News Report:I wish to return back to Texas Longhorns…

There is an NFL draft tonight, but I won’t have my name called. I made the decision to spend an additional year in Texas. When I would first explain why to people, I would just say the typical things that athletes say.We still have unresolved business. My goal is to return and win the Big 12. I want to assist in team leadership. I still have room to grow in X, Y, and Z.That isn’t the whole story, though.

The reality is more nuanced. It’s related to a topic you won’t hear many athletes discuss: fear. dread of not succeeding. apprehension about the unknown. dread of what will come next.

To be honest, I was worried that I might not be a fit in the NFL, so I chose not to enter the draft. And I was terrified of the consequences of that. In the end, I had to be honest with myself and admit that I wasn’t prepared to consider the possibility that I might not play football the following season. and that I would need to find another task to complete. It really got to me, that possibility’s fear.

I wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me a few years ago that this is how things will work out for me. Because for a very long time, it seemed like this football thing was meant to go in a specific direction.

My older brother was a D-1 player, and my uncle was a Super Bowl player. Everyone has been talking about me as the next Whittington you should be watching on TV on Sundays ever since I was a little child. Then, as fate would have it, I went bonkers in the state finals of my high school career.

I’m awarded five stars. I am the nation’s second-ranked athlete. Furthermore, everyone in my small town in South Texas is aware of who I am. Everyone seems to be talking about me, speculating about my future, and believing that it won’t be long until they can claim to know an NFL player.

When I arrive at UT, everything goes incredibly well. I’m managing. Everything is going according to plan. One spring day, I check to see that ESPN has me listed as a freshman All-America watch list member. Everything was starting to fit.

The second time I ever touched the ball in my first college football game, I tore my groin. Out for the season, just like that. A year later, the same quarter, same end of the field, inside the 10-yard line once more—the same first game. meniscus tear. Third Year? At first, things were going well. Things were starting to get better. I was top five in the conference and leading the team in receiving after six games. Then, in an Oklahoma game, I dove for a ball.

I cannot express how difficult it is to be a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old and feel absolutely certain that something will happen for you, only to have it simply not happen. Football had been my lifelong passion, and over the course of a few years, it was taken away from me repeatedly.

It was too much. My sense of directionlessness stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t fulfilling the role that everyone had always associated me with. After that meniscus tear, I even called my mom back home and expressed my complete disinterest in playing football at one very low point.

“Maybe this isn’t for me, Mom,” was how I felt. Perhaps this is what God is sending me.

“I know y’all are depending on me to do this, and I don’t want to let anyone down, but I just don’t know if I can do it anymore,” I recalled saying to her. And Mom—I mean, she really is the best. She brought me to a halt. “Jordan, you have no one depending on you for anything.”

“You don’t need to be concerned about us.” Mom told me that all she wanted was for me to do what was best for me, to follow my heart, and to not give up until I was certain that doing so would make me happier. It said something like, “Get your degree, and we’ll work things out from there.” I still have your back, though.