Diligent preparation could translate into early playing time for Bell

No matter how many high school accolades have been bestowed on you, for many freshmen, the transition to college football can be quite humbling. Time will tell if Norco (Calif.) offensive lineman will be the expectation or the rule for the Sun Devils, but there is little doubt that his physical and mental preparation puts him in an excellent spot to enjoy immediate success in an ASU uniform this season.

Bell started playing football in fourth grade, and back then he was often playing with older kids because his body was big for his age. Yet, he was watching the game from the sidelines at times because his body wasn’t matured enough to share the field with eight graders.

“I was always more underdeveloped because I was so big,” Bell said. “But my body started catching up when I reached my seventh and eighth-grade year. I started out playing as a tight end and linebacker, and I was a defensive lineman my whole career until my senior year of high school. I made the transition my senior year of high school due to a lot of coaches seeing a lot of interest in my frame on the opposite side of the line because of how athletic I was.

“They wanted me to get a little bigger so my junior season I was 250 pounds and by the time I got to my senior year, I was 300 pounds and switched positions. I started going to football camps and coaches started loving me. I was a really late recruit at first but once I made that transition to the offensive line, I’ve had a lot of colleges have interest and offers.”

Bell admitted that it the transformation into an offensive lineman from a physical and technical perspective was quite easy, but the proverbial buy-in aspect was another story.

“My mental side of it was always on the defensive side,” Bell admitted, “To actually accept that I was going to be an offensive lineman and know that that’s where my best opportunity is going to be in college, I made that transition. It was hard at first but then I bought into it and found, ‘Okay, I like this. I can do this.’ After that, it kept growing on me and became part of me.

“Being a defensive lineman, I knew everything I wanted to do to the offensive lineman, so, now being an offensive lineman, learning their techniques, I know exactly what I’m going to see when I go against the defensive linemen so it made that much better of an offensive lineman.”

A significant part of this position conversion did take place at the Winner Circle Athletics facility that is owned and run by former USC linebacker (2007-10) Jordan Campbell. This Corona (Calif.) Institute has been in existence for only four years but has already undergone a 60,000 square-feet expansion.

And for the entire time this building has been in existence Bell has become a true weight room devote, an investment that yielded the desired dividends. Campbell said that it wasn’t unusual for his to have customers such as Bell begin their training back in the eighth grade.

“Kids come here Monday-Thursday, half the day they have to block scheduling for their academics, their core classes (Winner Circle Athletics is a full credentialed school). The other half of the day they are on pretty much an NFL Combine program where we have a chef, they get their supplements, they do all their training. We have softball, baseball, lacrosse, all different sports coaches and they come to school here. So we have 125 students in those age groups. So, yeah it’s pretty common here, at least in our area since we started what we’re doing. We have kids that are going to the academy since (they were) 11 years old.

“When Jarrett first got here I liked his size. He was about 6-1 170 pounds and had a great frame. So we had the opportunity to just figure out what position he was going to play and develop in to. He wanted to play defensive line, so we trained him as a defensive lineman for about three-and-a-half years. (Then) he got up to about 6-4, 280 and then wasn’t really getting the offers that we wanted; he was getting smaller DI schools.

“We made the transition to the offensive line. Kyle Turley, who is a former first-round draft pick and ten-year all-pro in the NFL, is our offensive line coach who works with our NFL Combine guys so Bell had the opportunity to get mentored by him. But then, 12 weeks (later), we went to the Alabama camp, he was unknown, left there with a scholarship offer and the rest is history.”

A July camp in Tuscaloosa led to an August 7th pledge to the program. Yet, Bell did decommit from Alabama on November 11th.

“The reason I committed to Alabama was because I went from having smaller offers to having the No. 1 offer in the nation,” Bell explained. “Everyone’s telling you what to do, ‘You should go here. You should go here.’ How can you turn that down?

“Once I started realizing and looking at other schools I had opportunities that I liked better at other schools kind of made me want to back away from Alabama because they didn’t have everything I wanted. Even though they are the best football team in the nation, they aren’t the best football team for me. So I saw a lot of better opportunities at other schools for me, not only in an athletic way but also in academics. My career, I want to open a business in my future and I saw a better opportunity at other schools. That was my reasoning for decommitting from Alabama.”

A recruiting process that was at times a rocky journey, didn’t hold back Bell from dedicating himself to his craft, going through a challenging schedule aided by your typical light academic senior year workload.

“He (Bell) has one class at high school and then the rest of his day from 9-2 is training as if he was getting ready for the NFL Combine,” Campbell detailed. “So, from 9-10, performance training and then from 10-11 he’ll have position work with Kyle Turley and then he’ll have recovery work and Pilates from 11-12 that (is) cryotherapy, hyperbaric chamber, NormaTec boots, depending on what’s going on with his body. And then he’ll eat. We have food that’s delivered for him. That was the one thing that your normal high school or youth kid, they don’t have access to stuff like that. Mom, dad have ten kids, they’re driving all over the place, the last thing they’re worried about is getting food delivered for their kid. So we made it very easy for Bell. After his meal, he’ll do his physical therapy and then he’ll be done for the day.

“He also works (in the facility) from 4-8 every single day (and sneaks in a night lift from 8-9 when the facility closes) so once he is done with his training, he works for us in the evening time, and he’ll coach our youth offensive linemen. You always see the NFL guys come back or the college guys come back and the first thing they do is help out with the next kid. He was a younger kid when he entered the program, and since he had the opportunity to do that (train the younger players) he’s jumped right in.”

Bell knows that arriving at the position he is in now has only come by his determination off the field, but he certainly had another motivating factor as well.

“My whole family, none of them made it to college,” Bell remarked. “My father never made it to high school. Select individuals in my family were drug addicts and stuff like that. I’ve had a very addictive family. So I wanted to make my addiction working out, wanting to be a better person.

“Going through my high school career, that’s exactly what I tried to do. I just mimicked what I wanted in my life and put it into my present, right now, while I was training. That’s what gave me the determination to be where I’m at today. I work out because I want to set the example. I want to lead people and help people. That’s where all that came from.”

Needless to say that Bell is thankful that Campbell took him under his wing a handful of years ago, and made sure that he was fully prepared for what lies ahead in his college football career.

“Our goal was, wait for my senior year, prepare, develop, and then go hit these camps and shine,” Bell recalled. “That’s exactly where he got me to, all my trainers as well. My head trainer I’ve been with since day one, all the support I had behind me. They put me in a great position to be successful.

“We had our ups and downs in the beginning, buying into the process, knowing that what he’s telling me is the truth, not just trying to lead me in a direction to benefit him. It was a struggle in the beginning. I’d see all my friends being recruited, everyone getting offers and I’m over here getting nothing. Believing in the process was very hard in the beginning but in the end, I dedicate it all to them. They’re the ones who got me where I’m at today and I wouldn’t be where I’m at today if it wasn’t for him.”

Campbell noted that Bell’s second semester of his junior year, a crucial time for time for an overlooked prospect to truly get noticed and recruited, is when the lineman really turned the corner and ramped up his strength and conditioning workouts.

“He’s watched 30-plus guys before him sign scholarships out of here,” Campbell stated. “For example, (ASU’s offensive lineman) Cohl Cabral, he was one of our guys we had since his ninth grade, so Bell was working behind Cohl Cabral for two years, watched Cohl Cabral go to ASU and now he was in position to work himself into the same position as Cohl was and that’s when the light switch really turned on, that springtime when coaches were going around, finally ready to recruit him.”

Bell confessed that Cabral was a huge factor in his recruitment to the Sun Devils because he could give him intimate player’s perspective on the program. However, it was equally crucial to develop a strong bond with offensive line coach Dave Christensen and head coach Herm Edwards.

“The recruiting style that he (Christensen) attacked me with was a lot different than other coaches,” Bell said. “A lot of other coaches came to me and were trying to sell me everything that they had and a lot of it wasn’t the truth. He was very straight and very honest. He’s not the type of guy that’s going to sell you on a lot of crap, if you know what I mean, that’s not true just to get you to come to the school. He’s going to give you the straight facts and honesty of what he can provide for me, what he can do for me. At the end of the day, that means a lot more than what other coaches are saying that are not true or what I want to hear.

“I did not actually know much about Herm Edwards. I did not have much knowledge on his background. But after doing some research, I grew very quickly on him because he was an underdog. He came in as a rookie and he was a starter. He loved giving the underdog the chance to start. I felt like that was a very big thing for me, that being in that position once in his life, that he would want to coach the same way. He’s all about giving the underdog a chance. If he’s ready, he’s ready. He’s not going to hold you back and say, ‘No, this is an upperclassman’s position. You have to earn it.’ If you’re as good as that player or better, that’s your chance and we’re going to give it to you. I liked that. I loved his energy.

“When he (Edwards) came over to my house, he was very energetic. He was going and going and going. He had no breaks. I liked that. I need someone like that if I’m going to play on that team because he’s going to motivate the whole team, not just me. That’s very important to have your coach able to pump your team up and know he’s behind you the whole way.”

Edwards served as Campbell’s head coach in the NFLPA game, and the lineman’s trainer was also very familiar with ASU’s linebackers’ coach Antonio Pierce. Therefore, Campbell was very knowledgeable of some of the Arizona State staff, but while being heavily invested in the recruiting process, Campbell didn’t push the lineman to his eventual destination.

“I left my honeymoon from Fiji to fly out to pick him up in LA to take him to the Alabama camp” Campbell recollected. “I pretty much met with everybody who he had come by with the family myself. When you’re a kid who grows up in our program for four years, it’s kind of a group decision so we were able to meet and interview with everybody and that’s your one time to really ask the right question and so many people are so odd by just having a coach sit in their house that they forget to ask all the important questions. All the in-home visits took place in my office.

“I don’t go on the official visits, because that’s the family’s time to go and hang out and go enjoy that process and then they’ll come back and let us know how it went. Closer towards signing day we’ll be able to sit down and really figure out what the top three schools are. I really don’t care who the coaches are or even my relationships with them because I’m not going there, it’s the kid who’s going there.

“Let’s not worry about the logo on the helmet, let’s not worry about who is playing, how many guys are going to the NFL. None of that really matters. What matters is can you spend four years there and do you like the new coaching staff and what you’re hearing. And if you like it, make the best decision for you of where you can play and spend the next four years of your life because you can’t take your mom there, your dad, your brother, me. It’s you that’s going to have to be comfortable in that situation.”

It’s no secret that UCLA, ASU, and Nebraska were the de facto final three schools for Bell, but what may be less unknown is that the school the lineman eventually committed to wasn’t in the picture until three weeks before the February 7th signing day.

Bell noted that the “big push” employed by ASU and the long-term benefit of attending the school is what tilted the scales in the Sun Devils’ favor. He did admit that the process of heavily considering a very new suitor was stressful, but his “gut feeling” led him to a resolution he feels extremely comfortable with.

“Cohl (Cabral) gave me the truth from the inside,” Bell commented, “not just all the stuff they promote. It helped me see the opportunity I had at that school versus other schools that offered me, the opportunity I had to play early, the opportunity to build a business of my own in the future. It is a place I felt very comfortable. Once I stepped on that campus I felt like this is a place I could live for the next five years of my life versus other schools.

“I couldn’t point out one deciding factor but a couple would be my relationship with the strength coach (Joe Connolly). I’m really big into strength and conditioning but also the opportunity (with) alumni and how they can benefit me after college. I have a lot of experience in strength and conditioning and nutrition and a lot of the coaches I talked to during my recruitment process, we saw very similar terms when it came to the weight room and nutrition. A lot of them in strength and conditioning were very similar so I felt like that’s the one I would want to be coached by because we both believe in the same thing.”

Campbell said that after Bell’s official visit to Tempe, he felt that the depth chart situation at ASU was very advantageous for the Norco High School standout.

“The whole recruiting process really came down to playing time and opportunity,” Campbell said, “and it sounded like at Arizona State they had the opportunity, he could come in, he could play early, compete early. There is a new coaching staff there so no one’s spot was really safe so that’s what he bought in to. He enjoyed the new culture and the coaches and the offensive line coach and having a buddy on the team.

“The (strength and conditioning) program is very similar to what we’re doing and what they’re asking for him to do. I think the biggest thing when they do that is to at least get these kids working. A lot of times these kids don’t have the privilege to work out in a facility like us so they are just trying to give them some type of information so they can actually follow a plan, whether it’s at their local high schools. Pretty much what we’re doing coincides with what they’re already asking him to do.”

Bell is currently on the ASU campus with the rest of the summer arriving newcomers. The lineman stands at 6-5 305 lbs. and expects to drop 5-10 pounds once fall camp concludes. Even though it’s rare for a true freshman to start the season on the offensive line’s two-deep, Bell undoubtedly feels as if that opportunity is in his grasp.

“The offense that they are running is exactly the same as the offense I ran back in high school, Bell explained. “That was a great fit for me. Also position-wise, they are looking at me as a left and right guard and my opportunity is to play very early. So I have some great competition going against some returning players and new transfer from USC (Roy Hemsley). All of that is only going to make me better and I’m ready to suit up and get out there on the field.

“I have the maturity I need to play at this level and it’s given me the strength and conditioning side of it as well. Now it just comes down to me using all the tools I was given the last four years and use them to benefit myself on the field. My expectation is to come out there, give everything I have, all the hard work I’ve been doing for the last two years is for this moment. I’m not going to let it slip through my fingers. I’m going to give it everything I’ve got and let the best outcome happen. If I don’t start at least I know I gave it my all and I’m going to keep fighting for that position every week of the season. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t but that’s only going to motivate me to keep working harder. But my goal is to get out there, earn a spot and help benefit this team to win games.”

Ultimately, the level of investment Bell will have to put in Tempe, should in many ways mirror the investment he had at the Winner Circle Athletics facility.

“Jarrett is just a hard-working, blue-collar kid who just wants to be able to compete to get the job done,” Campbell said. “He never really had anything easy or handed to him. He always had to work hard and prove himself. His parents did a great job raising him to work hard and he’s going to go out and work hard and show up to work every single day.”

Jack Harris contributed to this article