It Turns Out Mac Jones Was a Child Actor

Mac Jones. Mac freaking McCorkle Jones. Every time you think you've got him all figured out, he still comes up with something you didn't know. He speaks Mandarin. He's already got his graduate degree. As this week's Do Your Pod guest points out, as a junior at Alabama, he drove everybody nuts because he was so intense and hyper-competitive. 

Now this? We find out he was a child star who did commercials and shit? I feel like Gandalf when he describes Hobbits. "You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch.”

But now that you see his publicity stills, it makes total sense. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was Rickey Schroeder in "Silver Spoons":

But then again, the show came on 16 years before Jones was born, so that's highly unlikely. But then again again, so was the pass he threw to Kendrick Bourne. 

If you can pull that off, a little thing like bending space/time, finding an agent, contacting a casting director and beating out a thousand other child actors for the lead role in an awful family sitcom is hardly a challenge. Barely an inconvenience. The girl from "Small Wonder" got the part in that one and probably would never have been able to have timed the throw on Hunter Henry's square out in the end zone like that. Which is neither here nor there, I suppose. 

But the point I'm making with this nonsensical rambling is that it's obvious this guy is going to be an endless source of fascination for the next couple of decades, if not longer. It's at the point where people are no longer afraid to make the comparison that was once forbidden, but now no longer is. This business about him being in TV commercials is like when Tom Brady's first interview surfaced:

… and realizing that he was always destined for greatness. At this point, it shouldn't surprise us if we find out Jones was originally drafted by the Montreal Expos as a catcher or he was in Candlestick when Dwight Clark made The Catch. 

And while I've tried to find the commercials he claims are available - believe me, I've tried - that's a task for someone with better search skills, more time and more patience than me. So instead, let's just use this one, since Mac has very much lived it:

The good news is that his acting career never panned out. That his love and commitment to winning football championships won out over the desire most kids have to be famous, have their name on a trailer door, make adults around you bend to your every whim, get addicted to the best drugs, end up in a conservatorship, and serve as a tragic tale told in cautionary documentaries about the hazards of show business on young minds. (Jerry recommends.) His life has turned out better for it. And all of us in New England are better for it. 

I get the feeling Mac Jones is already entering that territory where the most surprising thing about him is that he still has the ability to surprise you.