Jordan Love has never been afraid to work

[Cheesehead]

Love was perfect for the school's spread offense. He threw for 4,078 yards and 42 touchdowns during his final two seasons and gained another 1,190 yards and 13 TDs on the ground.


That team was talented but also extremely close. To this day, Love, Barnes and Liberty running back Quincy Jountti (currently a redshirt senior at USC) share a group text chat together.


That's what made Liberty's Central Section Division I Championship Game so meaningful. A senior team captain with Barnes, Love threw for a career-high 296 yards and three TDs in a 56-21 win over Clovis High School, capturing the school's first California Interscholastic Federation title.


"Once he was a junior, senior, you saw the arm talent," Nixon said. "You saw the ability to make plays off-platform, those type of things. I think that's one of the biggest characteristics for him is he was never too high or too low and he never got too rattled."


As much time as the physical development took, Love's mental aptitude for the game and maturity were unparalleled. Having lost his father Orbin when he was just 14 years old, Love put everything he had into his two greatest loves – family and football.


When he needed to get bigger, Love lived in the weight room. If he needed to get smarter, Love locked himself in the film room and studied the playbook cover-to-cover.


By his senior year, Love knew the line concepts so well he could change blocking protections based on what the defense was showing pre-snap.


"He's put so much into getting where he wants to be," Barnes said. "The challenges he's overcome, there's no better story than him right now."


While Barnes emerged as a coveted four-star recruit, the college offers trickled in slowly for Love. A few Division I schools called but most struggled to see past his slender frame.


Nixon and his assistants pleaded with college coaches. "This guy's best football is still in front of him because he's not grown into his body yet," they would say. "When that comes into place, he's going to be a special talent." Most nodded and respectively went on their way.


Yost, an assistant at Washington State at the time, had Love on his radar but the Cougars had offers out to three other quarterbacks in his class. When he asked one of the recruiters about Love, Yost was told he's "going to get big, but right now he's like a baby deer."


In the end, Utah State was the only FBS program to move on Love. He took a visit with his mom and committed.


An early enrollee, Love put his first six months on campus to use. With proper dieting and a rigid strength-and-conditioning program, Love returned to Bakersfield that summer looking like a different man.


"I was like, 'Oh my gosh, you've grown up.' He had muscles and was filling out to be a big man," Nixon said. "The growth he had had from the time away, it was really fun to see."