OPINION: Jackson, Madison Co. should pull for Trey Smith in Super Bowl

This is a big weekend for sports in Madison County.

While high school basketball is seeing regular seasons wrap up and teams secure their seeding for district tournaments, one of the best football players to come through the area ever and make Jackson, Tenn., on the map for a lot of new people a few years back gets hits first shot at achieving a pro football legacy few get to achieve.

University School of Jackson alumnus Trey Smith gets a chance to follow in the footsteps of South Side’s Jabari Greer (New Orleans Saints), USJ’s Trey Teague (Denver Broncos) and Merry’s Ed “Too Tall” Jones (Dallas Cowboys) and stand on the winners’ podium as an NFL world champion if Smith’s team – the Kansas City Chiefs – win the Super Bowl.

As a person from the area who watched Trey in high school and followed his college career at Tennessee and with Kansas City, it would be nice to see Trey finally get to end his season with a championship.

His three years playing varsity at USJ, the Bruins were eliminated in the first round in 2014 (his sophomore season) and the state semifinals the final two years.

His years at Tennessee weren’t the greatest as he was there for Butch Jones and Jeremy Pruitt, and the Vols made it to a bowl game only one time, his junior year with a Gator Bowl win over Indiana (who also had a USJ grad on their team – kicker Charles Campbell, who transferred this past fall to Tennessee).

And those four years at Tennessee also included his time dealing with blood clots in his lungs that kept him off the practice field and game field for the second half of his sophomore season. (By the way, if you get a chance to listen to Trey’s testimony, do it. Because listening to him discuss this part of his career is compelling as he talks about asking God why He would allow this and if He had plans for Trey away from football.)

So even though he fell to the sixth round of the of NFL Draft in 2021, there weren’t many better franchises in the NFL during this era than the Chiefs. Trey got to play in the AFC championship game his rookie season and then go back this season, win the AFC championship and play in the Super Bowl.

So Trey finally has a shot to finish with a championship.

And there are nearly 100,000 people living in Madison County. Without taking a scientific survey, I’d say between 70,000 and 80,000 are fans of football on some level.

I’d hope that Trey has nearly unanimous support to win this game from his home county.

He’s dealt with a lot of adversity but has never been a bad person to be around from everything I’ve heard about him here in Jackson or in Knoxville.

He’s always been humble and gracious whenever I’ve been around him when he was in high school and when he was back in town last summer to speak at The Church at Sugar Creek in Humboldt.

So unless you’re just a hater of the USJ football program and want to see anyone associated with the Bruins fail (which I know of a few people like that around here), I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to see Trey get a Super Bowl ring.

We live in the United States of America and we get the choice to root for who we want to as American citizens watching a football game.

But often, our choices boil down to a right option and a wrong option.

Rooting against Trey feels wrong this week. So here’s to hoping Jackson and Madison County get another claim to a Super Bowl win this week.

Brandon Shields is the managing editor of The Jackson Post. Contact him at brandon@jacksonpost.news. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or Instagram @Editorbrandon.