Brandon Boykin is more than the Swiss Army knife of Georgia football.
He’s also a senior in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, who, one day after a longed-for professional football career, would love to cross over into the exciting world of communicating to the masses.
Call this an instant internship.
His assignment: Suggest some approaches to a story about a Bulldogs cornerback who, in addition to the eight career interceptions, also has four kickoff returns for touchdowns, an 80-yard touchdown run and more appearances on the Georgia stat sheet than Alec Baldwin does on “Saturday Night Live.”
Boykin’s instincts seem sound enough. He said he’d focus in on a versatility theme.
“I’d say Brandon Boykin is a jack of all trades,” Boykin indeed said.
Falling back into first person, he added, “I feel like there are so many things I can do.”
But also, there are facets to this Boykin fellow off the field that should be explored, Boykin suggested. Get outside the hedges and flesh out this tale.
“For one, I enjoy drawing,” he offered.
“I enjoy writing.
“I like music. I’m trying to learn how to play the guitar right now. I enjoy country music, strangely enough. My teammate, [freshman linebacker] Ray Drew, is like a super country fan and he has been putting me onto a lot of country music.”
As he applies his major, Boykin will discover that the joy of storytelling is in the details. Like flowers, they can be arranged in a great variety of ways. But they always get back to trying to answer fundamental questions.
Who is this guy?
Boykin grew up in Fayetteville, the son of Alfred and Lisa Boykin. His father owns a trucking company; his mother is a manager at an insurance company.
Brandon played a little quarterback at Fayette County High, but that wasn’t going to be his ultimate destination. “I don’t have the arm at all to play quarterback, or the accuracy,” he said. Perhaps he could have been a receiver had he gotten serious about growing. But at 5-foot-9 and change, Boykin doesn’t fit the template of the modern, statuesque pass catcher. So he ended up at corner, trying to take away the ball rather than catching it.
That Boykin handles himself well on a football field is well documented. He is the only player in SEC history to have three plays of any kind of 100 yards (his were all kick returns).
He appears comfortable in the postgame interview as well. Thank mom for that. Back as a young teen, he’d be all showered and ready for bed and here would come mom again, holding a pencil in her hand like a make-believe microphone, ambushing him with questions a reporter surely would ask one day. Hold your head up, speak clearly, look me in the eye, she’d instruct him.
In J-school, Boykin is taught to express himself honestly and to extract honesty from others. But in the locker room, he is held to the code of saying nothing remotely controversial, to default to take-it-one-game-at-a-time, give-100-percent mode whenever the questions get pointy.
“Kind of weird,” he said.
Why is he so special?
Boykin is an athlete of rare stripe. Even those who keep company daily with a room full of jocks talk about him being exceptional.
Bulldogs tight end Aron White got the idea Boykin was a different sort when the two stopped to shoot a few baskets at Georgia’s practice gym. Boykin threw the ball off the backboard and threw down a resounding dunk — while in his walking-around clothes. And still wearing his backpack, weighted with books.
Serving his redshirt year last season, receiver Michael Bennett was fascinated when Boykin and A.J. Green — the star wideout taken fourth overall in the 2011 draft — went at it in practice. “Sometimes, he’d shut down A.J. — a cool thing to see,” Bennett said.
Nothing shows off Boykin’s springiness quite like the ritual pregame leap he performs in the presence of earthbound coach Mark Richt. Just a little something he started last season before the Auburn game to fire up the squad. “The team expects it. I try to get as high as I can. [Richt] just worries about me kicking him in the face,” Boykin said. It’s not an official Georgia game now until the coach almost catches a pair of cleats between the eyes.
For the record, there was one thing this all-around gifted athlete couldn’t do growing up. “I couldn’t skate for anything. That frustrated me,” he said.
Does it matter?
You name the place, Boykin has left little remembrances of himself all around the South.
● A 100-yard kickoff return at home against South Carolina in 2009, another later in the year in Knoxville, another in Lexington in 2010.
Alas, his longest kick return this year is only 58 yards. Must be in a slump.
“People have come to kind of expect that [100-yard return]. Hey, it’s hard to get a return past the 20 in the SEC with such fast and great athletes,” he said.
● An 81-yard touchdown return in Shreveport, whether anyone wanted to be there or not.
● An 80-yard touchdown on his first career carry in the Georgia Dome, against Boise State, this September.
● Eight career interceptions, the most recent last week in Nashville against Vanderbilt.
Boykin can affect a game in so many ways that the challenge for his coaches is to use him without using him up. The body, even one that can do as many good things as Boykin’s, is a finite resource.
As this season has progressed, and week after week of wear accumulates, the Bulldogs have deployed Boykin less and less as an offensive weapon. Push it too far, and he’d be no use on either side of the ball.
So the Dogs make it up as they go along.
Deciding when to expose Boykin on offense “has to do with the look in his eyes,” Richt said. If Boykin doesn’t appear tired or hasn’t just been spindled by some kamikaze special-teamer on a return, then who knows where you might see him next?
“They know I have a big responsibility on defense,” Boykin said of his coaches. “That’s the No. 1 priority. I tell them whatever they want me to do, I’ll be up for.”
Why does he do it?
That’s a question he would have had every right to ask himself at the conclusion of one kickoff return Oct. 1 against Mississippi State.
It pains Boykin to admit that it was the kicker who ultimately did the damage, who took out his legs and caused the first-class face plant.
As he sat up, Boykin knew something was wrong when he felt his bottom row of teeth pressing against his tongue.
They weren’t knocked out, but rather dislocated. He forced them back into place and continued playing. Afterward, his bottom teeth were wired into place, until they could reanchor. The cursed wire came off last week.
The payoff for such risk comes in those rare moments when a returner clears all the human clutter, like an airplane breaking through the clouds, and has nothing but open space before him.
“You get big-eyed when you know you have a chance of returning it,” he said. “It’s the No. 1 feeling. It can be a game-changing play, something that doesn’t happen as often as an offensive touchdown or an interception.”
How does he do it?
Boykin comes by his abilities honestly. His father ran track at Morehouse — where he trained with a hurdler named Edwin Moses — before transferring to play small-college football in Alabama. His older brother played a little basketball professionally overseas. Brandon was just the next step in Boykin evolution.
But genetics alone can’t completely account for a crossover player like Boykin, one so comfortable with any assignment on a football field. But, then, if such a talent could be explained, the wonderment just wouldn’t be the same.
Really, the question now is how much more does he have left? Is there something special waiting for Florida on Saturday? Does he have more in reserve for one last push for the summit of the SEC East?
Boykin is still working on the ending of his Georgia story.
He’d like to make it something splashy, with an abundance of adjectives and exclamation points.
