In 2015, I wrote about a video that surfaced featuring A-State freshman wide receiver Omar Bayless executing a flat-footed back flip in the Arkansas State weight room. I don’t do flips (or anything requiring dexterity), so I was pretty impressed. I figured that an athlete of this caliber would not be long for seeing considerable minutes on the gridiron.

Bayless redshirted his first year. The next season, he logged all of 13 receptions for 107 yards. Every year, I pointed to Bayless in my preseason previews and hinted that THIS would be his year. It wasn’t until 2019 – four years after I reported the Back Flip – did Omar Bayless become a focal-point of the Red Wolves offense, where he recorded 93 receptions for 1,650 yards and 17 touchdowns. The performance won him a Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year Award.

Bayless endured four long seasons to reach his potential. Four excruciating seasons of sitting in the back of wide receiver meetings, making plays on the practice squad, standing restlessly on the sidelines waiting for his moment. But he was patient. He paid his dues. And in that time, he bought into the culture of the Red Wolves – became an Arkansas State Man™. His legend is secure for eternity.

Will we ever see a college athlete as patient as Omar Bayless again? In 2017, his redshirt sophomore year, Bayless had 32 receptions and six touchdowns. In today’s portal climate, those stats are certainly worth a sniff from deep-pocketed programs. Nobody would have blamed him for entering the Portal and testing the depth of Scrooge McDuck’s vault of gold coins. But there was no NIL in 2017. No near-limitless transferring. Loyalty and patience were Bayless’ only real recourse. He remained an Arkansas State Man™.

In 2024, Red Wolves head football coach Butch Jones is attempting to create an entire roster of Arkansas State Men™. The day he stepped foot in Jonesboro was the day he realized that he simply could not build a culture of Arkansas State Men™ through the transfer portal. Like creating a diamond, it takes time to make an Arkansas State Man™. You have to be reborn and raised a wolf. He assembled his staff and sought out young men who would fit the mold.

Understandably and without judgement, some did succumb to the Siren Call of the Portal: Jarret Horst, Seydou Traore, Lincoln Pare and Javante Mackey are a few notables. Another, wide receiver Corey Rucker, transferred to South Carolina, only to come back as strong an Arkansas State Man™ as ever before.

However, most of Butch Jones’ raw recruits have remained Arkansas State Men™. As of this writing, only Louisiana has fewer Sun Belt athletes than A-State in the transfer portal. Why? Who knows? Perhaps because these young men have been entrusted with a responsibility – to elevate the pack and return a program to greatness.

Maybe they’re just Arkansas State Men.

PHOTO CREDITS: me and Carla Wehmeyer, A-State