MORGANTOWN — It is the evening of January 9, and in two more days, Jimmy Bell Jr. would be lining up against the Baylor men’s basketball team in a critical Big 12 game.
On this particular night, though, Bell, took his mind off hoops for a moment and switched on the TCU-Georgia football game for the national championship.
“I watched it, but I turned it off after the first half,” Bell said.
Standing 6-foot-10 and 285 pounds — his current weight is a product of hard work and diet, because he was at 350 pounds when he first enrolled at WVU — Bell’s frame looks every bit the part of an NFL-caliber left tackle.
And if basketball is Bell’s passion, well, football is what first got him going in the world of athletics.
We take you back to his high school days at Arthur Hill High in Saginaw, Mich. As a sophomore, Bell said he was already at 280 pounds, and it’s hard to believe there were many high school defensive tackles in the state of Michigan matching up with him in those days.
Bell was more than just a big guy back then. He had footwork and agility that also showed up on the basketball court, too, where it was also hard to believe there were any high school centers in the state of Michigan matching up against him.
By the time Bell reached his junior year, he was faced with a decision.
His first Division I scholarship offer had come from UNLV to play basketball, and so hoops had sort of jumped to the front of Bell’s list of priorities.
Except Bell said the coach who first got him playing basketball had just been fired.
“Once he got fired, I just sort of wanted to go somewhere else,” Bell said. “I wanted to take basketball more seriously.”
He traveled across the country and enrolled at Bella Vista (Scottsdale, Ariz.) Prep, where football was left behind and basketball became Bell’s top option.
In a 2019 interview he gave to MLive on YouTube, Bell said he transformed his game at the prep school, became more serious about working out, hiking and swimming, while taking on a diet of tofu and rice.
Football was now in his rear-view mirror, but admits the itch to play never completely goes away.
“The thought has definitely crossed my mind,” Bell said. “It’s definitely a thought, for sure.”
The idea of playing both college basketball and football isn’t a new one.
Donovan McNabb played basketball at Syracuse, while also leading the Orangemen to the 1999 Orange Bowl.
Charlie Ward won the 1993 Heisman Trophy at Florida State, while also setting the school’s career record for steals on the basketball team. Ward was drafted by the New York Knicks in the first round of the 1994 NBA Draft.
Both were quarterbacks/point guards, and neither were 6-10 and 285 pounds.
So, the question is posed to Bell, is it possible for a man of his size to play both sports?
“I think so,” Bell said. “I wouldn’t say ‘yes’ for everybody. For me, I always had a love for both sports growing up.”
On a fall Saturday in Morgantown, Bell can usually be found somewhere near Milan Puskar Stadium watching a WVU football game.
“I’ve gone to mostly every home game here, and I still reminisce and think about playing football,” said Bell, who is averaging 5.9 points and 5.8 rebounds per game at WVU. “I miss it a lot, but right now, I’m here to play basketball and that’s where my focus is.”
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