By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Even though Baylor football won just 19 games in his five years, Jason Smith was part of the foundation that eventually led to a pair of Big 12 championships, nine bowl games in 10 years and a shiny new stadium on the river.
"Those guys don't have a clue what we had to go through in order for that facility to be built," said Smith, an All-American offensive tackle as a senior in 2008 and the No. 2 overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft. "When your knees got hurt back then, they would just rub some cream on it and maybe do a little e-stim. When they get hurt now, they've got massage therapists and underwater treadmills to run on. I had to run the stadium (steps) to get my resistance training in."
Those stadium steps that he started running as an 18-year-old freshman helped Smith earn a spot in the 2020 Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame that includes fellow football players Brad Goebel and Andrew Melontree, tennis All-Americans Lenka Broosova and Lars Poerschke, softball's Brette Reagan, volleyball's Anna Breyfogle and track All-American Todd Cooper.
"It was a surreal moment where something you worked really hard for finally happened," Smith said of the Hall of Fame call he got from Walter Abercrombie. "And it wasn't just about me, it was about my whole senior class – Dwain Crawford, Vinnie Rhodes, Marlon Price, Dan Gay, Geoff Nelson, Ben Hixson and Jacoby Jones. We were the guys that came in as freshmen and left together as seniors. We completed the task and were able to say we were instrumental in building the program."
As a 6-5, 220-pound tight end who was deemed "not fast enough" to play defensive end on the next level, Smith got a lot of "piggyback offers" because of Dallas W.T. White High School teammates Micah Howeth and DeMaurier Thompson.
Ohio State, coming off a 2002 national championship, offered the more heralded Howeth a scholarship and Smith a visit. But ultimately, Smith picked Baylor, a name that was familiar to him mainly because his grandmother worked at the Baylor Medical Center for 40 years.
"The word 'Baylor' was kind of always around us,'' he said. "I had some friends from Baylor that were rodeo associates, and college was a smooth transition of life because it wasn't too far from home."
Smith also made a smooth transition to offensive tackle from tight end, the position he played as a redshirt freshman when he made eight starts and hauled in six passes for 70 yards and one touchdown, earning Most improved Player honors on a team that went 5-6.
W.T. White assistant coach Billy Thompson, a former defensive end at TCU, laid out a plan for him to put on some weight and eat himself into an offensive lineman.
"He told me the reason why he didn't go to the pros is because he wasn't fast enough," Smith said of Thompson. "He said, 'Right now, you're slow, and it's very unlikely that you're going to get fast enough to play defensive end. You play offensive tackle great, so the way to get to offensive tackle is you've got to eat your way there. If you do that, who knows where you'll end up.'''
The starter at right tackle in all 12 games as a sophomore in 2006, Smith moved to left tackle the next year and earned honorable mention All-Big 12 honors despite missing five games with a knee injury.
Receiving a third-round grade, Smith was thinking about declaring a year early for the NFL Draft until an agent told him, "you're not good enough to play in the NFL . . . yet."
To be a first-round draft pick, the agent told him, "you have to be the best offensive lineman on your team, the best player on offense, the best player on your team, the best player in your conference, the best player in your region."
"That helped me mentally that an outsider was telling me that you're no good, no matter what your papers or your peers around you are telling you," Smith said. "That's somebody who's really evaluating you the same way the NFL is going to evaluate you telling you you're not that good. He told me to spend this year training and preparing to be that."
First-year offensive line coach Randy Clements promised Smith that if "you trust in me and believe in what I teach you," that he could develop into a first-round draft pick. Smith was Baylor's first non-special teams All-American in 13 years and first Baylor player taken in the first round since defensive end Darryl Gardener was drafted with the 20th pick overall by the Miami Dolphins.
"Leading up to the draft, everything that I talked about was promoting Baylor football," he said. "I was just a symbol of what's to come from Baylor – a lot more first-rounders, a lot more draft picks, a winning program. It wasn't just about me. You could have put me in a green and gold suit just to make sure everyone knew it was about Baylor. Once I got to St. Louis, it was about me, about me becoming a pro player, me having to adjust. Me, me, me."
After signing a six-year contract worth up to $61 million, with $33 million in guarantees, Smith started 26 games in three seasons with the Rams and finished out his pro career with one season as a backup with the New York Jets.
"There were some things that were said about me at the end of my career that troubled me at first," he said. "I had to learn to take comfort in what I did do, not what I didn't do. . . . The truth is I played as hard as I could every down. A lot of players get hurt from being lazy, from standing around. I got my concussions from playing too hard."
Smith and his wife, Dacie, have a 5-year-old son, Jate, and a 2-year-old daughter, Drue, and live in Fairfield, Texas, where they are faithful members of Cornerstone Full Gospel Church. The Smiths operate Big Boy Ranch Transportation, a trucking company that services oil field operations in Louisiana.
"The coronavirus helped us solidify what we're doing and who we are," Smith said of the business. "You have to start from the ground up, acknowledging God and take it one day at a time, one step at a time. I like to run before I walk, so I just take off running. Maybe I'll be the only one and I'll get ahead of everybody. In business, sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Just like life. Everything has been a learning curve, a growing process."
Due to COVID-19, arrangements for the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame banquet are still pending.
"in" - Google News
July 07, 2020 at 11:02PM
https://ift.tt/2Z4VEgN
A BRICK IN THE FOUNDATION - BaylorBears.com
"in" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MLa3Y1
https://ift.tt/2YrnuUx
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "A BRICK IN THE FOUNDATION - BaylorBears.com"
Post a Comment