Bailey's '98 Season Still Extraordinary

Jonas Jennings can only smile and laugh and shake his head at the memories, which remain vivid and fresh.

We're sitting in Jennings' office in the Georgia football wing of Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall. Jennings is a beloved former Bulldog offensive tackle (1997-2000) that spent seven seasons in the NFL and is now the beloved director of player development for head coach Kirby Smart, his former Georgia teammate.

But none of that is what has Jennings' large shoulders bouncing up and down. The big man is describing how he used to get upfield as quickly as possible on certain screen passes, thinking he was going to plow the road for the speedy receiver, his roommate, that would be coming along directly.

"About the time I used to turn up, thinking I had the lead block to the end zone, about the time I hit my block and look up, Champ's 50 yards away already. He's passed me that fast and I swear I'm running as fast as I can," Jennings said.

How does that happen? How did so many of those kinds of things happen during a season in 1998, the likes of which we may never again see?

"Because he's Champ Bailey," Jennings said.

There were three Bailey brothers that did a lot of good things at Georgia: Ronald, Champ and Boss. All three were excellent athletes, but there was only one Champ. He wasn't just good during his three seasons in Athens, before being drafted seventh overall by Washington in 1998 and launching what will be a Hall of Fame career, he was extraordinary.

Champ Bailey was a shutdown cornerback from the very beginning, as a freshman in 1996. It was during his sophomore season that then-coach Jim Donnan really started to use Bailey as an offensive weapon, with Bailey ending up that season with 12 receptions for 234 yards and five rushes, as well as 11 kickoff returns.

But it was in Bailey's final season, as a junior in 1998, 20 years ago now, that excellence merged with the extraordinary.

"It's kind of surreal thinking back, 20 years, jeez," Bailey said during a recent phone interview.

"He's the best athlete I've ever coached," Donnan told the New York Times in a feature story that ran about midway through that 1998 season, when people around the country started to take notice of the superstar cornerback becoming a two-way star — a three-way star, really, when you add in how effective he was as a return man.

"I've coached a lot of good players but he's the best all-around player I ever coached," Donnan told me earlier this week, "just because of his ability to dominate, whether it was his defense or his offense or the special teams plays."

How do you sum up everything Bailey did during that 1998 season? Let's start with some numbers:

Bailey caught 47 passes for 744 yards (a 15.8 yards-per-catch average) and five touchdowns. He ran the ball 16 times for 84 yards and returned 12 kickoffs and four punts. All this while being one of the best defensive players in the country, someone offenses avoided as much as possible, which is why Bailey had just three interceptions that season (Smart led the team with five).

At the end of the season Bailey received the Bronko Nagurski Award, which is given to the player voted the best defensive player on the country. Georgia has had a lot of defensive superstars over the years but Bailey remains the only one to claim the prestigious award.

Bailey played 1,070 snaps during the 1998 season: 607 on defense, 343 on offense and 120 on special teams. He maxed out at 119 plays against Auburn, one of seven games in which he topped 100 plays.

"When I think back to how much preparation went into that, I can't believe the unlimited amount of energy I had," Bailey said.

It was boundless energy, according to Jennings, who said that after practice sometimes they would go play pickup basketball together. "He's a freak, man," is one way Jennings summed up his roomie.

"When we used to hoop. I used to throw him alley-oops; given our sizes it should be the other way, he should be throwing it to the big man," Jennings said, again laughing at the memories.

Donnan said he stressed to his star player, one of many future NFL greats on that 1998 squad, that if all those plays ever got to be too much, let him know. No, that didn't happen.

"He had just an unbelievable competitive spirit," Donnan said. "I think against Auburn that year he played almost 120 plays [it was 119] and I think he got mad when we took him out."

Ask Bailey now about those days and you think maybe he'll remember being tired all the time. Nope. The man was just having fun doing what he loved to do.

"My mentality was: if you can do it, do it all," he said.

And doing it all was not limited to playing as many football snaps as possible or lighting things up in pickup basketball. Georgia's track and field program also got to experience some Champ Bailey greatness.

Who is Georgia's record holder in the men's indoor long jump? Yep, Champ Bailey, who soared 25 feet, 10.75 inches at the SEC Championships in 1998. Bailey is also fifth on the UGA outdoor list with a leap of 25-8.75, and he also cleared 6-10 in the high jump despite little training or technique.

Bailey has accomplished so much on the football field, in college and professionally (a 12-time Pro Bowler, the most ever for a cornerback), but his long jump record still means a lot to him.

"I bring it up from time to time and people are surprised by that. It's funny because I'm not the only football player that ran track, but to have a record still standing today, 20 years later, that's amazing to me," he said.

In fact, among the very few regrets Bailey has from his days as an elite athlete is that he didn't find some way to try to make the U.S. Olympic team in 2000 in the long jump. The gold-medal winning jump in Sydney covered 27 feet, 3.55 inches and the top American placed ninth with a jump of 25-8.66.

"I feel like after my rookie season in the NFL [in 1999], I felt like I was the best athlete I could probably be in my life; that was probably my most athletic point of my life, right around 21 or 22, and I'm just mad that I didn't pursue those dreams," he said. "I always thought about the Olympics but then I look at the jumps that won and none of them were more than two feet further than me, so I'm thinking that if I actually put in time and get better at it, I would have been great at it and I might have had a chance to place in the Olympics."

Bailey never had an Olympic moment, but he had countless during an extraordinary football career at Georgia and in the NFL with Washington and Denver.

"He was just a dominating player and that's really all you can say about him," Donnan said. "He was a dominant player, high school, college and pro."

And perhaps never more dominant than 20 years ago, during that 1998 season when he never seemed to leave the field.

Bailey is in Jacksonville, Fla., this weekend for the Georgia-Florida game and is actually hosting an event, The Players Reception, Friday from 5-9 p.m. at Adams Street Station. The event put on by Bailey is a networking experience for former Georgia and Florida players. Click here for more information: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/champ-bailey-presents-the-players-reception-florida-v-georgia-2018-tickets-50366171575.

John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.

University of Georgia Athletics

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