From time to time Cats Illustrated catches up with a well-known former Kentucky athlete.

Today we're catching up with former Wildcat football player David Jones, a major contributor for some of the program's more successful teams in the modern era.

Although it hasn't been long since Jones donned the blue and white it sure seems like a lot has changed for the football program located in Lexington. Almost everything has changed.

Jones played for Rich Brooks. Kentucky is now two coaches removed from the man who laid the foundation for a five-year run of postseason appearances.

He committed to Kentucky and played for the Cats before the major facility renovations that have received so much publicity under Mark Stoops.

The former UK athlete has seen plenty of things change in the program that he once knew from the inside. He's got a unique perspective on a lot of things, as a former Wildcat who picked the program when it was in a downswing but saw his hard work pay off during a big period of success.

Now Jones has more perspective than ever.

He can shed light on some of the figures most prominent in the program's modern history from personal experience, including Brooks and his staff members of those years. Now, as a coach himself, perspective is in greater abundance for Jones than ever.

Jones played for Kentucky from 2005-2008 and was a defensive back, return man and occasionally someone who touched the ball on offense - including, famously (thanks to YouTube and modern media), a spectacular across-the-field run that landed Andre Woodson's unit near the goal line in the Swamp against Florida in a 26-7 loss that was much closer than the final score indicated.

He saw ups and downs. Jones enjoyed plenty of success, individually and as part of several Kentucky teams, but he also knew the agony of defeat, both from that first brutal season in 2005 and some of the more disheartening losses in the 2006-2008 seasons even as the program reached bowl games.

He's now the head football coach at Phelps High School in Pike County. This is his first year in that role, and his current job follows six years of coaching in a very different capacity.

Following his Kentucky playing days Jones was signed by the Baltimore Ravens as an undrafted free agent. A long-term NFL career wasn't in the cards for Jones but he did play indoor football professionally and he has kept the game he loves in a prominent part of his life with his decision to pursue a coaching career.

Jones' new job at Phelps will be quite a transition for him. He's been an assistant coach at Belfry High School on Philip Haywood's staff. Belfry is where Jones was part of two state championship teams before arriving as a student-athlete at Kentucky. He's also coached at the University of Pikeville in his post-playing days. There he was on the staff of legendary coach Dudley Hilton, the man who has won more games than any coach in the history of the Commonwealth, counting all levels of football.

"Anybody can become a head coach," Jones told Cats Illustrated. "Why I stayed under Coach Haywood so long is if you really want to be a good head coach you've got to know the ins and outs of everything. There was no better person to learn from than the best in the state of Kentucky."

Haywood's got a good reputation in football circles and the legendary Hilton does as well. That's not a bad coaching tree to come from for a young coach like Jones.

"Coach Haywood just always had a big impact on my personal life," Jones reflected. "My faith and everything else. He just works on you as a man and a person. Like I'll say to other people, he doesn't just coach football. He coaches life. He always told me if I want to be a mentor I need to start coaching."

Jones has a big heart for young football players. Because he's young and was a successful local prep player turned well-known Wildcat, he can relate to high school players in a way that many others can't. He's hosted local camps in the offseason and all of those experiences have helped prepare him for the job he now has.

Still, there's no perfect preparation for being a head coach at any level.

Coaching high school football isn't new to Jones, but it certainly has challenges that coaches at the college and professional levels don't have to deal with. There's all that goes with coaching the game of football, but there are also the challenges that come with coaching and mentoring young players who are still in very formative years, and many of those players come from less fortunate backgrounds.

Jones' own life experiences help him relate on those levels as well.

"It hasn't been too much of an adjustment (being a head coach) because I can relate to a lot of these kids now just because of how I grew up," Jones said. "I was adopted at a young age. Going through poverty -- bad poverty -- and growing up in the projects. I got adopted by a white guy when it wasn't cool around this area. For a lot of these kids I was their role model growing up, which I didn't know at the time. Now that I've been coaching I understand it a lot more. They looked up to me and they still do. I don't have to try so hard so that's worked out perfect for me."

Relating to all kinds of high school students as football players has required Jones to show tough love at times. He says he's not exactly what most would traditionally define as a player's coach, perhaps best illustrated in the person of someone like Pete Carroll, who is known for his big smile and sideline celebrations with players.

But he also doesn't like to box himself in as a stern disciplinarian who runs a very tight ship. Rather, Jones says situations call for different approaches and each young person has his own needs. Knowing which buttons to push with each player, and when, is just as much a part of his job as drawing up plays and teaching schemes.

Interacting with players requires a coach to adapt to each situation, but he said he wants his starting point and foundation to be an uncompromising attention to doing the right thing, no matter what a player or a team might want to do.

"A lot of first-year coaches are confused and want to be their players' buddy. You just can't do that," Jones said. "I come in as a straight up guy and I'm a coach. I'm not their buddy. You have rules and what you expect and they respect you if you stick to that."

Jones' current players at Phelps will often see their coach, the former Wildcat, running on the field and engaging them at their level. That's one benefit of being young as a coach.

"I can still move around with them but I'm blue collar," he said. "You're going to tuck your shirt in. You're going to say, 'Yes sir,' and, 'No sir,' and, 'Yes ma'am,' and, 'No, ma'am.' You have to have a lot of discipline in your program and I will, just because of where I've been with Coach Haywood and Coach (Rich) Brooks."

In many ways Brooks as a coach was a carbon copy of Haywood, Jones' high school coach and professional mentor.

The former Oregon coach turned Kentucky head man could often be seen berating officials and sometimes his own players, and he wasn't exactly the kind of young coach that would go through drills with his players. Still, like Jones, Brooks was known for cultivating relationships with his players, and the new Phelps coach believes that was one of the key ingredients in his success at turning a perennial loser into a consistent bowl team.

College football coaches oversee vast operations. While some coaches in ill-repute plead ignorance and explain the impossibility of being involved in all the details of a program's day-to-day happenings, with 100-man rosters and countless others involved -- and there is some truth nestled in those conveniently-timed defenses - Brooks was hands-on to an extent that many coaches are not.

He wasn't the CEO who simply delegated and watched from a bird's eye view. Brooks might not have been a micro-manager, but he certainly didn't err on the opposite end of the spectrum.

There will be off-field issues everywhere, but Jones says no one could fault Brooks for being detached or out of touch with what was happening in the lives of his players.

"My personal experience, and I can't speak for a guy who didn't play a lot, because I played a lot -- was that I was very close with Coach Brooks," Jones said. "I played on special teams a lot and I was very close with Coach Brooks and Coach (Steve) Ortmayer. I was very close with Coach Brooks for the simple fact that he was one of the guys who recruited me and I had a personal relationship with him. But really he had a personal relationship with just about everybody on the team.

"You'd be surprised," Jones said. "He was very into his team. He was very involved, all the way down to the walk ons. It was incredible. But just speaking for myself, we were very close throughout my time at Kentucky."

Now a coach himself, Jones appreciates the personal touch that Brooks always seemed to have with his players and his teams as a whole. That's among his fondest recollections when he surveys his time as a player and student in Lexington.

But there are plenty of still-vivid football memories as well.

Not many classes of Kentucky recruits in history can stake a claim to three bowl appearances in four seasons. That's the legacy of Jones' Class of 2005.

Jones' fondest memory of a player is connected to one of his most devastating moments on the field.

Fans of the program with good memories will remember well Kentucky's surprising performance in Tuscaloosa against Nick Saban's second team in 2008. Kentucky arrived in Bryant-Denny Stadium as a heavy underdog against a program that was laying the foundation for their recent run of four national championships. That 2008 team won the SEC's West Division and was once a front runner for the BCS title. They lost only to Florida in the league's championship game and then to Utah in the Sugar Bowl.

That 2008 Kentucky team didn't receive the national attention that the 2007 or even the 2006 team did, but on that Saturday in Tuscaloosa they nearly shocked the nation, losing by a narrow score of 17-14. There was a late touchdown to put a scare into the Tide, and Jones remembers well a play that he probably wishes he could take back.

"That game stuck out to me because I got a lot of hate mail afterwards," Jones said with a comfortable laugh that only the healing touch of time and perspective allows. "I didn't recover that fumble on the sideline. It bounced out (of bounds) on me. It was one of those moments, I just figured I could change things for my university and it didn't happen."

The ball had been fumbled by Alabama running back Glen Coffee inside Kentucky's 10-yard line. Alabama would go on to kick a field goal, which put them two possessions up, 17-7.

It was a painful bobble at the time for Jones, because Kentucky's defense had fought so valiantly. But it was made more difficult to stomach when Mike Hartline hit Demoreo Ford on a long touchdown pass that was the game's final score. That led some to speculate that it would have been a tying touchdown. Then again, hypotheticals have limitations.

Either way, Jones sees his contributions in Kentucky's Liberty Bowl win over East Carolina as a form of redemption that erased a sour taste in his mouth from that season.

"My all-time favorite game at Kentucky has to be that Liberty Bowl," he said of the game perhaps best remembered for Ventrell Jenkins' long rumble for a touchdown after a fumble recovery.

That team didn't defeat No. 1 LSU and there weren't the iconic moments of 2006, like when Trevard Lindley picked off an errant Georgia pass in a win over the Bulldogs or when his friend Demoreo Ford scored on a long pass after a converted fake punt against Clemson in the program's first bowl win in more than two decades.

But that team was emblematic of the change that Jones helped bring to Kentucky. A program more known for offense than defense sputtered with the ball for much of the year, and a once-maligned defense held its own, even against mighty Alabama, powering Kentucky to another bowl appearance.

Jones, a winner in high school, is like many others when he reflects on the reasons for the program's success in those years. He attributes much of it to Brooks' hands-on, no-nonsense and stay-the-course approach. But he also points out that the program had the right cast of characters. It was a cast that took pride in playing for not just the university but the state, and included some very successful high school players such as himself. The losing culture only ended when some players with a winning history and a little state pride looked history in the eye and shoved it aside.

"Honestly, I just enjoyed being around our team, our coaching staff, everybody," he said, singling out trainers, managers and the kinds of personnel that are often only appreciated by those inside a program.

"We were a big, tight-knit family. It was unbelievable. Still to this day we all talk," Jones said. "We talk to our coaches on the internet. Coach Hill's the assistant A.D. up there. It was just fun all the time."

Whatever Brooks' demeanor at a given time, whether an angry scowl or demonstrative protests following a controversial call or a player's mistake, his method was accepted because he had the trust of his players. Jones is hoping to build the same kind of positive atmosphere at Phelps, and he believes he has the experience to do that.

"I feel like another reason we were successful is we had a lot of kids from Kentucky on the team," Jones said. "Number one, we had a lot of kids from Kentucky that could play some football, too."

For fans of Kentucky's program in 2016, especially the optimists, Kentucky's recruiting haul last year could be a sign of at least one similar dynamic emerging down the road. Landon Young, Kash Daniel, Drake Jackson and some other leading personalities entering the program were either in-state, local Ohio kids, or loyal recruits who held fast to a vision even when courted by more successful programs. The program is also trying to break a string of losing seasons, just as it was when Jones arrived in Lexington in 2005 following a long and dark period of losing on and off the field.

"I think we had a lot of guys who were all familiar with each other from going through the recruiting process. We had the Johnson brothers, the LaGrange connection and a lot of kids from the same places. Including the staff," Jones said.

It all started with recruiting and the relationships that were forged when Brooks, Ortmayer and the rest of the staff were evaluating prospective high school recruits, such as Jones.

On the topic of recruiting, Jones can somewhat relate to today's high school standouts, but only to a point. He's young enough to have a profile on Rivals.com still accessible to historians of recruiting, but he acknowledges that Twitter and social media have drastically changed the recruiting world in even the short time since he's been out of high school. Jones himself is active on Twitter, a sign of how he can be a part of the world of his players and of young athletes. But he didn't have that when he was being recruited.

"It has changed so much," Jones said. "Growing up, I was heavily recruited coming out of high school, not even having any of that (Twitter, for instance). I just remember ICQ. If I got offered by Auburn, Alabama's right next to them. If I had Twitter and they had known about me, my stats and stuff, the Twitter world just has it right there for you."

Jones didn't participate in the kinds of 7-on-7 passing tournaments that dominate the schedules of so many recruits today, either.

But he's not an old-timer that begrudges new trends and developments that have changed recruiting so quickly.

"I think the 7-on-7 and that stuff is great," he said. "It'll teach a DB how to cover. (Football's) basically an offensive game. They're teaching DB's how to cover better. I love it for DB's, linebackers, skill guys -- I'm a big defensive guy. I love it for that. I had a buddy go hard 7-on-7 out of Louisville. I'm starting to get involved in that. I'm about to start getting into it and a lot of cats are getting offers (because of it)."

The football culture at Kentucky is perhaps discussed too much. It's often a relevant issue, at Kentucky or anywhere else, but the culture is often more the byproduct of wins and losses than the cause of those results. Win more games and nobody faults the culture. Lose and most outside the program's offices will assume the world and use a magnifying glass to find malcontents and personality conflicts.

To fans who celebrated those bowl games during Jones' Kentucky career, the Brooks culture is still a topic of discussion. Andre Woodson, Wesley Woodyard, Jacob Tamme, Keenan Burton and Stevie Johnson are regularly cited not only as high-level performers, but their near-legendary status probably has more to do with their widely-acknowledged leadership qualities on display when the program rose from the ashes to reach respectability.

Some outside of Kentucky, and even some in the state, often ask about the perception of the school as heavily slanted towards basketball. Mark Stoops and his predecessors deal with some recruits -- not all, of course -- who start from the assumption that the fan base is overwhelmingly preoccupied with basketball even to the neglect of the SEC's top sport.

While not all players' experiences or opinions will be identical, Jones is not one who faults the fan base for supporting basketball even year round. That could be because the program does have scores of loyal football fans who have suffered through many tough times. But it's probably also because Jones was in Lexington when the fan base's interest in football reached epic proportions, especially following the win over LSU and culminating in ESPN's College GameDay setup on campus before No. 7 Kentucky hosted No. 17 Florida and Tim Tebow. It would be tough for any player in that era to claim the fans didn't support the program.

"Just speaking on a personal level," Jones reflected. "Our fans are very passionate and down the long stretch you appreciate that. It doesn't put any pressure on you just because it's a basketball school. They've won national championships.

"When it's football season the fans let you know it's football season. It doesn't feel like a basketball school. The BBN is very passionate. That's why we're probably the most hated school, period. Basketball, football, baseball, gymnastics, cheerleading, whatever," he laughed.

"It's hard to explain when you're not a part of the BBN. If you're not a part of it you'll never understand. People outside of it probably think it is (hard for football players). But if you were a part of it you saw how many people were hungry to win."

There were some key events during Jones' time that led to the on-field turnaround beyond Brooks' approach and the desire of local players to change history.

There was Woodson beating out Curtis Pulley in a widely publicized quarterback competition, and Woodson's subsequent emergence as one of the best quarterbacks in the country. That may have been the biggest factor.

Just as the Jared Lorenzen and Dusty Bonner quarterback competition was a hot topic of discussion in Kentucky's media world and with the fans as well, the Woodson-Pulley race dominated football discussion while it raged on. The fans had their views. The coaches made their judgment. The players, such as Jones, observed it from the inside.

No one who remembers that quarterback competition would say it was too similar to the Lorenzen and Bonner competition, which ended with a quarterback who had taken Kentucky to a bowl game transferring to a lower-division program and the dawn of the 'Hefty Lefty' era. But all quarterback competitions are scrutinized and speculation about emotions, factions and everything else runs wild. That was still recent enough that the 24-hour news cycle created a frenzy.

In hindsight, the competition really was that important. But Jones told Cats Illustrated that it was mostly free of drama and the factionalism that sometimes makes such competitions unhealthy for locker rooms.

"I can remember it clear as day," Jones said. "Honestly, man, it was just a competition. Woodson was a professional. He didn't show anything. Just, 'Hey I'm coming to work.' Pulley did the same. At the time Pulley was a freshman and he had some growing up to do. Woodson had that year under him and he knew what was ahead of him. That probably gave Woodson a little bit of an edge.

"Pulley was more athletic. Woodson had a better arm and decision making. Woodson could throw bombs. You didn't see as much of the kind of quarterback that Pulley is like you do today. The Jameis Winston or Cam Newton kind of guy. Woodson was a traditional quarterback and it won it fair and square dealing with everything. Nobody was separated in the locker room and we knew what it was. Woodson was the man. The media might have put it one way but I saw it another way."

Given the rise of Twitter, pop-recruiting news and the entertainment aspect of sports media today, especially since Jones' coaching career began, those media-created challenges have increased for players. Now, because of his own experiences at Kentucky, Jones is able to counsel his players on how to deal with media, what to believe and what to disregard, and how a player should keep his head down and ignore what's unimportant.

"That just showed how strong our locker room was," Jones said, referring to the quarterback competition that preceded Kentucky's turnaround in those years. "Our locker room was very strong. We had a lot of leaders."

Kentucky's win-loss record changed dramatically with Jones in Lexington, and quickly. But he says the seeds of that oft-mentioned winning culture were sown well before the final results became more favorable. He never noticed a bad locker room even when the losses piled up in 2005 when he was a true freshman.

"When I first got there the attitude was that everybody was just hungry to win. We had Keenan Burton, Wesley Woodyard, Andre Woodson and Stevie Johnson had just come in. He came in my freshman season as a JUCO transfer. All of those cats that came in, they were just hungry. Keenan and Wes had experience from the year before and we knew it was going to be a turnaround. We had a heck of an '05 class coming in. We were really good. We had a lot of competition. We had the competition between Pulley and Woodson. I had a battle with Bo Smith and (Antoine) Huffman. You had Braxton Kelley and LaGrange guys battling. It was pretty tough. I guess we just had a lot of hungry guys competing with each other. We knew we were going to be good."

Not many people outside of the football program knew it, especially when Jones was a freshman in 2005.

The former Wildcat played as a true freshman that year but he acknowledges that bypassing a redshirt is seldom ideal for a player or especially for a program. But, Jones believes, that was a testament to the strength of the Class of 2005, regardless of what the recruiting rankings said.

"I was fortunate to make the All-SEC Freshman Team because (he played). Was I ready? No," he said with a chuckle. "It was one of those things you just had to sacrifice and do. Me and Braxton Kelley and Demoreo Ford had to play as true freshmen."

Playing too early might not have been ideal but it helped Jones become better prepared to make big contributions down the road. So when he went on the road with his teammates to Florida in 2006 and made one of the program's more impressive plays with the ball against Florida's fast defense, quieting the Swamp's wild crowd as the Cats trailed only 7-6 at halftime, Jones wasn't a young player anymore. He was tested and a veteran as only a true sophomore. Playing young players early may have hurt the team in 2005, but it was another factor that made the unexpected 2006 turnaround possible.

"We came back that next year and around 18 players had game experience," he said. "We knew we were going to start clicking after that."

As Jones aged in the program so did so many others who are now recognized as aiding in the Cats' resurgence. Winning as sophomores and juniors led to more confidence as juniors and seniors. Young leaders became experienced leaders that commanded the respect of players who would arrive later.

Of course, leadership doesn't automatically translate from one season to the next, and there's no guarantee a program's next batch of recruits will have the same strength of personalities as the last successful one.

Jones knew then-Kentucky assistant coach Joker Phillips well, and he was one of the many players in and formerly of the program who were happy to see him rewarded with the head coach in waiting title and ultimately Brooks' job.

It was difficult for Jones to watch the progress and foundation of Brooks' success gradually and then more rapidly crumble under Phillips' watch. But it was more difficult for him to watch the level of vitriol that was sometimes directed at a man and coach he knew so personally. The view from inside the program is often different than the view of those who cheer for a team without knowing the players as anything more numbers or names on a depth chart.

"Me and Joker, we had a great relationship," Jones said. "Joker was straightforward with you. He'll tell you how it is. That's what I loved about him. It was really tough to see the fans beating up on him so bad because Joker was very passionate about his university. Just playing under him and getting recruited by him, he was one of the bigger reasons I came to the University of Kentucky. Being recruited by Kentucky and Auburn, (Phillips) was one of the main reasons I came to Kentucky. I knew how passionate he was.

"Did he lose his edge or anything like that? Honestly I can't say. I just know how passionate he was. I know he never wanted to see Kentucky go down like it did. Me and Joker always had a great relationship and he was very personable. I loved his wife. He was awesome. His nephew still plays in Kentucky right now and I grew up with those kids. It was tough watching (the program's regression). That was probably the toughest part, just watching the fans beat him up. The fans didn't all know what was going on, the ins and the outs."

The results stand on their own, but that's spoken like a player with loyalty to a coach who wasn't just a coach, but a person.

Now Jones closely follows a Kentucky program that's once again striving to rebuild and even rebrand itself.

Mark Stoops has brought his own approach to Kentucky. His first few seasons at Kentucky have seen more losses than wins, just as did Brooks' early years. While Brooks never brought in recruiting classes with the lofty rankings of the Stoops-era hauls recently, it was indeed ultimately recruiting -- classes like Jones' own in 2005 -- that created the influx of talent and leadership that changed the results.

Stoops is now benefiting from one thing, at least in recruiting, that Brooks and Phillips did not. That would be the vast undertaking that has been Kentucky's facility overhaul. Long before even Brooks arrived at Kentucky the program had upgraded Commonwealth Stadium, but from those years until Stoops' own building project most of the nation's other Power Five conference programs had made major renovations that had left Kentucky's football facilities in the dust.

So Jones knows the recent facility renovations have been needed.

"Nowadays you'll get kids going to Oregon and they'll say, 'Look at their locker room. Look at their uniforms.' And they're winning games," Jones said. "You go to USC or anywhere and the facilities are top notch. They've got all this stuff. Honestly, Kentucky needed to catch up. Stoops needed to catch them up because we were behind big-time. If you want to get these five-star kids, they love the glamour."

That wasn't so much a part of Jones' recruitment.

The coaches recruiting him on Brooks' staff surely sold a good Commonwealth game day atmosphere, the loyalty of the fan base and the nicer parts of Kentucky's buildings and equipment. And for a high school football player, Kentucky's football facilities even in those days were still a major upgrade from what any had used themselves before.

The renovations are helping Kentucky with recruits nowadays, and many of today's prospects do speak of the importance of the building process.

But Jones told Cats Illustrated that Kentucky's facilities were not a hindrance for him as a recruit.

"Honestly it wasn't even a thought in my head. We were happy when we got shakes after our workouts," he said, laughing. "That never even crossed our minds. Tim Couch bought us that turf practice field. We got new turf in the indoor facility. Other than that we never even thought about it. It never came up. We were happy."

Is it possible that the absence of the latest high-tech gadgetry and newer buildings forced Brooks, so to speak, to recruit a kind of player who was less about glitz and more about a blue collar approach?

"One side of me says yes, one says no," Jones replied. "It didn't affect me, but you see what kids are looking for today and a lot of them are looking for that. I don't know how it affected us. I just know we had guys who were ready to work and change things around. Whatever it came from, I know the kinds of guys we had. We just didn't care about that stuff."

Jones' time in the program during those exhilarating years gave him a view of everything fans and pundits talked about, but it's a view that can't be appreciated by those who watched from the outside.

For instance, as the wins increased and as the program generated some hype, especially following the win over LSU, the disappointment following losses increased in some respects. Apathy may have long passed into a distant memory by that time, and that's worse than anything else. But the loss to Florida was crushing for many who were riding high and believing Kentucky could win the SEC East.

It was the loss to Mississippi State the following week, 31-14, that left many scratching their heads.

In at least that case Jones says the pundits were right. The team just didn't have anything left in the tank.

"Week in, week out, you don't get a break on our schedule," Jones said. "We had LSU that year. We had Florida and then it came to Mississippi State. It was just tough. Our bodies ... we just didn't have a lot of depth like that. We had some good players but we didn't have the depth. Our bodies were just done for. It was nothing about the coaches. They protected us. They were getting us in, getting our stretches in and everything. Our bodies just didn't have it."

Jones only has the experience of playing for Kentucky in college, but he can compare the difference between going head-to-head for four quarters with an SEC opponent and the impact of playing games against teams from lesser conferences or divisions.

He said that players in the SEC know the difference. The grind is real, and that's why the win against LSU was followed by disappointing losses down the stretch.

That's a grind that Mark Stoops knows about well. Some of it has been the schedule becoming more difficult. But some has been the product of trying to win an uphill battle against talented SEC rosters who usually have more depth than Kentucky. That depth is evident later in the season much more than in September or early October.

"A lot of people will tell you the SEC's different because of the speed," Jones explained. "From my experience, it's the strength. You're dealing with a player like that, you can tell their weight program's a little different than for these other cats. You can't get away with some things against an SEC guy or someone from Clemson that you can get away with from those schools that aren't as big. We could get away with things in those games that we couldn't (against SEC opponents).

"Every program in the nation has speed guys," he added. "It's the strength. It was more or less the strength and the wear and tear those guys put on you. For me, against the lesser opponents pressing the receiver was a whole lot easier. It's nothing like playing physical against Julio Jones or A.J. Green. You're not used to that."

Jones exhausted his eligibility in Lexington on a high note following that redemption win in the Liberty Bowl. It was Kentucky's third straight bowl game and also the program's third straight bowl win. That level of success wasn't predicted by anyone who followed the program around the time Jones signed his letter of intent with Kentucky in 2005 and was thrust onto the field as a true freshman.

For all of the peaks, and there were many he fondly remembers, there were also valleys. Football is the consummate team sport, so geared to the collective body that it's impossible for one individual to win a game. Nonetheless, the individuals on those massive rosters do have personal goals and ambitions.

Someone like Jones, a two-time state champion, a heralded recruit, a former Freshman All-SEC performer and a long-time college contributor -- well, he had NFL aspirations.

"The toughest thing for me at Kentucky was my injuries," Jones said. "Man, I had nagging injuries. Hamstring injuries. That cut a little bit of my playing time. I did start and all that good stuff, but that messed up my draft (stock). Those nagging injuries. I did get the opportunity because I felt like I had great ability as a return man. That was one of the reasons the Ravens brought me in."

The Ravens' front office told Jones they wanted to try him out because of his ability in the return game and because he had an impressive 40-time. But Jones still believes that those injuries kept him from realizing his full football potential after his Kentucky playing days, just as they slowed him at times in Lexington.

But that's a distant memory, and Jones' recollection of his time in Lexington was overwhelmingly positive. His football playing days are behind him, but he's just as close to the sport as ever. Jones is getting a different view of the game now as a high school head coach, but that's what every level of football and life has been about. Time has seen him grow, mature, learn and change.

But just as he credits Haywood with shaping him and directly influencing the steps he takes now, he gives the same tip of the hat to Brooks, his staff and a level of success at Kentucky that not many other players can claim.