The past 18 months of Keegan Jones’ life have been filled with adversity.
So as the former Cleveland High School standout prepares for his second football season at UCLA, it seems fair to ask: What difference could a little more of it really make?
During his time with the Blue Raiders, the top tier of major college football programs did not give anything more than a passing glance to Jones. With his 2017 senior season behind him, he planned to attend the U.S. Naval Academy and play for the Midshipmen, but not long after arriving on campus in Annapolis, Maryland, he realized the combination of Division I football and a military lifestyle wasn’t for him.
So he asked for and was granted a release from the service academy, even receiving help from one of the Navy assistant coaches who sent video of Jones to a number of colleges.
What other coaches finally saw was an elusive running back who rushed for 1,000 yards and scored a total of 23 touchdowns as a senior. What they saw was one of the best athletes in the state of Tennessee, with Jones capping his high school sports career at the 2018 Spring Fling by winning the Division I Large Class 200-meter dash title with a time of 21.1 seconds – the fastest in the state that year – and placing third in the 100 (10.57 seconds) and the long jump (23 feet, 1/4 inches) to help the Blue Raiders to a runner-up team finish.