Lyons Chooses Lions

Georgia athlete Jordan Lyons followed up his official visit to Penn State this weekend by making a verbal commitment over the phone to Joe Paterno early Monday. Jordan discusses his decision and which position he will play in college.

Name:	Jordan Lyons
Position:	QB
Height:	6'5"
Weight:	220 pounds
40-yard dash:	4.68 at Nike Camp
Bench Press:	255 pounds
School:	Woodward Academy, College Park, GA

“I talked to [Joe Paterno] at about 12:00 this afternoon," Jordan said Monday evening. "He asked me if I had made my decision and I said I had. That was pretty much it. He said that he was very glad that I chose Penn State and he’s going to come down and visit me on Thursday.

"He feels that I’m one of the most influential recruits that they got due to the fact that even though I may not be able to play quarterback, which I hope I will, I can play a plethora of other positions.”

“I enjoyed my visit," Jordan said as he began to explain why he chose Penn State. "It was great. I love Coach Paterno, he’s amazing. That’s probably why he got all the guys that he did this year. I mean, he got Dan Connor and Greg Harrison, a couple of the top recruits in the nation. He obviously knows how to do this and he’s been doing it for a long time.”

Jordan also talked to the legendary Paterno about how long he plans to be around as the head coach at Penn State.

“He hopes to be around for a long time. He says for the next 3 or 4 years, but you never know, he might go even longer than that.”

Jordan, who will not be making his previously scheduled visit to Notre Dame this weekend, discussed the other positions Paterno spoke to him about in the event that things don't work out at quarterback.

“In the worst-case scenario, if I don’t work out at quarterback and I don’t prove myself to be the best of whoever they get this year, he talked about tight-end and possibly wide-receiver.”

Lyons has only limited experience as a receiver.

“I did play wide-receiver last year. I was platooned with another kid from my school at quarterback. When I wasn’t playing quarterback, I was an athlete, so they wanted to keep me on the field, so that’s where I was. I caught 3 passes for 46 yards and one touchdown.”

This season, Jordan threw for over 1,400 yards including 15 touchdowns and 8 interceptions, and rushed for over 1,000 yards including 14 touchdowns. He talked about his team's run/pass ratio.

“It’s a little more 60/40 to the run side. We ran the option quite a bit and usually when we were ahead, we didn’t really didn’t try to break out too many passes.”

Jordan's combination of size and athletic ability were instrumental in helping Woodward Academy to a 10-2 record this season.

“I have very good mobility. I’m pretty quick on my feet as you can tell from the thousand yards rushing. I try to make the best decision and I make quick decisions. I’ve grown up a lot this past year. Going from playing half time to getting a chance to control the whole game was a big deal for me and I took that very seriously. I worked on a lot of stuff over the summer. I worked on my footwork, it got extremely better, and also my arm strength and all that stuff.”

What does he intend to improve upon?

“I can always improve on all my mechanics and speed. There’s a lot of things that I can get from Jay and he can tell me what I need to improve on. I think that I’ve been pretty good this year as evidenced from my improvement in stats.”