that has drawn much love and respect from his teammates.

"So proud of him," Sutton said. "Colton never got down. He just continued to fight, continued to battle, was always there to do whatever he thought would help the team. He's always embraced whatever role he's been asked to do."

Added Reeves-Maybin: "Our motto is 'Smart and Tough.' That definitely describes Jumper. He's underestimated as an athlete. We all know how hard he plays. We can always count on him."

Befitting both a lifelong Tennessee fan and a great teammate, even Jumper said of the talent and depth that cost him a starting spot, "Iron sharpens iron. Now we're not just talented, we're talented and deep."

The Vols have accumulated so much talent that Jumper isn't even always swiftly recognized as a team member when out on the town with his more physically impressive teammates.

"It's not like I'm (Jonathan) Kongbo, 6-6 and 270," said a grinning Jumper. "I don't look like a stereotypical football player. I'm a white guy with red hair."

But at least he's now a scholarship player with red hair who couldn't wait to complete the two-hour drive home from campus to the family's Lookout Mountain residence before telling them they'd no longer have to pay for his schooling.

"I wasn't going to tell them until I got home," he recalled. "I couldn't hold it in any longer, though. I called them about halfway there."

By the time he got there his mother Dawn, father Jay and younger brother Will, a UT reserve tight end - sister Hannah, a former Vanderbilt track star, now works in Washington, D.C. - were waiting to uncork a bottle of champagne to celebrate his big news.

"We kept the cork," he said. "I think it's even got the date written on it."

The date he officially hooked the fish he once thought was too big to catch.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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