Everyone’s familiar with the butterfly paradox — small events, inconsequential at the time, can have big effects down the road.
But the story of how wide receiver Jared Scott ended up at Idaho State stretches the theory to its breaking point.
The winding tale of how Scott, a grad transfer who announced his commitment to ISU on June 19, ended up in Pocatello includes the following seemingly unrelated events: Josh Allen turning into a star at Wyoming, a SWAC school in Texas getting hit with academic violations, and a former Clemson quarterback suffering a broken leg.
Perhaps all those twists and turns are why Scott, who’s been on ISU’s campus for less than a week, already seems familiar with the favored slogan of the Bengals’ men’s basketball coach Ryan Looney, who uses the mantra “Saw Wood” to remind his players of the day-to-day consistency required to do difficult things well.
At 6-foot-6, 225 pounds, Scott could certainly pass as one of Looney’s basketball players. In point of fact, he’s never met the Bengals’ basketball boss. But he certainly understands what Looney is talking about.
“You know, things aren’t gonna go as you planned in your mind, but you just have to keep your goals and the task at hand in front of you,” Scott said. “Just be able to chop wood every day.”
Idaho State is the fourth stop for Scott, a former 3-star recruit coming out of Oak Park, Illinois.
He committed to Wyoming, where, as a true freshman in 2017, he caught two passes for 40 yards and two touchdowns from Allen and lived on the same floor in the dorms as another quarterback, Tyler Vander Waal, who was then redshirting his freshman season.
By that point, it was clear that Allen, a potential No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft, wasn’t going to return to Laramie for his redshirt senior season in 2018.
And with the rocket-armed Allen off to the pros, Wyoming’s offense went from old-fashioned to practically prehistoric.
“I think we went from 70% runs to about 90%,” Scott said. “I actually played in every game as a sophomore, but, you know, we were running the ball.”
Vander Waal, who started nine games under center that year for the Cowboys, and Scott spent plenty of time on the field together, but had just one completion, a 17-yarder against Fresno State. That was Scott’s only catch of the season.
Vander Waal has cited Wyoming’s run-heavy scheme as one of the reasons why he eventually left the school, entering the transfer portal and ending up at Idaho State after the 2019 season.
Scott didn’t wait the extra year, leaving Wyoming and committing to Prairie View A&M, an HBCU in the Southwestern Athletic Conference. He was eligible to play immediately as an FBS dropdown, and had 11 catches for 262 yards and two scores as a junior in 2019.
That might have been the end of the story, but the Panthers were hit with NCAA academic progress violations after the 2019 season, making them ineligible for the postseason in 2020.
“Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have left Prairie View,” Scott said. “In the SWAC, you don’t qualify for FCS playoffs. If you win the SWAC championship, you play against the MEAC champion in the Celebration Bowl. So it was like, we can’t even have a chance to play for that. That was kind of bogus.”
Scott went on the road again, transferring to FCS powerhouse Jacksonville State. Thanks to an NCAA waiver granted because of Prairie View’s probation, he was once again eligible to play right away.
He had a catch in each of JSU’s four games in fall 2020, but in the season finale against FIU, Gamecocks’ quarterback Zerrick Cooper, a former top recruit and Kelly Bryant’s backup at Clemson in 2017, broke his leg.
It was deja vu for Scott; with Cooper out for the spring season, JSU became a run-heavy team, with 372 rushes against 209 pass attempts in the nine-game spring season.
Scott finished with 10 catches for 126 yards and two scores. He could have stayed at JSU for his extra COVID year of eligibility — but he’d also always dreamed of making the NFL. Scott knows that’s a long shot, but he also felt he’d never gotten the opportunity to show what he could do, his path interrupted again and again by twists of fate.
So he went into the transfer portal again, told his old friend Vander Waal, now established as ISU’s quarterback after a successful 2021 spring season, and Bengals offensive coordinator Mike Ferriter called to offer a scholarship on the first day he was in the portal.
“They were upfront and honest with me from the start, and that’s all you really want,” Scott said. “As a player, especially with one year left, I think there was a clear plan that made sense.”
Scott immediately becomes, along with all-Big Sky senior Tanner Conner, the most experienced receiver on Idaho State’s roster. The Bengals played four true freshmen alongside Conner in the spring.
Another intriguing spot is at tight end, where Nate Shubert won’t return for the fall season, leaving ISU without a clear starter. At 6-foot-6, Scott certainly has the size to play there, and past coaches have toyed with the idea. If Idaho State does make the switch, it could set up an interesting position battle between two former FBS players in Scott and Oregon State dropdown Isaiah Smalls, who missed the spring season with an injury.
That surfeit of opportunity to break into the lineup — for a team that, under Ferriter and head coach Rob Phenicie, absolutely, positively won’t abandon the pass game — helped Scott pick ISU over interest from Gardner-Webb, Missouri State and Florida International.
So did his connection with Vander Waal and ISU defensive back Alec Flanagan, who he met because they went to the same gym in California for a couple years.
That sounds like a small thing, but Scott has had plenty of experience with how seemingly small things can change a career. Now, they’ve helped bring him to Idaho State.
“At the end of the day, it’s about opportunity,” Scott said. “And that’s why I came here, because there’s a lot of opportunity. I just, you know, wanted to be able to go out with a bang for my last year.”
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