Won't be hard keeping up with Joneses at Independence Bowl

They won't go head to head because both are running backs, and it's probably a good thing.

"They figured it out by themselves," said Rod Jones, their father. "We took the position they needed to figure out how to get along."

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The boys look like their parents. Roddy, 22 months older than Darius, has his mother's nose and his dad's eyes and forehead. Darius is the opposite.

They both talk like their father. An attorney, youth football league organizer and active community leader, Rod Jones has an exact but comforting cadence to his voice. He means what he says and says what he means, with a lot of humor mixed in.

Ask Roddy or Darius a question, and the answers don't seem rehearsed or vanilla

Angel Jones speaks more softly. She has a pleasant smile, that the boys share, and a calm demeanor. She's much smaller than her husband, whom she met when he was in law school at Emory and she was an undergraduate student.

Though Rod joked that he's responsible, he pointed to Angel, sitting on a white leather sofa in their family room, when asked why his sons were so fast.

"Playing in the streets of New York, all we did was run and I never got caught," she said.

The brothers are so similar, they had the same final score on the SAT, twice.

Roddy, not sure he could handle the regimen that comes with being an Air Force cadet, enjoys being the big brother. He keeps tabs on Darius as well as his younger brothers.

Darius is more of the free spirit. He once shaved his head because that was the style Michael Jordan sported. Darius then wanted an Afro.

Roddy would never have had an Afro, because he's much too conservative, his parents said.

Darius admits he could be more laidback because he knows Roddy will worry for him. Roddy even came home when Air Force's recruiting coordinator visited Darius, wanting to make sure his younger brother was in good hands.

"Roddy enabled Darius to be what he wanted to be and Darius enabled Roddy to be what he wanted to be," Rod Jones said.

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Roddy's first love was always baseball. Darius preferred football.

When he was 7, Darius bugged his mom about playing. She didn't like the idea. Darius was smaller than other boys. Even today, he has a 5-foot-9, 160-pound frame, weighing 35 pounds lighter than his older brother.

Angel Jones relented and told Darius that she would enroll him in a summer football camp. She picked one in July, hoping the heat and bigger, rougher boys would change her son's mind. He loved it and wanted to play.

As they were driving to sign up Darius for tryouts, Roddy still hadn't decided if he wanted to play, despite his mother's repeated urgings to make up his mind.

After he was asked for the last time, Roddy said yes. But he didn't have anything to wear. His resourceful mom borrowed a cheerleader's top large enough to fit over the borrowed shoulder pads, turned it inside out and told him to get out there.

Roddy showed enough skill to get called back for the next couple of tryouts. By the fifth game of the season, he was starting at tight end and defensive back for the Lions while his brother was playing for another team.

Darius remembers not doing well in the tryouts, and his brother succeeding.

"He inspired me to stick with it," Darius said. "I didn't know it was gong to be quite that tough. After watching Roddy I knew I wanted to do it."

They played on the same Chamblee High School team, with Roddy the starting running back and Darius his backup. A favorite memory is Roddy's reaction to Darius' first touchdown. Roddy bounced off the bench, sprinted onto the field and hugged his younger brother for a few moments.

Rod Jones initially thought it was odd that Roddy didn't run off the field with Darius, before realizing his oldest son also was the team's long-snapper and had to handle the extra-point attempt.

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Roddy has always been faster than Darius, though he's willing to admit that his brother can beat him over 20 yards. He wasn't always that gracious.

When Darius was a junior in high school, Roddy came home from college to work out with his brother and father, who also has a training company. Doing pro-agility and L-cone drills, Roddy went first and posted a good time. Darius beat it. Roddy's response: "I'm going again."

People in the park wandered over and watched.

"It was like an Ali-Frazier meeting," Rod Jones said.

Roddy took off. As he got to the finish line, he turned his head and gave his brother a knowing look: You aren't faster than me yet.

"Their competitive level at that point helped their development," Rod Jones said. "Little brother doing everything he could to catch up to big brother and big brother doing everything he could to push him."

Now their college teams will face each other for the first time.

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The Jones family members and friends will gather in Shreveport over the holidays to watch their sons' teams. They will be easy to find. A friend of the family has offered to make half-and-half jerseys: one side Tech, the other Air Force. Darius is No. 21; Roddy wears 20. The family might split up in the stands, with half on one side, half on the other side.  They are considering switching sides at halftime.

They also are working on a Christmas meal so the family can spend the day together. The brothers made it so much easier by playing in the same bowl.

The family is not pulling for one team to win. They want to see a lot of offense and everyone stay healthy. However, Angel Jones said if Brad Jefferson, or any other Tech player, tries to knock Darius' head off he won't be invited to Jones' Stone Mountain home for another home-cooked meal.

"Playing against him in a game that means something, it'll be a very memorable game for me and my family," Roddy Jones said.