Story by Thomas Corhern
Cookeville Herald-Citizen Sports
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COOKEVILLE — Tennessee Tech head football coach Watson Brown is entering his 30th season as a head coach this year.
To put things in perspective, Golden Eagles senior safety Marty Jones has seen a fifth of it.
In fact, Jones, who is in his NCAA-granted sixth year via medical redshirts with the Tech football team, will have his third degree from the university by the time the 2014-15 academic year ends to go along with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree he received earlier this month in finance.
“Marty’s going to leave here with more degrees than anyone who’s ever played college football,” Brown joked. “It’s all been injury-based, but he had to miss two full seasons.”
But six years? There aren’t a lot of players who have gotten to do that.
“It’s exciting,” Jones said. “This is something I’ve been working toward. Not being able to play much with the team that won the championship in 2011 inspired me to keep working because I want to be a part of another championship team.”
Jones entered the Tech program in 2009 and had productive seasons in 2009 and 2010. But in 2011 — the year the Golden Eagles won the Ohio Valley Conference — Jones was sidelined with a knee injury in the preseason. He came back ready to go in 2012, but after the second game of the year, another injury cut his year short.
But in 2013, Jones started all 12 games and finished second on the team and third in the OVC in total tackles with 98, including 16 tackles against Indiana State, 14 against UT Martin and 10 against Jacksonville State and Wisconsin.
The NCAA granted him medical redshirts for both the 2011 and 2012 campaigns.
“It was more of a sense of relief (when the NCAA granted the sixth year),” Jones said. “This is something we had been working on for a while, and with the help of Mandy Thatcher in Tech’s compliance office and getting all the documents from (team physician) Doc (Richard) Williams. We expected it to come through, but once it did, it was a sense of relief and time to get back to work.”
And Jones hasn’t been afraid to take on the leadership role.
“When Marty has played, he’s been really good,” Brown said. “He’s been an all-OVC guy. He makes tackles. He’s our quarterback (on defense) and gets us lined up. What’s also really neat about Marty is when he didn’t play, he’s also been really good. He was one of our best leaders when he had to sit out those two years. It was devastating to lose him in the second scrimmage in 2011, because we played with a true freshman at that point with Austin Tallant and had to move Taylor Hennigan — and neither one had played there before. But Marty helped them, coached them up. He was there during games and cheered them on.
“That’s what’s neat about Marty, whether he was on the field or not. It’s easy when you’re on the field, but it’s a special kid when he’s not and that’s what he’s been to us.”
