{"id":88140,"date":"2026-06-10T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T16:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=88140"},"modified":"2026-06-10T10:10:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:10:06","slug":"80-days-away-from-college-football-kickoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2026\/06\/10\/80-days-away-from-college-football-kickoff\/","title":{"rendered":"80 Days Away From College Football Kickoff"},"content":{"rendered":"
We are 80 days away from college football kickoff. \u00a0 The countdown<\/a> keeps on moving. Today we have Ed “Too Tall” Jones of Tennessee State University and Ron Beagle of Navy. Enjoy your hump day and check back tomorrow for #79 in our\u00a0<\/span>countdown<\/a> to kickoff. Enjoy.<\/div>\n

Ed \u201cToo Tall\u201d Jones <\/span>Days Away From College Football Kickoff<\/h2>\n
Ed \u201cToo Tall\u201d Jones enrolled at TSU as a heavily-recruited basketball player, but he left the team after two seasons to focus on football. Tennessee State was not prepared for a football player of Jones\u2019 at 6\u20198\u201d to suit up for the team, so Jones was given a uniform that didn\u2019t quite fit. Much to the delight of his teammates, Jones ended up looking like a child who had outgrown his clothes. His appearance led teammates to call him \u201cToo Tall\u201d because he looked too tall to play football. The nickname followed him during his entire professional football career.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Thanks in part to Jones\u2019s quickly improving skills, Coach Merritt\u2019s teams, which included several other players who later joined the National Football League, won the Rice Bowl in 1971, the Pioneer Bowl in 1972, and went undefeated in 1973. The 1973 team was also named the College Division Wire Poll Champion.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Jones left TSU as the school\u2019s second leading sacker, having amassed 38 for his career. His collegiate performance caught the attention of NFL teams across the country.<\/span><\/div>\n
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He completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Health and Physical Education in 1974.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Jones gained national attention in 1974 when the Dallas Cowboys selected him first overall in the NFL Draft. He played defensive end for Dallas for fifteen seasons, retiring at the end of 1989 with a club record of 194 career starts.<\/span><\/div>\n
While a member of \u201cAmerica\u2019s team,\u201d Jones started twenty playoff games, including three Super Bowls. He was selected to participate in three straight Pro Bowls from 1981 to 1983 and earned All-Pro honors in 1981 and 1982.<\/span><\/div>\n
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In 1979, Jones left the Cowboys for a year to try professional boxing and came back with a 6-0 record. After retiring, he stayed in Dallas and became a partner in an investment group with his former teammate Preston Pearson. While playing, Jones supported the Special Olympics and took part in many other charitable activities.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Another Great # 80 Ron Beagle, Navy<\/b><\/h3>\n
Ron Beagle<\/a> played during an era when the end position required players to stay on the field for the entire game. He was known for his strong blocking, defensive skills, and ability to catch passes for Navy. From 1953 to 1955, Beagle caught 64 passes, mostly from George Welsh, and scored eight touchdowns. He was named All-America twice, including a unanimous selection in 1955, and won the Maxwell Trophy as college player of the year in 1954. <\/span><\/div>\n
Beagle also earned All-America honors in lacrosse. <\/span><\/div>\n
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After graduating, he served in the Marines before starting a business in Sacramento, California.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Beagle married Jo Ann Jones, a Navy nurse. Their daughter, Ronda, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1984, making the Beagles one of the first families with both a father and daughter as Academy graduates. Another unique part of his story is that two men, nine years apart, came from the same high school, Purcell in Cincinnati, played football at Navy, won the Maxwell Trophy, were named All-America, and were later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. This only happened once, and those two men were Ron Beagle and Roger Staubach.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Editor’s Note: The countdown to college football kickoff has been a series on the Last Word on College Football social media platforms for the past 9 years. \u00a0They consisted of a photo and a small blurb for each player, with the jersey corresponding to the number of days until kickoff. \u00a0The rank of the players is sourced from articles by Bleacher Report, Fox Sports, and The Athletic. There are also some favorite players of the Last Word on College Football writers. \u00a0Their bios are sourced from multiple online sources, including but not limited to the College Football Hall of Fame, their Heisman profiles, and school websites.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Main Photo: Joe Rudis \/ The Tennessean<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are 80 days away from college football kickoff. \u00a0 The countdown keeps on moving. Today we have Ed “Too Tall” Jones of Tennessee State University and Ron Beagle of Navy. Enjoy your hump day and check back tomorrow for #79 in our\u00a0countdown to kickoff. Enjoy. Ed \u201cToo Tall\u201d Jones Days Away From College Football […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1643,"featured_media":88222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10906,4162],"tags":[36159,5676,36160],"class_list":["post-88140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-cfb","category-fcs","tag-maxwell-trophy","tag-navy-football","tag-tennessee-state"],"modified_by":"Kate Pearson Halyburton, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88140"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88223,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88140\/revisions\/88223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}