OSU QB Jones: ‘Team knew I was capable’

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Cardale Jones realizes many people weren’t even aware he was still playing football.

It had been five years between big games — a state championship game as a junior in high school to the Big Ten title game Dec. 6 — and the only time people heard of him was because of an infamous tweet where he said going to class was pointless as a football player.

“If people forgot, I don’t have a problem with that,” Ohio State’s latest replacement quarterback said Thursday. “My teammates and my coaches knew that I was capable when ready.”

With a breakthrough game in the 59-0 rout of Wisconsin two weeks ago, Jones has suddenly reappeared.

Jones was an overlooked third-string quarterback just four months ago. Now the third-year sophomore is the central figure in a Buckeyes’ offense heading into the national semifinal game against Alabama at the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1.

No one has ever doubted Jones’ big arm and big talent. But there have been a lot of questions about his intangibles.

He provided a lot of answers with three TD throws in his first collegiate start against Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship game.

A highly recruited prep star, Jones led Cleveland Glenville to the state championship game as a junior. When he graduated Glenville, he spent another year at a military school to buck up his grades.

But his early years at Ohio State were marked by being way down on the depth chart behind Braxton Miller and backup Kenny Guiton — and his tweet.

On Oct. 5, 2012, a day before the unbeaten Buckeyes under first-year coach Urban Meyer beat No. 21 Nebraska 63-38, Jones turned to social media to vent.

“Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL” he railed in the tweet. “We ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS”

Meyer suspended him soon after.

“It was just something that I did,” Jones said on Thursday. “I was young and very immature at that time. Of course, I didn’t feel that way about academics and, of course, no one in this program feels that way about academics. It’s just something that’s in the past that we got over as a team. I’m still dealing with it on social media, but it’s in the past.”