With his decision to transfer from the University of Illinois, the enigma that is the oldest offspring of one Michael Jeffrey Jordan continues to evolve.
The junior, who is entering his last year of eligibility for college basketball has two choices — ending his collegiate basketball career or transferring to a Division II or III school where he can play immediately (Division I would require Jordan to sit out one season and lose a year of eligibility which would end his career).
First, from a sports standpoint, the effect on the Fighting Illini is really nil. With two heralded incoming freshmen coming in to the program that can handle the ball (Crandall Head and Jereme Richmond), one more guard coming back from a redshirt as a freshman (Joe Bertrand, who many of the Illini on their Twitter feeds this offseason have called the team’s best dunker and most athletic player), the ongoing development of Brandon Paul and D. J. Richardson and the return of Demetri McCamey after pulling himself out of the NBA Draft, it wasn’t like Jordan was going to find a lot of minutes on the court.
From a basketball standpoint, this actually makes a little bit of sense.
Also, though the Illini now have a scholarship open for next season, don’t expect them to fill that slot. All that would do is tie up a scholarship for the all-important 2011 recruiting class — a class that, in the state of Illinois, is one of the deepest in the history of the state — and the Illini and head coach Bruce Weber surely will not want to do that. In ESPN’s rankings of the top 60 prospects for the 2011 season, the state of Illinois has 7 players listed there, or almost 12 percent of the list.
So, no, no one will replace Jordan on the roster, and with so many players there to fill the void, except for the fact that MJeff won’t show up at random Illinois games any more, you won’t even know that young Jeffrey is gone.
So, in that vein, good luck to him. Hopefully he finds what he is looking for on the court at a smaller school.
This is where it gets a little tricky, though — what does the decision say about Jeff Jordan the young man?
We all hold our athletes to a higher caliber, and we all know that. Jeff Jordan isn’t any different. But the strange saga of young Mr. Jordan is…well…strange, to say the least.
Coming out of high school, one of the biggest knocks on Jordan was his desire to actually play the game. There was certainly talent there — not on the line of his father, but who is? — but did he actually want to PLAY big time college hoops? That question seemed to be answered prior to the beginning of last school year when Jordan left the team to pursue his academic interests.
Jordan was always viewed as the more academic of the two Jordan sons (Marcus, at UCF, was always looked at as the better player and athlete), and it always seemed as though he was the one in line to take over the family’s business interests, and nothing in his academic record at Illinois, where he majored in business, did anything to dispense with that theory.
Then, last October, he came to Bruce Weber and said he missed the game and wanted to come back. OK, fine. He still had some passion for the game and wanted to come back. I can accept that.
The transfer that now comes, however, is a little bit confusing to me.
When Jordan came back to the team, he knew how the minutes situation was going to look for the 2010-2011 season. It wasn’t a secret that, whether Demetri McCamey came back or not, it was going to be a VERY crowded backcourt for the Illini. So why not transfer last summer to a smaller Division I school and play his senior season at a bigger program?
Not to mention the problem that he has already quit before. Meaning a school will need to have a scholarship open, and be willing to commit it to a kid that can’t seem to make up his mind.
Even if it is for only one season, I find it hard to believe that many premier schools at the smaller level would take that risk, only to have him decide to bail later on.
Again, the whole saga of young Jeffrey Jordan has been strange. in his personal life, for his degree and for his future, hopefully he finds what he is looking for. He’s giving up an extremely high-quality education at the University of Illinois — and that is what I thought college was always supposed to be about for him.And maybe there won’t be any effects of that felt in his life at all.
For his sake, let’s all hope that’s true.
—Paul Schmidt