Greeneville quarterback Brady Quillen threw a simple bubble screen to Ja’Kobi Gillespie on an early September night in 2021. Gillespie did the rest, taking it 82 yards for a touchdown in a breakout performance as the Greene Devils routed Elizabethton 42-12.
“That was when I realized, man, he is really good at football too,” Ja’Kobi’s father Byron Gillespie told RTI. “He had a huge game.”
Byron wasn’t the only one that took notice. Before Ja’Kobi Gillespie was a potential All-SEC point guard, he was an all-state football player at Greeneville— drawing more college interest for his prowess on the gridiron than the hardwood.
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Gillespie was “a pretty good” football player by his own admission in his junior season. But he elevated things to a completely different level his senior season.
“Senior year, I just blew up athletically,” Gillespie told RTI. “I think I got a lot faster, just making a lot more plays.”
“The dang weight room helped take his basketball and football to another level,” Greeneville head football coach Eddie Spradlin told RTI. “I say it a lot of times, if your best players are your hardest workers, you’re gonna be pretty successful. And that’s what you got with him. And he was just a freaking grinder in the weight room.”
Gillespie did nearly everything for Greeneville. A slot receiver, he caught 39 passes for 892 yards and 11 receiving touchdowns as a senior. Gillespie threw for a pair of touchdowns. The two-way star totaled two interceptions, 11 pass breakups, two fumble recoveries and two defensive touchdowns while playing cornerback.
“If you watch him play basketball, I think you (can see) he’s fearless out on the court. He feels like he can make every play, make every shot,” Spradlin said. “That’s the same way he played football. He was fearless. Go up and get the ball, and he was a lockdown corner, and same thing now, but he’s just so smooth as an athlete.”
There was the breakout performance against Elizabethton the third week of the season. Later in the year Gillespie caught a touchdown, threw a touchdown, returned a punt for a touchdown and had a pick six in the same game.
Gillespie averaged nearly 20 yards per punt return while taking two back to the house.
“Any kind of way we could get him the ball, we were trying to get him the ball,” Spradlin said.
“My favorite part of going to a football game later in the year when they were going to kill everybody was watching him return punts. That was fun,” Byron Gillespie said with a laugh. “There was a chance he was scoring (every time).”
Greeneville rolled through the regular season with a 10-0 record, all 10 wins by four or more scores. But Elizabethton got its revenge in the quarterfinals, defeating the Greene Devils 13-7. Gillespie’s disappointment about the result is still evident when he talks about it four years later.
“He caught a touchdown pass, and they called a pass interference, offensive pass interference on somebody and brought that touchdown (back), it would have won the game,” Spradlin said. “We end up getting beat 13-7. It just wasn’t our night that night.”
The college interest came early in Gillespie’s senior season and was steady throughout. Vanderbilt and Virginia Tech offered him scholarships. North Carolina and Duke both expressed interest and tried to get him to come on a visit.
“It was definitely out of the blue,” Gillespie said. “I didn’t go to any football camps or anything like that.”
Schools talked to Gillespie about coming on a football scholarship but playing on both the football and basketball teams. But every school had the same question for the Belmont basketball commit and the people around him.
“But is he going to play football? That was like the number one question,” Byron said.
Why Gillespie Stuck With Basketball
Gillespie didn’t play football his sophomore year of high school because he wanted to be a starter on the basketball team. Waiting until football season was over to get in the swing of things with the basketball team would have been detrimental to his chances. That decision early in his high school career largely explains the decision he made about his athletic future two years later.
“He always liked basketball better,” Byron said. “He always had a ball in his hand.”
Gillespie’s goal was always to play college basketball. It was his favorite sport. He played football because he enjoyed it, but his aspirations were always on the hardwood.
“I definitely worked more at basketball than football,” Gillespie said.
That’s why he spent his summers playing in AAU tournaments and not going to football camps. A number of mid-major basketball programs offered Gillespie the summer entering his senior year and he committed to Belmont in late July.
With basketball being his first love and having already committed to Belmont, Gillespie decided to stick with hoops. But it wasn’t without thought and even some nudging towards the gridiron from family friend and former NFL safety Gerald Sensabaugh.
“He (Sensabaugh) was like, man, you should have told him to play football,” Byron said. “Because man, they try to teach him to go get the ball at the highest point. And he does (that) every single time. But I just remember that conversation with him and then I was like, ’Kob man, Gerald told me too, you might want (to) think about going and playing football. He thinks you’re a pro.
“And he said, ‘dad, I’m going to go pro in basketball.’ I remember that conversation. So it was dead then.”
There was only one football option that truly piqued Gillespie’s interest. It was the option that never came.
“I was really waiting on Tennessee football,” Gillespie said. “If they would have offered it would have definitely made me think about it.”
“I asked him what it took (for him to play football),” Byron said. “He said, ‘Tennessee calls and offers, then I’ll go play football.’”
Tennessee football never called and Gillespie signed with Belmont to begin his college career. It creates quite the what if.
Gillespie insists that he would already be in the NFL if he chose football— declaring it with the same level of confidence he used to high point deep balls in his standout senior season at Greeneville. Others won’t go as far, but have no doubt that he would have had a successful college football career.
“Oh, he would’ve been a starter,” Byron said. “I think he might even got drafted. It’s hard to say that now, but he might even got drafted.”
“Whatever he’s doing in basketball, he’d done the same thing in football,” Spradlin said. “Because his resiliency or relentless work ethic to be the best. He wants to be the best period. And he’s going to put the work in to be the best. And you know it’s showed on the basketball court. And no doubt in my mind that if he would have decided to play football, he would have that same type of success.”
Things have worked out pretty well for Gillespie on the hard wood too. He spent two seasons at Belmont before transferring to Maryland for his junior season.
Starting at point guard, Gillespie led the Terps to their first Sweet 16 appearance since 2016 and earned Third Team All-Big 10 honors. After head coach Kevin Willard left Maryland for Villanova, Gillespie’s path led him back to Tennessee. He leads the Vols with 17.3 points and 5.4 assists per game entering Tuesday night’s showdown with No. 11 Louisville.
There will always be the “what if” about Gillespie’s football career, but there’s no regrets or doubts. Gillespie says he “for sure” made the correct decision, sticking with his favorite sport and finding his way to the court he dreamed of playing on growing up.
