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And so it was, as the most frenzied football recruiting chase ever at O'Hara culminated with a fake, a twist and one final surprise. Kevin Jones had a college. As for those who found the issue worth round-the-clock attention? They had a life.
"It's a high-pressure business," said O'Hara football coach George Stratts. "You don't want to make a mistake. Those coaches can't afford to make a mistake."
It is a strange but gripping treadmill act, those college coaches so afraid to error. For if they do not fuss over the right teenagers, they will not be allowed to fuss over more teenagers next year.
Yet it was not only the coaches who fueled the perpetual motion machine that was the Kevin Jones Experience. It was the media, too -- newspapers, as well as TV.
"The worst were the recruiting services -- the Internet guys," Jones said, in the quiet after the twister. "They called all the time, trying to find out where I was going. At the end, it was every day, and up to 11, 11:30 at night, too."
While the NCAA has established and is said to enforce specific times and dates during which a high school player can be contacted by recruiters, the fans and computer geeks are not always intimately familiar with the finest print in those rule books. So they, too, joined a mob scene.
If there were a postcard from the recruitment of Kevin Jones, it would be this: TV cameras, their night-vision lamps searing, catching Joe Paterno arriving for a sit-down with the Jones family to negotiate terms for training, as if five undefeated seasons were not evidence that something done around Beaver Stadium works.
"On those days when they were permitted to recruit players, it was like gangbusters," Stratts said. "They were like hounds on a trail. But I thought Kevin handled it very well. And I thought the family handled it well, too."
If there must be such a carry-on, Jones seems as legitimate a reason as any, what with his Delaware County record 5,790 career yards and 83 touchdowns, his 4.23 time in the 40 and his High School Heisman Award for the Northeast Region. But as if someone once said of the Super Bowl, if it is the ultimate game, why will they play one next year, too? And although Delaware County will not soon enjoy his likes again, there soon will be another Kevin Jones someplace -- with those gangbuster recruiters fighting the TV cameramen for prime access.
The circus simply will move elsewhere, leaving Jones and O'Hara fans with the souvenirs.
"I'm ready," Jones said. "I was ready for college last year, I think. But I did want to come back and win that championship. We were able to do that. So we will live forever."
It will just be quieter, that's all.
"I guess what I will remember is all those coaches coming to my house," the 6-2, 205-pound Chester resident said. "That was a cool experience. Unconsciously, it probably kept me up at night, though. I just wasn't sleeping. It was all on my mind, I guess."
So yesterday it ended as all these chase scenes do, not with a crash, but with a press conference in a schoolroom, with classmates literally straining to peek into the window for a better view of the show. Frankly, given tragic modern realities, it is just as good that a high school parking lot is jammed with TV minivans for such a feel-good story.
"I'm tired," Kevin Jones said afterward. "The whole thing was very tiresome. But it is going to pay off, I think."
Why not? Jones has the opportunity to receive an education -- he will major in business -- at a university of high academic regard, even if he rushes for 5,790 fewer yards than he did in high school.
Should Jones have picked Penn State? Would the Big Ten have been a better test than the Big East? Should the All-Delco runner have stayed closer to home? To dwell on any of that would only add to the lunacy.
Speaking of which -- apparently in the spirit of Jones making his announcement on the first day of the Chinese Year of the Snake -- the phone in the Jones home will continue to ring for a while. Despite the verbal commitment to Virginia Tech, the official early signing period does not begin until Feb. 7.
"The Tennessee coaches told me they will continue to stay on me," Jones said. "They said they will call me up until midnight on the day I sign."
Will he listen?
"Nah," Virginia Tech's latest recruit said. "I probably won't even answer the phone."
It was time, after all, for the circus to end. The best running back in Delaware County history had earned the disappearing act.
To contact Jack McCaffery, e-mail sports@delcotimes.com
