While coaches Troy Calhoun of Air Force and Paul Johnson of Georgia Tech prepare game plans for their meeting Dec. 27 in the Independence Bowl, Dareisse Jones of Atlanta is working on some important strategy of her own.
Her game plan has family harmony hanging in the balance.
What makes her task so difficult is that she has sons on both teams. Roddy Jones plays for Tech and Darius Jones plays for Air Force.
What to do?
“We’ve talked about sitting on one side for a half and the other side for the second half,” Jones said from her home in Stone Mountain, Ga. “We’ll have enough family members at the game to be represented on both sides of the field.”
“We’re going to root for the offense,” said father Rod Jones, because both of the Jones brothers play on offense. “We’ll hope to see a lot of points.”
Whatever is decided, this is a decision that can’t be taken lightly. The game in Shreveport, La., will be the first time the brothers have played against each other.
“They’ve always been very close to each other,” said Angel Jones, as she’s known by her sons. “As the season went along, we thought there might be an outside chance they would meet in a bowl game. Unless it ends in a tie, it’ll be hard on the family to balance the excitement.”
The brothers aren’t worried.
“My mom’s in charge of how they work it out,” said Roddy Jones, a junior starter in Georgia Tech’s triple-option backfield.
“I know they’ve talked about sitting on one side and wearing Air Force apparel for a half and then switching sides and wearing Georgia Tech apparel the second half,” Darius Jones, a sophomore backup at halfback, said during Air Force’s practice last week. “That might be the best way to do it.”
Roddy Jones has the edge in terms of statistics. He has rushed for 336 yards and scored four touchdowns on 50 carries. Darius Jones has 73 yards and no touchdowns in eight attempts for the Falcons.
Both the Yellow Jackets and the Falcons thrive on the running game. Georgia Tech leads the nation in rushing at 327 yards a game and Air Force is second at 318 yards a game.
Roddy and Darius didn’t waste time heating up the rivalry by contacting each other minutes after the bowl-game announcement.
“We knew we were going before they did,” Darius Jones said. “I called him right away when we found out. We’ve been able to talk online. We’ll be teasing each other about this game no matter the outcome.”
Roddy Jones noted there are other connections between the teams.
“Air Force has a lot of players from Georgia who know players here,” he said. “It’s an interesting mix from two teams from opposite sides of the nation.”
Air Force has nearly a dozen players from Georgia, including Jones, quarterback Tim Jefferson, linebacker Andre Morris and tailback Asher Clark, a 1,000-yard rusher this season.
Irv Moss: 303-954-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com
