Driven by loss but not defined by it, Utah States Jordan Love continues to progress

LOGAN, Utah — Almost a decade ago, Dennis Hicks I dropped off his son at a seventh-grade basketball tryout at Rosedale Middle School in Bakersfield, Calif.

The gym was like many other middle school gymnasiums in metropolitan areas — surrounded by bright white walls, fluorescent lights hanging down toward the floor. And like most middle school tryouts before the age of helicopter sports parents, there were about 40 to 50 kids taking part and just two parents standing up against the wall: Dennis and one other father suited up in a police uniform.

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“I was wondering, ‘Who is his kid?’ ” Dennis said.

When the tryouts were over and basketball practices began that year, Dennis wondered whether he would see that same father, if his son would make the team. And at the first practice, there was the dad in his police uniform.

Eventually the two talked, and Dennis learned that the man in the uniform was Orbin Love and his son, Jordan, was the gangly one with the gray shoes and natural athleticism. Orbin and Dennis, present at most practices, offered their help to the coach, who was attempting to lead both the seventh- and eighth-grade teams. That offer to help quickly led to them running most of the practices by themselves.

“He was really quiet, but he knew the game, and he knew what the kids needed to learn, and he was teaching old-school fundamentals,” Dennis said. “He said, ‘Kids need to be developed. They need to be developed.’ ”

As Orbin and Dennis became closer, their sons Jordan and Dennis II did, too. Dennis learned the details about Orbin that those close to him already knew — that those white Air Force 1s that were always on his feet were his absolute favorite shoes, that he was into old-school R&B, that he loved helping out at the family’s church as a youth pastor, that Jordan was named after Michael Jordan (and that Orbin’s wife, Anna, had nixed the name “Michael Jordan Love,” so instead he became “Jordan Alexander Love”).

But mostly, Dennis saw the way Orbin emphasized the process of learning and growing, that all the players, Jordan especially, needed to put more into the game if they hoped to get anything out — it was all about progress at any rate. Jordan needed to keep pushing himself, Orbin knew, to try to make 10-out-of-10 free throws in the driveway at night, because that was the kind of stuff that was going to help him when he was starting on the varsity basketball team five years later.

Jordan continued to progress, faster in basketball than in other sports. When Jordan and Dennis II went to Liberty High School in Bakersfield, Jordan stuck to football and basketball, while Dennis played basketball and ran track.

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But Dennis I and his son weren’t there the Saturday that Orbin didn’t show up to the basketball game.

Jordan was a rising sophomore, and his team was playing in a summer tournament. At just 14, he was one of the youngest players on the team, but he was naturally talented beyond his years. At that point basketball had panned out better for him at that point than football, as he had played wide receiver, safety and backup quarterback on the freshman team the previous fall.

Jordan didn’t notice during the game when his younger sister, Alexis, walked into the gym without her dad or how his mom left immediately after Alexis arrived. When his aunt picked uphim and his sister from the game, didn’t think anything of it until she started driving them back to her house instead of their own. Jordan asked why, and he remembers her saying that their mom had to go do something, so she would take them home in a bit.

But when they pulled into the driveway, his aunt put the car in park and paused.

“She just said it straight up — that’s the only way you can be with it, I feel like,” Love said. “She just told us, ‘Your dad committed suicide.’”

Orbin had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in their family’s home, in his and Anna’s bedroom, after dropping off Jordan’s sister at the basketball game. Orbin was 16 days shy of his 52nd birthday.

In San Diego, Dennis Hicks I got a phone call from a friend relaying the news. The family hadn’t been at that basketball tournament because Dennis II was finishing up his summer track season.

“I’m like, ‘No, that can’t be — you know how rumors start; they must be talking about someone else,’ ” Hicks I said. “I said, ‘We’ll get back and I’ll go by and talk to Orbin, because I don’t want to believe these calls that we’re getting.’ ”

But Jordan didn’t have the same disbelief. He knew that his father had attempted this once before. And he knew that his dad had been on blood pressure medication and it had recently been switched. There were times when Jordan would look at his father and know that he was in a bit of a daze and unfocused, which was unusual for Orbin.

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“It just messed with his head,” Jordan said. “And he was not the same for a little bit. You could tell.”

And Jordan thought of that in the driveway and later when they went into his aunt’s house. He thought of it that evening when his mom came to get him and his sister, and when they drove back to their house, where they slept that night.

It was the middle of July, not long until preseason camp for football was set to begin. And Jordan, who didn’t want to discuss his emotions with anyone, decided that instead of opening up, he would shut down. He’d withdraw himself a little bit here and there, and when it came to sports, he’d just quit.

When he told Hicks II his plans, his friend strongly urged him to reconsider.

“I told him, ‘You need to just play this year. … You need to just give it one more year,’ ” Hicks II said. “He needed it to keep him busy so he didn’t just have idle time to sit there and think.”

That season, hard as it was without his dad in the stands, Jordan felt a little bit better.

“I was young, and it was a lot,” Jordan said. “But I think that’s what really helped me — playing football, being able to take my mind off things, just being around my friends.”

As a junior and senior at Liberty High School, Jordan started at quarterback on the varsity team, making small strides in both seasons. As a junior, he threw for 1,930 yards and 18 touchdowns. As a senior, he racked up 2,148 yards and 24 touchdowns. But those numbers didn’t garner the kind of attention that other California high school quarterbacks received on the recruiting scene, and ultimately, he accepted his only FBS scholarship offer: Utah State.

He arrived in Logan as a lanky 6-foot-3, 180-pound freshman. Certainly, the areas in which he needed to improve were many. So as he had done under the tutelage of his father in his driveway shooting free throws, he did the same at Utah State. He just quietly went to work.

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Jordan redshirted his first year and earned the starting job for the final six games of the 2017 season. As a redshirt sophomore in 2018, he set five single-season school records and was named second-team All-Mountain West. His play piqued the attention of NFL folks, who began pegging him as a potential first-round pick for the 2020 NFL Draft.

His 3,567 passing yards and 32 passing touchdowns last season make him smile a bit — they mean progress. It’s better than his freshman year.

Former Utah State offensive coordinator David Yost remembered not only the strides Love made over those three years but also how he made them.

“He was the guy that came in the office and kinda snuck in the side door, went up, found a meeting room, went in and watched video, studied video, and did what he wanted and needed to do to get himself ready to play,” Yost said. “We’d be watching video and I’d say something, and he’d answer the question before we even got the video watched. And I’d ask, ‘When did you watch this?’ He goes, ‘I came in this morning between classes.’ ‘Oh, OK, where’d you go?’ He said he just went in the receiver room, the running back room. He wasn’t the guy walking into the offensive staff room to make sure everybody saw him and saying, ‘Hey, everybody! I’m here to watch video!’ ”

Orbin wasn’t that way, either.

And now, Love enters his redshirt junior year at Utah State, primed to be the next non-Power 5 QB to be highly sought after in the NFL Draft. Outside of his play and numbers, he’s not flashy, not one to draw attention to himself or his story. He doesn’t want anyone to know if he has been in the weight room or the film room. And he doesn’t wear his father’s name on a wristband or put his initials on his jersey.

He has a road map about progress that he has followed, even if the person who gave it to him is no longer with him. And Jordan just wants to keep getting better.

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“He could’ve just given up and everyone would’ve understood … just look what he went through,” Hicks I said. “But he didn’t give in. He got stronger somehow. … A lot of that was just himself. Somehow, he seems like he got stronger.”

Contributing: Max Olson

(Top photo by Joe Camporeale / USA TODAY Sports)

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