An example:
Before Jones spent 45 minutes in early July posing for pictures and shaking hands at a fundraising event at Sandusky's Kalahari Resort and Waterpark, he was calling two of the most important men in his life to tell them he had just finished a workout and was running a little late.
Jones swears he called Meyer and Ted Ginn Sr., the event's namesake, to let them know his situation. And, truth be told, there was construction on the Ohio turnpike and a small-town funeral procession had clogged some of the back roads. Either way, upon arrival, Jones tried to casually blend in near the entrance until he was waved to the stage.
Jones, of course, blends in nowhere these days, at least not in Ohio. He eventually received a prolonged standing ovation that was followed by Meyer taking the microphone.
"He's either late because he was stuck in traffic," Meyer said, "or he's late because he's Cardale."
Chronic tardiness, as the stories go, was a staple for Jones in Meyer's first two-plus seasons as Ohio State's coach. That went for football meetings and activities. When it came to class, he sometimes wouldn't go at all. Though he was actually a better than 3.0 student at the time of his "classes are POINTLESS" and "we came to play football" tweets in 2012, they're now characterized as the kind of lapse in judgment and lack of awareness that held Jones back — and almost pushed him out of Ohio State altogether.
"Coach Meyer never asked me to change who I am," Jones said. "He just wanted me to take things more seriously. I'll say it. I wasn't living up to the standards."
On the banquet circuit last spring, Meyer told the story of those first viral tweets — remember, kids, that the delete button is largely worthless — and how he wasn't even sure at first what Twitter was and how they'd been so largely disseminated.
"I was just thinking I was going to jump his ass when I got ahold of him," Meyer said.
Fast forward 30 months and Jones decided to play a Twitter prank that might have had Meyer wanting to jump his ass again. It was May 1. He grabbed his phone and fired off a series of tweets saying he was transferring to the University of Akron. He thanked Buckeye Nation for everything and said he was ready for a new challenge. The immediate responses varied from calling him a liar, to disbelief, to Akron students telling him he'd love the new Chipotle that recently opened on the west end of campus.
Eventually, Jones came clean, calling it a "May Fool's" joke. It was a Friday afternoon at a light football time of the year, so maybe his timing was good; Meyer didn't find out about the Akron tweets until much later. Jones got plenty of response from inside the Ohio State football building though — "Cardale, quit being a dumbass," basically — and it quickly faded away.
Asked this summer about those Akron tweets, Jones says he was pretty sure that Meyer didn't know about them and firm that "it will never happen again. The real, honest, true story is I really thought it was April 1. April Fool's Day. Honestly."
That's his story, and he's sticking to it.
Meyer wants it to be known that he never said Jones was a bad kid. He's been coaching — and winning — for a long time, and he's seen lots of kids who need a push, who respond to different motivations, who initially think classes are pointless.
Some last. Some don't.
"[Cardale is] a very good person," Meyer says. "His stuff is just stuff, he's late for this ... it's stuff. It's not the headline news. He's got incredible leadership skills, but they've been hidden. We keep trying to pull them out."
It's probably not coincidence that Meyer has reinforced in recent public comments that leadership ability and "the whole package" will weigh heavily in the ultimate decision as to who starts at quarterback for the Buckeyes this season. It's no coincidence either that he's mentioned the impressive leadership skills Jones has shown, even if they need some dusting.
He knows, after all, that Jones spends a lot of time on Twitter, where all things Buckeyes are discussed freely and openly. The two have had their own free and open discussions too, back when Meyer's concerns ran deeper than what kind of salsa Jones prefers on his burritos.
At points in both 2012 and 2013, Meyer was unsure Jones would even remain at Ohio State. When the coaching staff pushed its priorities on Jones, he sometimes pushed back. Sometimes, he didn't respond at all. Meyer didn't recruit Jones, and in the college football world that's often an easy way out for both parties. But Jones wasn't making anything easy.
So well after the first round of tweets and a handful of other incidents, there was a meeting. It was in Meyer's office, and it was about Jones, and his antics, and his decisions, and his future. His high school coach, Ted Ginn Sr., and his non-legal guardian, Michelle Nash, were there too.
Meyer has a policy for such meetings. Essentially, all who are close to and care about the player are welcome. They're also welcome to bring their opinions, just not any excuses.
Both sides present their cases and when the meeting ends, it's either Meyer's way or Interstate 71.
And though Meyer admitted last spring that it was mostly "nonsense" that had left Jones "with one foot out the door" before the air was cleared, that meeting took place and no excuses were made.
Ginn, the former school security guard turned Ginn Academy namesake, is the longtime football coach at Cleveland's Glenville High School. Ginn is in the business of changing and saving lives — winning football games is secondary, he's long said. The Glenville program had produced 2006 Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith, eventual first-round NFL picks Ted Ginn Jr. and Donte Whitner, and has sent as many as a dozen players to Division I college programs in a single year. That's a credit to Ginn, who knew Cardale Jones before Jones was even in middle school, because Jones would hang around Glenville football practices.
Florence Jones raised six children, working multiple jobs while trying to make ends meet. Cardale, her youngest, has said he never knew his father. With Cardale struggling early in high school and in danger of falling in with the wrong crowd, Ginn contacted Nash, a longtime friend, and asked her to serve as a mentor of sorts to Jones, to provide meals and an ear and things his mother could not. Jones eventually moved in with Nash, who has no children of her own, and has referred to her as his guardian and surrogate mother.
Asked what he remembers about that meeting in Meyer's office, Jones said: "Just the simple fact that Coach Meyer talks about how those meetings usually go, how the parents or what he calls 'a third uncle' ask why they kid is getting treated a certain way. [He says] they point the finger and play the blame game. My mom wasn't like that at all. Coach Ginn wasn't like that at all.
"My mom came away from that meeting knowing Coach Meyer had my best interest in mind, not just as a football player but as a person and a student at Ohio State."
Said Meyer of the meeting: "It was real. There were hugs, tears, confessions — the whole deal. We came out okay."
There was an understanding, and also conditions, and also some more bumps on the road. Tom Herman, Ohio State's quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator for the past three seasons, made Jones sign a contract stating he could miss only a certain number of classes and maintain a certain grade-point average or he would lose his scholarship. At one point last year, Herman made Jones wear a dunce cap in a quarterback meeting when he wasn't meeting his responsibilities.
As recently as the week of that famous Michigan game last November, Jones was back in Meyer's doghouse. Ohio State safety Tyvis Powell, a longtime friend and roommate of Jones, told reporters that Jones "got into it with the coaches about some [academic issue]. I think he didn't go to tutoring or something like that and they were going to take his tickets. And Cardale was like, 'I don't care because I'm not playing anyway, so I don't care what you do. He said, 'I think they forgot that I don't play.'
"But after that day, I think that's when I saw him change and be more focused and watch more film and throw the ball more to receivers. All the way up to [that] game, Cardale was like, 'For what? What am I going to do that for?' And then, boom, he ended up playing."
In the week leading up to his first start in the Big Ten Championship game vs. Wisconsin, Ginn told everyone who asked that "people will be surprised" and said that Jones was ready not only for Wisconsin and a week of preparation as a starter, but for everything that would come with success.
And now?
"A lot has changed, but the goals are the same," Ginn says. "He was confident before. He was prepared before. People just didn't know it. Some of that was Cardale's fault. He made some mistakes, sure. Those are in the past. Now that he really sees what's in front of him, it's all about going forward."
Does Ginn have any doubts?
"He's a grown man," Ginn says. "He's blessed and ready for all of this."
