LOUISVILLE, Ky. — They called him “Nowhere.”
He was 11 years old when he showed up without warning on the soccer field behind Doss High School. It was one of the few times that Tim Richardson, who runs a local youth soccer league, didn’t have a skinny physique for one of his players.
“Nobody knew who he was,” Richardson said. “We didn’t know what to do with him.”
The coaches were so caught off guard that they played him on the offensive and defensive lines in seventh grade. When Richardson brought him back for eighth grade, he realized that the quiet, mysterious outsider was outperforming everyone else on the team and was too fast and athletic to stay in the trenches. Richardson moved him to every position he could get his hands on the ball – receiver, quarterback, running back – and got a top player on one of the best youth teams in the country.
“I had him touch that part every game,” Richardson said. “He probably had 35 touchdowns that season.”
But despite being a star player whose game was scouted by local high school coaches, he remained an unknown kid who emerged from the fog, a trace of something unspoken that always followed him closely.
The back of his uniform reads “NO-WHERE” instead of his name.
Currently, Jordan Watkins is a senior wide receiver for the Ole Miss Rebels, who are ranked 16th in the College Football Playoff rankings. Last Saturday, Watkins set two Ole Miss single-game receiving marks with 254 yards and five touchdowns in a win at Arkansas. This Saturday, the Rebels and Lane Kiffin’s high-powered offense will take on the third-ranked Georgia Bulldogs in Oxford, Mississippi, looking for a win to strengthen their chances of advancing to the 12-team playoffs.
But before he became a record-setting starter in a top-rated SEC offense, Watkins was suddenly that kid.
When Watkins was 8, she sobbed as she watched her mother being thrown out of the back of a police car. He said the officer said, “Don’t worry. “Mommy will be back soon,” I can still hear him say.
He did not see her again for almost two years.
Paula Baker was a child of addiction. She started drinking alcohol at age 12, smoked pot as a teenager, used cocaine at age 18, and became addicted to Oxycontin at age 21. She was a mother of two at the time, giving birth to Jordan at the age of 17 and his younger brother Elijah a few years later.
Although she did her best to keep her drug abuse outside the home and away from her children, she eventually began trafficking drugs to feed her habit. At age 25, she was kicked out of her apartment in central Ohio. So she called a friend in Ashland, Kentucky, with her two sons, and asked if they could crash at his house. They arrived in the middle of the night, and Watkins and his younger brother were sleeping in the back seat. Paula was arrested the next day and accused of making a deal to raise money for new accommodation and violating her parole in the process.
“That was the bottom for me.” said Paula.
She spent more than 18 months in a western Kentucky correctional facility. The boys stayed with their aunt on the other side of the state, five hours away in Ashland. They did not see their mother throughout their imprisonment. Watkins told friends she was on a business trip.
Paula was eventually paroled and conditionally released to The Healing Place, a recovery center in Louisville, where she was to spend an additional 18 months. It’s two hours closer to Ashland, and her sister brought the boys to meet her the week she arrived. They all sat together in the common room around the Christmas tree.
Although she had been sober for over a year and a half by that point, she quickly realized that she had no real understanding of addiction or recovery.
“I didn’t know that addiction was a disease or that I wasn’t a terrible person. But I heard stories of recovery and that’s what I wanted,” she said. “I didn’t want to live a life of chaos anymore.”
By May 2013, she had completed her recovery program and worked part-time at The Healing Place, saving enough money to settle down with her future husband, Austin Baker, who had just completed his own recovery program. . She regained full custody of her sons and moved them from Ashland to Louisville.
Watkins, 11, struggled with the transition. Watkins’ father had never been a consistent figure throughout his life, and now he had to leave his friends in Ashland for a new city, move in with his mom after more than three years apart, and was suddenly in the picture with Austin.
“He was angry and I understood why,” Paula said. “He didn’t know what would happen if I ended up in prison again. “It was all new to him too.”
The soccer field was Watkins’ sanctuary.
“When he showed up, you could tell it was an outlet for him,” Richardson said.
Over the next few years, Watkins continued his old ways of rebellious behavior, lashing out at home and getting into fights at school.
“It took me a very long time to forgive my mom for leaving home,” Watkins said. “Looking back, I hate it because I love my mom to death, but I acted to make it clear how much resentment I had towards her.”
Richardson had heard stories about Watkins causing trouble, but had never seen him in the field. Watkins asked questions about route running and planning, but mostly kept that anger buried and to himself.
Things began to change during Watkins’ freshman year of high school. Because he was suspended, he was ineligible for his public school’s football team. So Paula and Austin enrolled him in a private school, barely able to afford the tuition.
“They had to sacrifice everything so I could play football,” Watkins said. “I messed up out of spite, but then I saw what they were going to do for me.”
He did not realize this immediately or realize it himself. There has been a lot of healing as a family and individually. Watkins was initially opposed to it, but then became attracted to it and worked for several years with a therapist named David. The two decided to take a bite each. Take a walk. Go to the library to do your homework.
“In today’s society, there are still many people who think therapy is for sissies. I think men should be tough. I try to be open about the fact that therapy changed my life,” Watkins said. “David didn’t expect anything in return from me, and he didn’t have to be someone I wasn’t. “He was just trying to help me.”
Once Watkins accepted that she was trying to help her mother and Austin, too, the wounds began to heal.
As a junior at Butler Traditional High School, he emerged as a three-star wide receiver and committed to play at Louisville in the 2020 class. He liked the idea of his family being a 10-minute drive from the stadium, but he entered the transfer portal after two years with his hometown Cardinals. Watkins received a lot of attention, but Kiffin sold him on Ole Miss by being public about his sobriety journey.
“Coach Kiffin told Jordan that if he wanted to go to the NFL, he had to play for himself,” Austin said.
Watkins is midway through his third season with the Rebels and has 118 catches for 1,739 yards and 12 touchdowns. Paula didn’t like the idea of her son moving more than six hours away, but she recognized what it could mean for his future and that he was ready for a new challenge. And she was ready too.
Paula has been sober for over 14 years. These days, Watkins is a self-described “mama’s boy” who speaks to her every day. He also became friendly with Austin. Watkins first called me when I got the new College Football 25 video game featuring his likeness, and immediately FaceTimed him this summer when he hit a hole-in-one, out of breath from a sprint. In green. Watkins will regularly send photos of what he’s cooking for dinner on his flat-screen grill to his family group chat.
“I always had a little hope. If you wake up and keep going every day, things will get better,” Paula said. “And that’s true.”
Ole Miss wide receiver Jordan Watkins, pictured with his mother, Paula Baker, says therapy changed his life. (Courtesy of Paula Baker)
Ken Trogdon got giddy watching the highlights of Ole Miss’ win last week. The South Carolina graduate and resident is a loyal Gamecocks supporter, but became a Rebels fan after meeting Watkins earlier this year.
“Five touchdowns? “I was so excited for Jordan,” Trogdon said. “He is a truly special young man.”
About 12 years ago, Trogdon, a health care administrator, founded HarborPath as a nonprofit organization that supplies medications to vulnerable populations across the country. These missions soon intersected with the opioid and fentanyl crisis, including efforts to distribute and inform people of naloxone (commonly known as Narcan), a drug that can reverse opioid and fentanyl overdoses. Over the past few years, HarborPath has been working to put naloxone within reach of as many people as possible.
That’s what brought Trogdon to Ole Miss last winter. HarborPath supplied Narcan to the William Magee Center, which was founded in 2019 in memory of a former Ole Miss track and field athlete who died of an accidental overdose. Anyone can stop by and pick up Narcan for free, no questions asked.
Trogdon approached The Grove Collective, an Ole Miss-affiliated name, image and likeness organization, about partnering with Ole Miss athletes on social media videos to spread awareness. Watkins, a prominent football player who felt comfortable in front of the cameras, was one of the athletes suggested by The Grove.
Chatting with Trogdon and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch between filming sessions, Watkins shared details about his life before coming to Ole Miss in 2022. We talked about her childhood and her mother’s struggles with addiction. It describes his time spent in prison and a recovery center, and how his recovering adoptive father was resurrected twice with Narcan. He explains how his mom now works as a consultant in the recovery field for organizations such as HarbourPath.
Trogdon hoped the charismatic footballer would help make his case. Instead, he secured a player he “connected with more personally than anyone else.”
Fake medicines are not worth the risk.
ole miss wide receiver @jordantwatkins We’re partnering with HarborPath to save lives from drug overdoses and lethal fentanyl on college campuses.
🔗 https://t.co/vZE9w9Jy8j pic.twitter.com/zwN47gWSFk
— HarborPath (@HarborpathRx) March 8, 2024
When the Ole Miss video was released in February, it received 100,000 views on the first day on X. Trogdon said HarborPath is considering expanding the campaign to additional campuses, which could see Watkins become a national spokesperson for the organization.
More importantly, the Magee Center administered Narcan after the video circulated, and Trogdon said the available drug played a role in reversing an overdose on the Ole Miss campus.
It also became another outlet for Watkins, who also worked with recovery groups in his hometown in Louisville. And his mom will call kids who are going through the familiar pain of family addiction to offer perspective.
“It affects a lot of people, not just because of personal use, but because of the people around them,” Watkins said. “I love being able to use my platform or experience to help.”
Recovery is not a process with a beginning and an end. It’s something we do every day, it’s a plant that needs to be watered. But after 14 years, the roots took root. This weekend, Paula and her family will make their regular 400-mile-plus trip to watch Watkins and the Rebels take on Georgia. I’m rooting for a quiet child somewhere.
“We’re not perfect, but we’ve come a long way,” Paula said.
(Image: Mitch Robinson / athletic; Photo: David Jensen / Getty Images; (provided by Paula Baker)
