National Football League

Cardale Jones came to play school after all

Published Jan. 13, 2015 7:02 a.m. ET

foxsports

Today, Ohio State QB Cardale Jones is on top of the world. He's a national champion after a historic three-game postseason run that only came about when he was pressed into duty after starting the season as the third-string QB.

A little over two years ago, Jones was a punchline when an ill-advised tweet about classes being pointless for football players went viral.

"Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain't come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS," the quickly deleted tweet read.

We come not to bury Jones all over again for the tweet. He was a freshman, stuff happens. And the dude was rocking a 3.0 GPA as an OSU scholar-athlete at the time, so he was obviously going to classes whether he liked it or not.

The point here is to show how far he's come since then.

Taking a backseat as Braxton Miller and then J.T. Barrett became Heisman-caliber stars in Urban Meyer's offense, Jones stayed the course and clearly kept working at his craft. And along the way, he seems to have discovered an appreciation for the college experience and all it requires.

Just take a look at what he had to say after beating Oregon 42-20 in Monday's title game and being approached about potentially leaving early for the NFL.

"It's definitely a 'who knows' right now. It's up in the air sort of because my No. 1 priority is to graduate from the Ohio State University and walking away with something that nobody can take away from me. Football definitely has a timetable on it, but my degree is hands down one of the most important things to me."

Yes, he's not ruling out the NFL. But he also sounds like someone who plans to have that diploma in hand either way.

And with Miller and Barrett both potentially coming back, keeping his options open sounds pretty darn smart.