Jordan Hall, a 6-foot-4, 320-pound defensive lineman with speed, has learned to embrace a surprising nickname: “Big Baby.”
At first blush, it’s hard to imagine anyone brave enough to call Hall a baby. But the moniker turns out to have a history.
“My grandma, she used to call me that when I was a kid,” Hall recalls, presumably because he was always large for his age. But the name didn’t stick until Hall was a rising freshman trying to earn a spot on his Westside High School football team in Jacksonville, Florida.
At 14, Hall was already bigger than most of the upperclassmen on the field, but he didn’t have the strength or maturity to match it. So a coach called him a “big baby” to remind players and coaches that Hall still had plenty of room for growth.
Today, the Georgia Bulldog is bigger, stronger, and more determined than ever.
Overcoming injuries
Hall expected the 2024 football season to be his breakout year.
It was a momentous year, he says, but not in the ways he had hoped.
Hall found himself sidelined with stress fractures in his legs, which ultimately led to three surgeries in seven months.
But Hall doesn’t look at it as a lost year.
“I grew a lot off the field mentally,” he says, because he had to practice patience for himself and trust in others and in God.
“I wish things would’ve gone differently,” he says, “but you go through things in life for a reason.”
“I’m getting the opportunity to really display who I am as a player and showcase what I can do as an athlete.”
The Positive Approach
That positive spin is how Hall approaches most things in life. He makes a habit of giving high fives to strangers at the bus stop and cracking jokes to keep things light.
“Why not have fun? Why not be joyous?” he asks. “That’s who I am as a person.”
Sometimes he shares that joy by reading books at a local elementary school or volunteering for Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service opportunities in his hometown, where his father is the vice president of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation.
With the worst of his injuries hopefully in the rearview mirror, Hall is now focused on making the most of this season. And sure, he’d like to fill his stat sheets with plenty of tackles and sacks, but his bigger goal is to become the kind of player opponents pay attention to when reviewing the tape. Making the plays that might not earn an official stat but will set up his team to make big plays.
“I’m getting the opportunity to really display who I am as a player and showcase what I can do as an athlete.”
