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LAS VEGAS — Here’s everything you need to know about Jeremy Maclin and his passion for the university where he became a two-time All-American: On Monday, he arrived in Las Vegas for his induction ceremony into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame with one question for the Mizzou Athletics contingent that joined him to celebrate.
“Who can we get in next?” he asked.
We’ll get to that eventually, Jeremy. For now, this week was all about your Mizzou legacy.
The last few days at the Aria Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip were dedicated to honoring college football’s latest class of luminaries — headliners Tim Tebow and Reggie Bush, plus 15 other players and four coaches — and for Maclin, it was another chance to reflect on an incredible, though brief, run at Mizzou. And, man, did he run. After missing his freshman season, Maclin raced through the Big 12 Conference and the Mizzou record books in 2007-08, becoming the most electric and prolific all-purpose playmaker the program has ever seen. Maclin, 35 and five years removed from his last season in the NFL, treasures his time at Mizzou, more now than ever before. He got the call about his Hall of Fame induction last January.
“And ever since that day, I’ve just been reflecting about the whole journey and everything that happened when I was at Mizzou — but then also everything that I’ve gone through just in my life in general,” he told me here Tuesday, a few hours before the black-tie NFF induction ceremony. “To be sitting up there, considering the circumstances that I had to go through and really just growing up, I’m thankful and grateful to be in this position.”
On Monday, Maclin took part in a reception hosted by the Southeastern Conference to honor the inductees who spent their college careers at current SEC institutions, including Florida’s Tebow, Tennessee’s Eric Berry, former Georgia head coach Mark Richt and former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer. After the reception, Mizzou Athletics hosted a dinner for Maclin and his family, including his wife, Adia; his mother, Patti; his surrogate parents, Jeff and Cindy Parres; and Adia’s father and sister. Some important figures from his Mizzou past joined as well: former Tigers head coach Gary Pinkel and his wife, Missy; former Mizzou coach and current UNLV head coach Barry Odom and his wife, Tia; former Mizzou assistant Cornell Ford, who recruited Maclin out of St. Louis and Kirkwood High; and former Mizzou team physician Dr. Pat Smith, who made the whole week possible 17 years ago when he repaired Maclin’s knee from the catastrophic injury that wiped out his freshman season.
Over dinner, the group shared stories, laughs and a few tears reminiscing on how their lives intersected and impacted one another.
“All these men played a huge role,” Maclin said. “Coach Ford and G.P. got me to Missouri. Coach Odom was young in the game at the time, but I could always talk to him because he was a guy who played (at Mizzou), so I could ask him questions that maybe some of the other guys couldn’t answer. And then Dr. Smith. He didn’t want to say this last night (at dinner), but they thought I wouldn’t ever play any more. That’s how messed up my knee was. But he trusted his process and they were able to get me back on the football field better than ever.”
Little known fact shared over dinner: The final time Jeremy touched the football in a Mizzou uniform was a mistake. A beautiful mistake. Tied in overtime with Northwestern in the 2008 Alamo Bowl, Maclin ran the wrong route in the red zone.
“I ran a slant. I was supposed to run a bubble,” he said. “The play was supposed to be slant-bubble. Ended up going slant-slant. We do that have that call in the playbook but for whatever reason, I thought I got (the signal right) and I ran slant. But Chase (Daniel) threw the ball to where the other guy might have been, but I guess he saw me.”
The rest is history — and so was Jeremy’s college career. But he wasn’t exactly certain in the moment, especially when he returned to the team hotel after the Alamo Bowl.
“When I was walking through the hotel lobby, everybody was screaming, ‘One more year!'” he recalled. “That was really cool. It spoke volumes to what I meant to them, but little did they know they meant that much to me as well.”
The star power in the ballroom Tuesday night underscored the event’s prestige. The ceremony kicked off with one of the event’s best features: Every Hall of Famer in attendance gathers backstage and is introduced to the crowd one at a time. Among Tuesday’s attendees: Peyton Manning, Steve Spurrier, Marcus Allen, Vince Young, Bill Snyder … and Pinkel, who made a return trip to Las Vegas after his induction ceremony last year.
It was appropriate that Pinkel and Maclin were inducted into the Hall of Fame in consecutive years. Without each other, would they have enjoyed Hall of Fame careers?
Maclin’s college career was a relatively small but jam-packed body of work. He appeared in just 28 games — Mizzou was 23-5 those two seasons, with two Big 12 North championships — and caught 182 passes for 2,315 yards and 22 touchdowns. He also ran for six touchdowns, scored three times on punt returns and took two kickoff returns to the end zone. “The Kid From Kirkwood” as radio play-by-play voice Mike Kelly called him, set the NCAA freshman record for all-purpose yards with 2,776 in 2007. In 2008, he led the NCAA in all-purpose yards (202.4 per game) and shattered the program’s single-season records for receptions (102), receiving yards (1,260) and touchdown catches (13).
Maclin, who left Mizzou after the 2008 season to enter the NFL draft, still thinks about what could have been had he stuck around longer. He doesn’t regret entering the league at the time, but it was by no means an easy decision to leave behind his close friends and coaches.
“You know when it does hit me a little bit is when I think, if I did that in two years, what could I have done in four years?” he said. “That’s kind of how I started thinking. But I think it’s a testament to really what we had going on at the University of Missouri at the time and how talented we were and how many good football players we had. Sometimes practice was more competitive than the games. I think it elevated everybody’s level of play. Like a bunch of the guys here have said, (the Hall of Fame) is not just an individual award. I couldn’t do the things that I did without Chase giving me the ball or things like that. I’m just fortunate enough to have played with a lot, a lot of good players.”
Including three who remain his closest friends. Though scattered across the country with their own families and careers, Maclin, fellow receiver Danario Alexander, linebacker Sean Weatherspoon and cornerback Kevin Rutland remain tight. (They’re even planning to launch a new podcast. Stay tuned.) All three were with him for the Tigers’ home game against LSU on Oct. 7, along with Daniel and another dozen former teammates, when Mizzou surprised Maclin by adding his name to Memorial Stadium’s Ring of Honor. Daniel and Weatherspoon unveiled Maclin’s name along the brick façade on the stadium’s west side — directly looking across from Pinkel’s name on the east side, revealed last fall. Mizzou and Maclin’s close teammates successfully kept the ceremony a secret — and seemed every bit as touched by the honor as No. 9 himself.
A couple Mizzou legends pulling a surprise on another legend.
Congrats to @jmac___19, the newest member of the Mizzou Ring of Honor. pic.twitter.com/Q7no7cPIRH
— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) October 7, 2023
“To see those guys come back and even some of the guys I haven’t kept in touch with, to just see the enjoyment, man, I’m getting chills right now,” Maclin said. “But that moment was extremely special. I think everyone understood collectively what we did. That was history — and it all started with G.P. I think it was a salute to everybody that was involved.”
These days, Maclin pours himself into the next generation of players. He just finished his third season as the head coach at Kirkwood High. At the Aria on Tuesday, a high school player approached Maclin and asked for some advice. What did you enjoy more, returning punts or kickoffs?
“For me,” he said, “it’s punt because I always felt like if you can make one person miss, you’ve got a good chance to score.”
The young man: The son of fellow Hall of Fame inductee Terance Mathis, the former All-American receiver at New Mexico and longtime Atlanta Falcon.
Later Tuesday night, Maclin became Mizzou’s eighth player inducted into the Hall of Fame and the first who played in the 21st Century. The NFF avoids electing players from the same program in consecutive years, which means another Mizzou player won’t get the call until the Class of 2025 at the earliest.
That’s where Maclin’s curiosity kicked in. Shortly after arriving at Monday’s SEC reception, he quizzed myself and others from Mizzou on which potential Tigers might someday join him in the Hall of Fame. Former defensive end Justin Smith (1998-00) was also on the ballot this year. To be eligible, a candidate must have received first-team All-American honors by one of the organizations recognized by the NCAA. Players must be 10 years removed from their final season of college football. Another possible candidate is Maclin’s former teammate Chase Coffman, a 2008 All-American and the Mackey Award winner for the nation’s best tight end.
Other Tigers will surely follow Maclin in the Hall, but he’ll forever be one of a kind at Mizzou, his numbers intact, his legacy secure.
