Misunderstood in Mississippi: Jaxson Dart finds home in unexpected place

OXFORD | Just after 10:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Jan. 9, Jaxson Dart exited the brightly lit John McKay Center and walked out to the parking lot.

It was a chilly Sunday night in Southern California. A somber Dart walked away from the USC football facility and hopped into a car where his mother, Kara, had been waiting on him for the last couple of hours. A mentally exhausting day was winding down as Dart was moments removed from breaking some hard news to his soon-to-be-former teammates, a group of men he considered some of his closest friends – that he was entering the transfer portal and was likely leaving the Trojans football program.

“The connections I made with my teammates, my friends,” Dart said, ”it.. it was just really hard.”

Not much had come easy for Dart before and not much has come easy since. The embraces and the goodbyes were hard, as was the uncertainty that loomed when he walked out that door, into the parking lot and, really, into the next chapter of his life.

Dart and his mother spent much of that day meeting with newly-minted USC head coach Lincoln Riley, trying to gain an understanding as to where he stood in a program that was under new leadership, but also one he managed to thrive and to find a home in as a freshman, despite appearing as a buoy in a sea of dysfunction.

Riley, who left Oklahoma for the beautiful weather of Los Angeles and a chance to rectify a dormant power in college football, offered a message drenched with coach-speak, one you’d expect from a newly installed head coach trying to cover all his bases and keep a talented asset on the roster. Riley didn’t want Dart to enter the portal, despite having other plans for who he wanted as his quarterback next season.

As far as learning the fate of his future, this meeting was less of an inflection point and more of a confirmation. Oklahoma transfer quarterback Caleb Williams was on the USC campus the very same weekend for an official visit.

Dart is a sharp kid, but it didn’t take a genius to see the writing on the wall that had been slowly engraved over the previous few weeks. And though things weren’t close to official yet, he entered the portal to take some semblance of control over his uncertain future and keep as many options open as he possibly could.

That’s the name of the game in modern college football. Loyalty is a farce; stability is seldom achieved and self-preservation is a must. That’s what made delivering the news to his teammates so difficult – it wasn’t something that he himself desired to do, but rather something he felt forced to do.

“Jaxson was tired of being a sitting duck,” his father, Brandon Dart, said. “He didn’t want to enter the portal without telling his teammates. He wanted them to know this was not a decision he wanted to make but was truly forced to make. Jaxson did not want to leave USC.”

Jaxson got into the vehicle and Kara pulled out of the parking lot as the car meandered through the southwestern portion of USC’s campus, onto Interstate-110, eventually merging onto the 405 and headed south toward their hotel in Huntington Beach.

In this moment, 18-year-old Jaxson Dart was a lot of things. He was both a victim and a byproduct of the chaos that’s engulfed the college football ecosystem, fueled largely by a recently-passed piece of NCAA legislation that allows student athletes one time without penalty, but is also stoked by money and an unquenchable thirst for winning.

Dart was also a teenager struggling with the emotions that accompany being pried from a newfound home that provided a sense of independence and belonging that most college freshmen feel when they’re dropped off at school by their parents.

In this moment, he was also a highly-touted quarterback prospect in limbo between a soon-to-be nostalgic past and an uncertain future as a new wave of chaos was on the verge of setting in: being recruited again.

But mostly, Dart was just a kid distraught over leaving behind the friends he’d made over the last 12 months. The embraces at the football facility were hardly the end of the goodbyes. FaceTimes and phone calls in the hotel room continued until 3 a.m.

As the car whizzed down Interstate 110, it passed The Coliseum on the right, where the Trojans play their home games and where Dart forged many of the bonds he was leaving behind.

There are two consistent pillars that comprise Dart’s football journey. The first is an unwavering belief that things will eventually work out the way they are supposed to. That had to have been a hard principle to keep faith in on that drive to a Huntington Beach hotel room that January night, but it wasn’t the first time that belief was tried.

Dart may have ended up as a blue-chip quarterback prospect at the culmination of his recruitment, but the path to that point was far from typical. Dart, a Kaysville, Utah, native, started at quarterback as a 9th grader at Roy High School. Despite three seasons as a starter at a Class 6A high school, he garnered little attention from major college programs after his junior year.

“He just had to trust the process," said Taylor Kelly, Dart’s trainer. “I told him that things will eventually work out for you. You will get your opportunity to show it. Do not get discouraged. Schools will find you. As long as you put numbers up, play well and win games, coaches and schools will come find you.”

Kelly is an instructor at 3DQB Elite Quarterback Training located in Huntington Beach. He is also the quarterbacks coach at nearby powerhouse Mater Dei High School. Kelly, an Idaho native, played quarterback at Arizona State from 2010-2014. He was the only player in the state of Idaho to sign with a (then) BCS program that year. As a trainer, he’s worked with the likes of Bryce Young, Matthew Stafford, Dak Prescott, Lamar Jackson and Carson Wentz, among others.

How was Kelly so sure Dart would eventually be discovered? He recalls one throwing session at the facility before Dart’s senior year. Highly-touted prospects C.J. Stroud, Young, Miller Moss and Dart went thru a training session together.

“He was keeping up with them,” Kelly recalled. “He absolutely belonged. I think it was then that realized he could play at the next level.”

Dart transferred to Corner Canyon High School for his senior year. Corner Canyon is a football power and ran a more pass-happy offense, one that was more conducive to a quarterback trying to get noticed by colleges than the more run-heavy scheme of Roy High School.

The program was also two-time defending state champions. Dart was willing to do anything for a college opportunity. Not many eventual 4-star prospects enter their senior year without a power five offer, but nothing has come easy for Dart – and things eventually worked out.

Due to a global pandemic, the fall of 2020 was an unprecedented year for high school football nationwide. Some states didn’t play at all. Utah made it work and started its season three weeks early, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Dart.

In the third game of the year against fellow power Bingham, a game televised on ESPN, Dart went 16-23 for 279 yards with six touchdowns, no interceptions and ran for 132 yards. Quite literally overnight, Dart went from no-name to noticed.

“It took us two days, basically the rest of the weekend to sort through all of the messages,” Brandon Dart recalled. “We were trying to sort out which schools Jaxson was truly interested in and narrow it down to that. We didn’t really have time to do much else. It wasn’t a gradual recruiting process.”

Dart wasn’t listed as a four-star prospect until Mid-October. The pandemic made it difficult to visit schools. But still, things were beginning to evolve toward working out as they were supposed to despite the whirlwind. Dart threw 67 touchdowns and just four interceptions as he led Corner Canyon to a third straight state championship that year.

The second pillar that’s shaped Dart’s football career is, for whatever reason, perception not meeting reality.

As previously mentioned, Dart wasn’t an elite quarterback prospect that was pampered and catered to from the time he touched the field in his first high school game. His first Power Five offer came in September of his senior season. He didn’t milk a melodramatic recruiting process for all its worth before deciding on a blue-blood program. That’s not really his style. There wasn’t an opportunity to do so even had he wanted to.

Dart is now a transfer at his second school in Ole Miss. According to Sports Illustrated, more than 1,400 FBS players have entered the transfer portal since August of last year. At least 24 FBS quarterbacks have transferred. College football is a big-money business. That’s what ultimately drove this freedom of movement without penalty. Now, players being compensated is legal, too.

“Let’s call it what it is: We have free agency like professional sports,” Lane Kiffin has said more than once.

This transfer era comes on the heels of a time in which commitments to schools and decommitments from schools became normal, and doing so required little more than drafting an overwrought iPhone notes app message that usually culminates with a plea to respect said person’s decision.

Reasons for transferring, committing and decommitting are numerous and wide ranging. They can be as flippant as a lack of immediate playing time, a souring relationship with a coaching staff, a better NIL deal for more money, and recruiting another high-profile player at the same position (especially quarterback), among other more and less serious reasons.

Players are well within their right to exercise their limited but growing power. They only have a limited time to play a child’s game at a high level, but the celebrity-like, high-maintenance catering culture that recruiting has become sometimes brings with it certain assumptions about high profile recruits who transfer schools. They had to have transferred for a reason after all, right?

While each case is different, Dart doesn’t really fit the bill of a typical blue-chip transfer. Perception doesn’t meet reality when examining him as a football player at surface level.

Is he fearful of competition and wanted assurances about playing time?

Every step of Dart’s path to this point serves as evidence to the contrary. He’s never lost a quarterback competition. When he won the job at Roy High School as a freshman, he beat out a senior who had transferred in to be starter, according to the Los Angeles Times. When Dart’s whirlwind of a recruitment began to take shape, USC quickly became the favorite despite the Trojans having two other quarterbacks committed in their 2021 class in Moss and Jake Garcia.

In this current age of recruiting, courting a second quarterback in a class is sometimes enough to perturb the first quarterback commit enough to cause him to go elsewhere. As potentially the third man late to the party, Dart didn’t blink.

“He was so focused on USC and making it a great thing, it was sort of his first love in a way,” Brandon Dart said. “I think he felt as if there was a genuine interest in him as a person. That is something Jaxson requires. He genuinely cares about people. His relationships with people have always been really tight bonds. I think that he felt like (Former USC Coach Clay) Helton connected with him as a person.”

Helton was known as a player’s coach to a fault. It contributed to his downfall. Helton entered the 2021 season essentially as a dead man walking in terms of job security. Dart remained undeterred, and while talk of strong relationships and feeling like family are often used cliches in the recruiting world, he is hardly flippant about it. The somber Sunday last January is proof of it. When asked a question earlier this week about his chemistry with new Ole Miss offensive coordinator Charlier Weis Jr., Dart’s word choice was telling.

“It’s getting stronger,” Dart said. “That’s how it works in any friendship or relationship, the more time you have with them, the stronger it gets.”

USC became a heavy front runner for Dart. It’s where he wanted to be. Garcia de-committed on Dec. 3. Dart committed and signed 13 days later and became a January enrollee – three months removed from lacking a power five scholarship offer. He had a strong spring and beat out Moss for the job of backing up entrenched starter Kedon Slovis. Things appeared to be working out for Dart. Just two weeks into the 2021 season, after an embarrassing home loss to Stanford, Helton, whose bond with Dart is what pulled him from northwest Utah to Los Angeles, was fired.

If that wasn’t enough of a whirlwind, five days later, Slovis was injured in the first quarter of a road game at Washington State. Trailing 7-0, Dart entered a college game for the first time. Kara was in the stands.

Brandon was at home watching Jaxson’s younger brother, Diesel, play and preparing for a horseback elk hunting trip in eastern Utah the next day. Brandon remembers packing up, getting in the car to make the drive to the hunt when his phone exploded with messages. He ran back into the house and watched the game from his bedroom, electing to instead drive through the night after the game concluded. Kelly’s sister was getting married that day and he recalls watching it as he got ready for the ceremony.

Dart’s first three drives went interception, punt, fumble as the Trojans floundered into a 14-0 hole. He rebounded and threw for 391 yards and four touchdowns en route to a 45-14 victory. After the game, Dart climbed atop the band director’s ladder with a Trojan sword in his hand and a grin on his face. He was on top of the world. Things were working out.

Until they weren’t. Numb to any pain because of the emotional high he was riding, Dart hardly remembered his knee buckling when tackled on the third drive of the game. It wasn’t until he woke up the next morning that he realized the severity of the pain. Dart tore his right meniscus and suffered an MCL strain. Another peak followed by a valley. Determined to get back onto the field, Dart tore through his rehab and somehow only missed four games.

“I think that is another thing that other people may not realize about Jaxson,” Brandon said. “He is a tough son of a bitch. He is a quarterback, but he wants to wreck you out there. He is old school in that sense.”

His knee still greatly compromised, Dart again wrestled the job away from Slovis over the next two games against Arizona and Arizona State and started in USC’s final three contests as a tumultuous season for the program mercifully came to an end. It was a strange fall for Dart. He thrived despite everything around him crumbling – an interim head coach, an injury, receivers lost to injury and the general apathy that accompanies a 4-8 season for a proud program. Dart found a home, forged friendships, and against most expectations, saw significant playing time.

Did Dart transfer because his relationship with the new coaching staff soured, like many other transfers do each year when there is coaching turnover?

Hardly. Dart met with Riley to see where he stood in the new head coach’s eyes. He wanted to stay at USC and bring the program back to prominence alongside his friends. Kara and Brandon preached to him throughout this last rollercoaster ride of a year to focus on controlling what he can control.

His future at USC was now out of his control as an unprecedented coach-quarterback package deal began to take shape. Williams was a 5-star prospect in the 2021 class. He chose Oklahoma because of Riley and unseated the Sooners’ incumbent starter, Spencer Rattler (now at South Carolina), midway through the 2021 season.

Dart spent the month of December and early January with his future in limbo, waiting to see if Williams would elect to transfer to USC. Imagine him in this moment: 18 years old, weeks removed from a whirlwind of a freshman season that included the highest peaks of his football career in a place that felt like home. Now, all of that hung in the balance and hinged upon the decision of another teenager hundreds of miles away.

Part of the reason Williams is so closely linked to Riley is because Riley’s plans align with those of Team Williams. And, yes, there is a team. Welcome to the modern world of NIL recruiting. Williams has his own website that describes him as “the first high-profile free agent in the history of college football.”

The site has its own branding section where you can book media tours, speaking engagements and television ads with the 19-year-old college sophomore. Shortly after he transferred to USC, he inked an NIL deal with a Beverly Hills private equity firm called Hawkins Way capital.

“What is Caleb going to do? You are hearing all these things. We are getting updates just like anyone else out there, through media reports and rumors,” Brandon recalled. “It was really tough. As a parent, you worry for your son. I know he wanted to stay at USC, but at the same time, it’s like ‘you have to read the writing on the wall, bud.’ We had to start figuring things out.”

Dart doesn’t fear competition or a quarterback battle. He’s never lost one. But in what world was Williams, Riley’s hand-picked guy with a $2.4 million NIL evaluation according to a recruiting site that measures such things, coming to USC to sit on the bench?

It’s worth pointing out that, in this contrast, Williams represents more of the norm in terms of highly-rated quarterback prospects, and Dart is the outlier. High school quarterback signees, who have been on the national radar since junior high, are now getting massive NIL deals before ever taking a competitive college snap.

That’s another misconceived perception of Dart among fans. There is no Team Dart. He turned down every penny of NIL money offered to him when he arrived at Ole Miss, refusing to address any of it until he he’s named the starting quarterback – if he is indeed named the starting quarterback.

He has no website, nor has he hired a marketing agent. Don’t let the pookah necklace fool you, Dart isn’t a high-profile California kid looking to catch on at another program after flaming out at his first destination. He’s a 19-year-old kid who grew up in a small town northwest Utah as the oldest of four kids in a devoutly Mormon family.

“I feel like people think he is from Southern California because he has the vibe and the whole look,” said Brandon, a former safety for the Utah Utes. “That he’s this big shot transfer who is probably somewhat selfish and must have crazy sports parents or something. . .That couldn’t be further from the truth. Jaxson plays football because he loves it. Our family loves the game of football. That’s really all there is to it.”

Dart spends most of his free time hunting and fishing. He and his dad enjoy big game hunting. Brandon recently completed a two-week trip to the Northwest territory of Canada in which he camped out in the wilderness for days at a time hunting Dall Sheep. Jaxson is more partial to fishing. It’s something about the pole, the water and being left alone with his thoughts. Fishing requires being patient. So has his college journey. Jaxson Dart is just a kid looking for stability and acceptance, in a football sense.

“This transition hasn’t been easy,” Brandon said. “I don’t want to sound like I am faulting Jaxson for this, but he really truly does just want to seek out genuine relationships with every person he comes in contact with, whether it be players, coaches or anyone. Naturally, at a new place, that’s going to take longer. There’s been a lot of change in the last year.”

Did Dart transfer because he’s immature, a common trait for any teenager that football players aren’t immune to either?

If that were the case, Dart would’ve imploded already, amid a tornado of change and instability, most of it outside of his control. Consider the last 18 months of his life for a moment:

- Commits, signs and arrives at USC as a January enrollee.

- Wins a competition for the backup quarterback job after a strong spring.

- His head coach gets fired two games into the season.

- He makes his first college appearance five days later

- He throws four touchdowns in his debut and also tears his meniscus

- Rushes back from injury to make the most of an opportunity.

- Wins the starting job with a compromised leg once he returns.

- The interim coaching staff leaves.

- USC hires the one coach in the country that brings in the only quarterback in the country that could’ve realistically unseated him from his starting position.

- Endures a teary goodbye to his teammates and the transfer portal

- Lands across the country in Oxford, Mississippi

- Goes through spring practice and is currently engaged in another quarterback competition.

All of this occurred three months prior to Dart’s 19th birthday. That alone makes for a crazy career. All of this happened in a single year, and it came on the heels of what is normally a multi-year recruiting process that was condensed into three months.

“I keep reflecting on it,” Dart said when asked about it back in the spring. “If you would’ve told me that this is how my first year of college would’ve turned out, I would have thought you were crazy. It’s been a whirlwind, but I am thankful for where I am at now.”

As the car drove further away from the USC campus that night and closer into an unknown future, one thing that he was certain he had was a strong support system. His mother Kara drove the car and consoled him after one of the tougher days of his young life. Brandon encouraged him and helped guide him through the next round of recruitment. His best friend and USC teammate Michael Trigg entered the portal as well and told Dart “wherever you go, I go.”

“That’s my brother,” Dart said. “I think our friendship is close and having that really helped.”

Dart found a home at Ole Miss largely due to a connection formed with Kiffin. He knew there were no guarantees and never sought any. Dart isn’t one to shy away from competition. He’s the same kid that would’ve happily arrived at USC as the third blue chip quarterback in his recruiting class.

He’s yet to lose a quarterback competition and, with the season two days, is in the final stages of the most consequential one yet. Dart has already used his one-time free transfer. How this shakes out will largely shape his future. Maintaining peace of mind might be tough for most, but Dart’s unorthodox and trying path to this moment has trained him to remain even-keeled.

“In his 18th year, he experienced some of the highest of highs in the college football world. But he’s also felt the pain of an injury and an opportunity that he took full advantage of, taken from his grasp,” Brandon said. “He’s grown up a lot and I think he’s learned to compartmentalize what is important is what he can control.”

The Darts have embraced Oxford and the small-town charm it offers. They’re property owners here now. It’s unlikely they could’ve foreseen being a condo owner in Mississippi a year earlier.

Brandon sat back and sipped his coffee on a rainy August Saturday morning at a coffee shop on The Square and reflected back on the last year of his family’s life and the unexpected turns his son’s football career has taken in such a short time. He’d flown in the night before from Salt Lake City to Memphis and made the drive down to his son’s new home. Ole Miss had its second scrimmage of preseason camp the next day – it was a crucial day for the quarterback competition.

Shortly after arriving in Oxford that night, Brandon texted Jaxson reflecting on the last year, from the rollercoaster of a freshman season to the car leaving the USC facility that night all the way to a small town in Mississippi.

A decision will eventually be made on a starting quarterback. Beyond his on-field performance, the decision itself is sort of out of his control, just as so much else has in his football journey.

Is he prepared to grapple with his fate? One might argue his entire journey has equipped him to do just that.

“I think he’s grown up a lot and learned that you have to take on a great deal of emotional turmoil and understand that other people are going to make decisions that affect your life,” Brandon said. “Whatever happens, he will be fine. Jaxson will focus on the things he can control and things will eventually work out the way they are supposed to.”