Jones out with Tide, likes Ducks
- Updated: July 19, 2014
By Al Muskewitz
East Alabama Sports Today
Ulric Jones says his favorite color is neon green. Good thing. He might be wearing it soon.
Jones, the former Oxford defensive lineman now at Butler (Kan.) Community College, has dropped the committed to Alabama he trumpeted in social media in January for somewhere on the West Coast.
He’s particularly hot on Oregon right now. But he’s also interested in Southern Cal and California. All three schools told him he’d be able to get on the field his first year there, he said.
“Nothing really happened (against Alabama),” Jones said Saturday in a phone interview from Kansas. “It’s one of those things I have to make the best decision for me and I feel that was best.
“There always stood a chance I could go back, but as of right now I just wanted to open up my options.”
Jones, 6-foot-7 and 280 pounds, said he hasn’t committed to Oregon, but was looking hard at the Ducks. His visits, he said, “are coming soon.” He said he’d make a decision in November and hopes to enroll in his new program in January.
He didn’t say Alabama had done anything to turn his head and he didn’t pay attention to the Tide’s recent signing class.
“All I know is my commitment is not to Alabama anymore,” he said. “There’s still a chance I could (bring it back), but right now my options are open.”
Yet, the West Coast seems such a departure for a player who said at the time of his initial commitment “I was destined to play in the SEC.”
But he likes the idea of checking out new things.
“I guess it’s something new that I looked into that I never had a chance to look into coming out of high school,” he said. “It kind of opened my eyes to varying my options. I just wanted to take a look at something different, explore something different.”
There is something to be said for all those uniform combinations they have at Oregon.
“I look good in green and yellow; I look good in all white,” Jones said. “My favorite color is neon green.”
Al Muskewitz is Content Editor/Senior Writer of East Alabama Sports Today. He can be reached at musky@wrightmediacorp.com and followed on Twitter at @easportstoday1.
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