HOOVER, Ala.— Robby Ashford used to be a terrible baseball player. Then he turned 6 years old.
After about a year, Ashford emerged as a buddingbaseball talent. That’s also the year he started playing football.
By third grade, Ashford was playing in a travel baseball league. By fourth grade, he was executing a high school playbook as a quarterback in his pee-wee football league.
Almost a decade later, Ashford, a senior at Hoover High School in Alabama,has blossomed into a coveted dual-sport athlete.
Like Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, Ashford plans to play quarterback and baseball in college. And like Murray, who was selected in the first round of the MLB and NFL drafts, Ashford thinks he can parlay his talents into a professional career.
With Murray's recent success,more and more athletes might be willing to play two sports in college.
“It’s just something I’ve done my whole life,” Ashford told the Clarion Ledger. “I just take it as a blessing to be able to play both, and to be pretty good at them at the same time.”
Ashford is ranked the No. 8 dual-threat quarterback recruit in the nation by 247Sports. Last summer, he was invited to participate in the Under Armour All-America baseball game at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
Ashfordalso has been invited to play in the Under Armour All-America football game in January. Only four athletes have ever played in both games.The list includes Murray, former Ole Miss wide receiver A.J. Brown and Ole Miss freshman Jerrion Ealy.
Ashford plans to bring his talents to Oxford to playfootball and baseball at Ole Miss, and there are athletes in college right now who signed up to do the same at Ole Miss and other schools.
Mississippi State's Brad Cumbest plays football and baseball. LSU defensive back Maurice Hampton, who also played in both Under Armour All-America games, is contributing on special teams as a true freshman.
Ealy has scored seven touchdowns in seven games for Ole Miss. Ealy’s teammate John Rhys Plumlee, also a true freshman, has started sevengames at quarterback, rushing for nearly 1,000 yards. And Notre Dame tight end Cole Kmet is the Fighting Irish’s second-leading receiver this fall after pitching 18.2 innings with a 2.89 ERA for Notre Dame in the spring.
Whether any of these players will end up as top-10 picks in two leagues like Murray is yet to be seen. But ifMurray set any example, it’s that juggling two sports in college and excelling at both is possible for this generation.
“I knew wherever I was going to go they’d have to let me play baseball and football,” Ashford said. “I told a lot of schools we were interested, but I couldn’t come because they just wanted me to play football. Or some of them just wanted me to play baseball. After seeing [Murray], I thought ‘Yeah, I can do this.’”
Leading the way in Oxford
Ashford’s commitment to Ole Miss came about four months after Ealy and Plumlee signed with the Rebels to play both sports.
So why Ole Miss? What’s making Oxford a premierdestination for elite two-sport athletes?
Sure, Ole Miss plays in a top football conference and is a perennial contender in baseball. But that applies to plenty of schools. Since the dawn of the College Football Playoff, there are eight colleges that have gone to a College World Series and finished a football season in the top 10. Three of those schools — Auburn, LSU and Florida — are in the SEC. But Ole Miss isn’t on the list.
To Ashford, Ole Miss separated itself from others with “the plan.” Ashford says 90 minutes into his official visit for football, which also included a visit with the baseball coaching staff, he knew Ole Miss was home.
Other schools didn’t seem as committed to letting Ashford play both sports. LSU only wanted Ashford as a baseball player. Colorado only wanted him as a football player. Vanderbilt said he could play both, but Ashford said he got the impression he wouldbe encouraged to focus more on baseball there.
Ole Miss, meanwhile, encouraged Ashford to do both. This encouragement was intentional, said Mike Clement, the Rebels' baseball hitting coach. He helped recruit Ashford, Plumlee and Ealy.
“It takes a lot of planning from the recruiting side of things,” Clement said. “And really just sitting them down and giving them a level of comfort in the recruiting process that both of our staffs will work together. We’ll work together with them, with their schedule.
"All they want to know in the recruiting process from our standpoint is that we’re genuinely going to give them an opportunity to play both sports. It’s not just lip service to them to get them to sign a National Letter of Intent.”
From the baseball perspective, recruiting football players is a no-brainer. Unlike in football, where you get 85 full scholarships to build your team, college baseball programs only get 11.7,which is a severe handicap in a sport with rostersas big as 35 or 40 players. Most baseball players are on partial scholarship, or aren't on scholarship at all.
But, as Clement explained, signing an athlete to play football and baseball creates aloophole.The NCAA rule book says that if an athlete is listed on the roster for a full-scholarship sport and a partial-scholarship sport, that athlete must be included in the full-scholarship sport’s scholarship count. That means Ealy, Plumlee or Ashford won’t have to count against the baseball squad’s 11.7 scholarships so long as they remain on the football roster.
Of course, this only becomes a loophole if the athlete is genuinely good enough to play both sports. There aren’t many football programs that would willingly sacrifice a full scholarship just to help the baseball team.
As Ealy and Plumlee have shown this football season, football isn’t sacrificing anything. This is a true collaboration.
“A lot of times a guy is way better at one sport, but he wants to do both so it becomes a little bit of what I would call ‘eyewash,’” Clement said. “We’re going to help football out, but we know full well they’re not going to play baseball. But it’s no skin off our back because it’s not our scholarship dollars. With [Plumlee and Ealy], it’s a little bit different. We feel like they’re both good enough to play both sports."
Plumlee said back in August that he wasn’t sure how spring would unfold but looked forward to the juggling act. Ealy has joked that he won’t answer baseball questions until January. During football season, both guys are football players first.
That said, Clement says Ealy and Plumlee find time to hit in the batting cages a couple times a week. At least for now, baseball is a priority for both of them, just as it’s a priority for Ashford.
Ole Miss understands this. That’s at least one reason why Oxford is becoming a destination for a new generation of multi-dimensional athletes.
Can the trend survive?
One major reason Murray’s ascendance to two-sport prominence was such a surprise has been the growing trend of specialization in youth sports. It’s harder and harder for kids to play multiple sports when playing one sport can be a year-round endeavor.
High school football seasons are in the fall, but weight training sessions begin in the winter, and 7-on-7 skills circuits take up entire summers for elite recruits. AAU basketball tournaments last throughout the spring and summer, while high school seasons span the fall and winter. And one of the biggest annual baseball showcases was held from Oct. 10-14, in the heart of high school football season.
In an article published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017, Patrick S. Buckley et al., found that 67.7% of the 856 college athletes they surveyed specialized in one sport as a child. A whopping 80.6% of those athletes thought specialization made them better athletes.
The problem? That doesn’t necessarily have to be true. In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology in 2014, Richard D. Ginsburg et al., polled more than 700 Minor League Baseball players and found that the average age when a player specialized in baseball was 15 years old. More than half of players surveyed (52%) said they specialized after they turned 17.
Buckley’s study seems to support Ginsburg’s data. Though two-thirds of college athletes specialized in adolescence, only 46% of the 1,731 professional athletes surveyed specialized.
Clement said he can see the tides shifting away from overspecialization.
Five years ago, he wouldn’t have said that. But now, thanks in large part to the increased prominence of multitasking in youth culture, Clement said he hasseen more recruits willing to eschew showcase tournaments in favor of playing football, basketball, wrestling, track and field or whatever other sport they please.
This doesn’t mean the next cohort of athletes will be a super-generation of Murray and Ashford clones. But if a kid wants to be as good at sports as Murray or Ashford, playing multiple sports is a good place to start.
Ashford thinks so, at least.
“It keeps me going," he said. "I don’t really have time to take a break. Which I love, because I’m playing two sports I love. But it keeps me in better shape. It keeps my mind going. It lets me know that I can’t slack off because I know someone’s going to be working to get better than me at both sports. It makes my drive want to go even higher.”
SEC Two-Sport freshmen
Three true freshmen plan to play football and baseball in the SEC this year. Baseball season hasn't started yet, but here's how they've performed on the gridiron so far:
- Ole Miss RB Jerrion Ealy: 640 rushing yards, 140 receiving yards, 317 returning yards, seven total touchdowns
- Ole Miss QB John Rhys Plumlee: 789 passing yards, 989 rushing yards, 15total touchdowns
- LSU DB Maurice Hampton: Eight games played, one tackle
Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.
