ATHENS — As recruiting visits go, Jarvis Jones’ to Georgia in June 2010 had an unusual highlight: quality time with coach Mark Richt at ... a hospital.
“I actually sat through every single test that he took with the doctors,” Richt said. “I mean, if he had an MRI or whatever, I wasn’t in there, but I was in the hospital, spending time with him and getting to know him better.”
Said Jones: “We talked about a lot of stuff that day — talked about football, family. He was right beside me the whole way. It was something good that he did, and I really appreciated it.”
The trip to the hospital wasn’t designed for bonding between recruit and coach; it just worked out that way. Its purpose was to determine if Jones, a linebacker who was seeking a new team after suffering a neck injury as a freshman at USC, would be cleared medically to play for Georgia.
“After our doctors did their battery of tests, they came back and felt like he was fit to play,” Richt said. So Richt offered a scholarship, and Jones, who had snubbed UGA for USC when he came out of Carver High in Columbus, signed with the Bulldogs the second time around.
When Georgia opens its season Saturday night against Boise State at the Georgia Dome, Jones will start at outside linebacker — his first game since Halloween 2009, when he was a USC freshman.
“Trying to make a tackle at Oregon,” Jones recalled matter-of-factly, “I wound up hitting one of my teammates’ hip with my helmet.”
That changed everything. The collision caused a neck injury, called a sprain by USC and pinched nerves by Jones, and sidelined him for the rest of the 2009 season. When the time came for spring practice in 2010, USC doctors would not clear him to participate and told him he should not play again.
“I never gave up,” Jones said. “I never believed that I couldn’t play again.”
He sought second and third opinions from independent doctors, who, he said, told him he should be able to return to football. That led him to request a release from his USC scholarship, reopening his recruitment and reversing his cross-country course.
He surely took an improbable, albeit scenic, route to UGA — from Columbus to Athens by way of Los Angeles.
As a senior at Carver in the fall of 2008, Jones was among the state’s top three prospects and was fiercely recruited by dozens of schools, including Georgia, Florida and LSU, before signing with USC.
He played in the first eight games of the ’09 season for the Trojans and appeared to have a big future on the West Coast.
“I loved Los Angeles, man,” he said. “It was a great place, a great experience.”
But when he found himself looking for a new team — medically disqualified by USC but told by other doctors he could play again — Jones wanted to go home.
“He felt like he could still play football, and he also wanted very much to come back to Georgia, so those two things certainly sparked our interest,” Richt said. “We had a scholarship available at the time, which was important, [but] we knew that if he was to go to Georgia that he’d have to go through a battery of tests.”
Jones considered other close-to-home options, particularly Florida State, but once UGA’s doctors cleared him and Richt offered a scholarship, Jones jumped at it.
“The time we spent together at the hospital, it was greatly needed,” Jones said. “Before, I hadn’t really been around Coach Richt like that. We really got to know each other.”
Jones was redshirted last season, satisfying NCAA transfer rules and putting some distance, chronologically as well as geographically, between him and his injury. He has three seasons of eligibility remaining. By all accounts, he has shown no effects from the injury in the 14 months since joining the Georgia program.
“I can’t think of a time that he had any kind of an issue injury-wise that was anything to concern us,” Richt said. “Last season when he was on the scout team, he had a tremendous attitude and kind of made the best of it. ... Then in the spring, it didn’t take him long to move into a No. 1 [outside linebacker] spot.
“I’d have to say he has done about as well as you can, and now we’re at the moment of truth. We hope he’s going to be very productive for us this season and this opening ballgame. I know he’s got to be extremely excited about playing again, and we’re really looking forward to seeing him.”
Jones’ circuitous route to his UGA debut cleared a final hurdle several weeks ago, when the NCAA exonerated him in a case involving payments by his former AAU coach in Columbus.
Georgia expects the 6-foot-3, 240-pound Jones to be a key player on a defense that needs to show substantial improvement.
“He likes to hit, likes physical contact,” said Cornelius Washington, Georgia’s other starting outside linebacker. “I don’t have any doubt at all about him getting on the field and being able to produce.”
Said inside linebacker Christian Robinson: “I hope he can wreak some havoc. ... He hasn’t hit a quarterback in almost two years, so I bet he’s really hungry.”
His debut is eagerly anticipated by Georgia fans, but after all he has been through, Jones seems calm as the moment approaches.
“I was just blessed,” he said, “to be given a second opportunity to be a Bulldog.”
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