This day in LSU football history of course didn’t see any victories on the field. But it scored one nonetheless.

On July 3, 2003, Sai’vion Jones was born in Louisiana. Two decades later, he would become one of those LSU football stories that feels almost old-fashioned now because the sport he’s been a part of has changed so quickly.

That is not to romanticize football or the young man into something larger than they are. The game has always had its bread-and-circus element, and college football has never been as innocent as the old footage pretends. But if the sport still has a defense worth making, it has to include stories like this one: a young man comes to a university, stays there, grows there, and leaves as much more than just a promising recruiting profile on 247.

The Commitment

Back in May 2020, when Jones committed to LSU out of St James, it felt like the kind of recruiting win that was destined to be. The Tigers had just finished the greatest season in college football history, Ed Orgeron was still selling Louisiana with a full heart and a loud “Geaux Tigahs,” and Jones was exactly the kind of in-state defensive lineman LSU was supposed to keep home. He was listed then as a 6-5, 245-pound four-star prospect, the No. 11 weak-side defensive end in the country, and a player coming off a junior season with 103 tackles, 17 tackles for loss, 13 sacks, 25 quarterback hurries and two forced fumbles. He had also helped St James go 15-0 and win its first state title since 1979. The Hayride ran a piece on his commitment. Here is one pull from it:

“LSU was the school for me because they made me feel at home most,” Jones said. “They got a great coaching staff, great facility, and it was just a great school to pick.”

The 6-5, 245-pounder out of St James is a four-star prospect and the No. 11 weak-side defensive end in the country. He made a huge leap in the new Top247 player rankings on Wednesday, moving from the nation’s No. 194 overall player to No. 154. As a junior, he posted 103 tackles with 17 of those for loss, 13 sacks, 25 quarterback hurries, and two forced fumbles.

Check out SI Country’s film study of Jones here and prepared to be wowed.

Jones is currently the No. 8 player in the state of Louisiana, earning LHSAA Class 3A MVP honors and helping the Wildcats to their first state title since 1979 with a 15-0 record last year.

Needless to say, the LSU coaching staff was ecstatic to land Jones’ commitment.

“They were pretty hyped up, and they wanted to get on the phone. When I’m over there, I just feel like I’m at home. My family is very excited.”

Jones spoke specifically about how special Coach Orgeron is.

“He played a big role, and I think Coach O is an awesome coach,” Jones said. “I like the energy he pulls out and how he cares for the players not only on the field, but also off the field.”

In addition to Coach O and the coaching staff, Jones said he just felt at home at LSU, despite being impressed with the Tigers’ magical run in 2019.

“That’s something you can’t get better than. 15-0 and the national championship—that’s amazing,” he said. “It didn’t play a huge role, though. It was more about how it affects my family, and I just feel like it was the best choice.”

247Sports recruiting analyst Gabe Brooks added that, with his next-level athleticism, he’s got a chance to star on Sundays when his time is up at LSU.

“You absolutely have to be encouraged by Sai’vion Jones’ overall athletic profile,” Brooks said. “He’s in the 6-foot-5, 245-pound range, his tape made the requisite jump from sophomore to junior seasons, and he competes in multiple track and field events: shot put, discus, and believe or not, high jump. That multi-sport participation for a player of his size gives you plenty of hope for his long-term ceiling.”

6-5, 245 coming out of high school. He is now playing for the Denver Broncos at 6-5, 289, seeing limited action as a rookie in 2025.

The language around that 2020 commitment now reads almost like a telegraph in another time period. Jones talked about LSU making him feel at home, about the coaching staff, about family, and about the school being the right choice. There was still, at least in the language, some sense that the school mattered as a school, and that the football part was supposed to live inside that larger reality. That was only six years ago, but now in the NIL-portal era it may as well have occurred back in the leather helmet days. Today, a player can be “home” on Monday, decommitting to play at another school a month later with the demand that we respect his decision, in the portal by December, and playing for a third or fourth team by the time he finishes college.

That is what makes Jones worth remembering, perhaps because he wasn’t the quintessential star, and why he provides a nice little story on this down time of LSU sports, an illustration of what Coach Lane Kiffin has been talking about when it comes to the most important part of building a program. No, you can’t win with a bunch of two-stars. But you had better have a good number of third round draft picks sprinkled among your top-shelf talent.

Jones Is the Player Kiffin Is Talking About

LSU under Kiffin is unapologetically leaning into the professional reality of college football, with a front office and meticulous NIL strategy. Yet even in that world, or especially in that world, there is still unlimited value in a player like Jones. It is exactly why the front-office structure has been put in place. The hope is that Kiffin, General Manager Billy Glasscock, and the larger football operation are organizing themselves around the inescapable reality of modern roster construction and doing it with high school recruits that have the integrity to stick.

And perhaps the most important component of succeeding at that is understanding the human being behind the star-studded recruiting profile. That should be obvious at a university, though modern college football has developed the remarkable talent, and society has certainly aided in it, of forgetting what the university is supposed to be.

That last part has become increasingly important with Kiffin. On Tyrann Mathieu’s “In the Bayou” podcast recently, Kiffin discussed the importance of evaluating and developing the whole person, including how a player handles money. His point was simple: How driven will a young player remain if he realizes many of his financial dreams years before the NFL, especially after growing up with very little?

It is hardly a throwaway point in this era, one I’ve personally made in conversations in the beginning of NIL. Kiffin recognizes that a staff that cannot help young players deal with sudden attention, sudden money, and sudden leverage over the coach will eventually watch some of those same players drift into bad decisions, bad advice, or another program’s depth chart. That is not just a roster problem but more importantly a formation problem, which is what college athletics was supposed to care about before the sport came to speak almost entirely in market and transactional terms.

Football can build discipline, toughness, patience, loyalty, and courage. It can also train a young man to believe the world exists only to applaud him.

Final Thoughts

Despite the hype coming out of high school, Sai’vion Jones did not become an instant superstar, but he stayed and developed. He played through coaching change, and roster turnover, and inside a sport and a peer group that was becoming less patient by the month. By the end of his LSU career, he had appeared in 51 games, started 29, posted 99 tackles, 17 tackles for loss, 11.5 sacks, 17 quarterback hurries and three forced fumbles. His best year came as a senior in 2024, when he started all 13 games and finished with 40 tackles, 7.5 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks. LSU notes that he closed his career by starting 27 consecutive games.

The payoff came after all the hard work. The Denver Broncos selected Jones in the third round of the 2025 NFL Draft with the 101st overall pick.

That is a story worth remembering on this July 3. Sure, LSU football needs five-stars, highly regarded transfers, NIL impact, front-office structure and all of Coach Kiffin’s psychological moves. Nobody serious can pretend otherwise. But Jones is a reminder that the old virtues Louisiana was built on still exist: local roots, physical and mental development, loyalty, and the willingness to wait to become more in year four than you were in year one.

Those virtues do not make football sacred, and they do not rescue the whole spectacle from its many sins. But they do show that some glimmer of hope can still happen inside it.

Maybe that is where the old LSU and the new LSU have to meet. Kiffin’s front-office model may help LSU win the modern roster game, but the best version of that model will still embrace players who can be more than financial assets. It will embrace players who can be coached, challenged, retained, and grown into men.

In today’s college football, that almost feels rebellious. To some of Jones’ peers, it may have seemed silly.

But for LSU, it’ll be the difference between building a serious football program inside a serious university and merely managing a circus act.