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From Big Apple to Big Orange

NEW YORK --- It's there, almost from birth.

Certainly once the family departs the hospital and arrives at their home mere miles from Ellis Island where the Guarantano family roots extend deep into the Jersey shore; blocks from aunts, uncles and grandparents.

Football is part of Jarrett Guarantano like stuffed animals adorn baby cribs. In fact, Guarantano traces his earliest sleeping patterns to his variation of a crib companion: a plush pigskin.

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“I don’t know if I’m just as crazy as they are, but when he would fall asleep at night, and it wasn’t just a football pillow,” says Karen Guarantano, who rivals any New York taxi driver for her trips spiriting both Jarrett and his younger sister, Victoria, to camps ranging from basketball to gymnastics. “We would actually go get the football and lay the football in bed with him with his hand on top of the football.

“And when we would say our prayers, even before he went to bed, he would say his prayers with his hands on top of the football. Football is big in our house.”

Football is there when Jarrett begins, around age 6, the training sessions with his father, former Rutgers University and Canadian Football Leaguer James “Jim” Guarantano, once close enough friends with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson that Johnson attends Jarrett's 2nd birthday party.

“I’d laugh and tease and make fun of something, but two seconds later there’d be a coaching lesson I’d work in,” Jim says, “or just ask him, say, ‘Look at the date and time. It’s summer. It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. How many people do you see on the field? Everybody’s at the beach or hanging out. Where are you at? You’re at the field, getting the work in before the beach or the pool.’

"He’s always had all of those things, experienced all of that, but we’ve taught him you go to work before you do that. He’s never missed hanging out at the mall with his friends or anything like that. He’s just always been so structured and got his work in.”

There again, naturally, when Jarrett, age 8, throws the first of what now is a triple-digit touchdown tally. Yes, he remembers.

“Of course, it was a pass to the tight end,” Jarrett recalls, as if it’s his final play of high school and not a youth league toss from a decade ago. “Quick 8-7 was the play-call.”

More recently, the legend of Jarrett Guarantano spawns from exploits at national prep powerhouse Bergen Catholic, which sits across the Hudson River from New York in the former Italian migrant haven of Oradell, N.J.

“One of the coolest moments was when he was a sophomore, we were at practice in an intrasquad deal, and he was running full-on at the safety, a great player, a three-year starter for us” recalls B.C. head coach Nunzio Campanile. “And the safety went to square him up, and Jarrett just jumped right over him and kept going right into the end zone. And we were like, ‘Holy crow!’ The whole team was like, ‘Whoa! Hold on!’

“And we had some good players on that team, and they turned around and were like, ‘That was different.’ I think that was one of those moments where everybody got to see like that’s what the hype’s about. He’s got natural gifts that other guys don’t have.”

Jarrett Guarantano knows this; understands football alone cannot define him. Understands it from an early age.

“From Day 1, since Jarrett turned 5, 6, 7, his interactions with adults and his interactions with church and especially with church and God and healing and helping people, his hands,” says Karen, telling a recent story of Jarrett imploring her to stop the family car in traffic so that he can lend a helping hand to an elementary school girl walking home and needing a drink of water. “He would say, ‘Mommy, my hands are so big.’ And I would say, ‘Yeah.’ And he would say, ‘No, they’re big for a reason. I’ve got gifted hands.’

“He would say, at a young age like 10, ‘These hands are going to make me somebody, some day. I just feel it.’ He’s been in church and his faith is so strong and his belief is so strong. When he’s had injuries, he knew who to call when he was injured and to call God. It was a God-given thing; it wasn’t that he just decided to get hurt that particular day. So Jarrett has always been true to who Jarrett is. I think he’s gifted all the way around in everything he does.”

He is true to the hard-work, earn-what-you-get, grateful-for-what-you-have values his family continues to instill in him. So Jarrett Guarantano is riding a block from Central Park, his N.Y.P.D. father at the wheel, football equipment bubbling from the trunk to the backseat, and contemplating the plight of a homeless man on the sidewalk; wondering aloud if he can help the man or if perhaps help isn’t really what the man seeks.

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of homeless people on the streets and that’s sad, seeing that kind of stuff,” Jarrett says, eyes on the sidewalk. “Every time I’m in the city, every time I have the chance to see someone that’s unfortunate like that, it takes a big impact on me. In a sense of, every time I see someone I always want to help them, want to give them my jacket. Always want to give them some money, but you have to be careful with what you give them in the sense of money because you don’t know if they’re going to give it away to drugs or that type of stuff.

“But it really helps you to understand how gifted and blessed you are to be able to have a family that’s behind you and people that are supporting you each and every day. It’s a tough life for those guys, and you don’t know their story or how that’s happened.”

Jarrett’s tale might be the singular most illustrative yarn of today’s college football demands and recruitments.

Junior days, once voluntary, now are mandatory for all big-time dreamers. Days, plural on purpose, because one is not enough to survive.

Some SEC schools are making headlines touting their freshman days, inviting select prospects who are closer to G-rated movies than college entrance exams.

Big deal. The Guarantano family is turning to Jarrett’s collegiate chapter following more than a half-decade of colleges in pursuit. Of invitations to Oregon, Southern Cal, UCLA, Ohio State and all of college football’s effete programs.

“Sixth grade, sixth-seventh grade it started,” Jim says. “I’m looking at pictures of us with Coach (Brian) Kelly at Notre Dame, seventh grade, big banner [that read] ‘Welcome Jarrett.’ The recruiting process really started then.

"That’s why when people said, ‘He’s committing early, April his junior year?’ I said, ‘Early? This process has been going on for years.’”

Blossoming since Jarrett elected to focus solely on football, leaving behind his elite status on both the baseball diamond and basketball hardwood.

“I wasn’t that competitive until, with football I wasn’t so competitive until maybe seventh or eighth grade, and then I started to realize, ‘All right, it’s buckle-down time,’” says Jarrett, his competitive zest still evident in his 2016 Easter egg hunt championship Sunday, which remains his favorite holiday both because of his faith and desire to compete. "When I realized I wanted to go on in football, that’s when I became so competitive and it just translates to everything now. I can be playing X-Box and start screaming at the screen. It’s pretty bad. I don’t like when somebody’s better than me in something.

“If I can’t practice and beat [his dad], I’m not going to play (pool, ping-pong, etc).”

The size and natural talent are as unmistakable as the New York City skyline that Jarrett prefers to view from the Jersey side of the river. Yet the preparation is where he already separates himself.

“I think he has a desire to be the best, he really does,” says Campanile, close with former pupil and ex-Tennessee quarterback Matt Simms, now a godparent to Campanile’s two sons. “He’s a tremendous competitor and I think it’s also a little bit in the way he’s raised, he’s been around this game his whole life.

“He wants to be an all-time great, and I think he really has a chance to be. He works at every element of the game. You see what he does in the weight room, you see what he does in the way he practices but he also prepares to learn the game plan and learn the defensive side of the ball. He’s educated about it and wants to take it to the next level.”

So the footballs, the nets, the bungee cords and cones and ladders and snapping station never leave the car.

“His level of preparation is absurd,” Jim says. “I pay him compliments, but I dig in his ass more than anybody. That’s a product of where he is right now. You can’t be more prepared than he is at this stage of the game. We’ve been everywhere; it’s just not feasible or possible.

"He’s as gifted of an athlete as you can possibly be, and then he’s as polished as a pocket passer. That’s why people don’t know what the hell category to put him in.”

Put the family into the ‘Team Butch Jones’ category. Not because Jim and Jones know each other from Jim’s standout days at Rutgers, where Jones’ first Football Bowls Subdivision job apparently includes plenty of stories about disrupting Jim’s focus in the wide receivers’ room.

During January’s official visit to Rocky Top, with parents, family members and coaches gathering, Jim feels compelled to address the room.

Is it impromptu; Jones is nervous. For the next several minutes, as the guy Victoria Guarantano calls ‘Uncle Butch’ sees his anxiety dissolve in emotions, Jim Guarantano speaks passionately, his Northeast staccato accelerating, about Jones, Tennessee, the man, the program.

“Well, first of all, I was very taken aback, very surprised; Jim is never short on words,” says Jones. “He kind of took over the room, and I kind of sat back and it was emotional. Here’s an individual you’ve been a part of his life for so many years, his family’s life, and to hear those words, it meant everything.”

Jim owns the longest history with Jones; Karen speaks with the perspective of both wife and mother.

“I am with Butch 150 percent,” she emphasizes. “No matter what any storyline says or no matter what anybody can possibly say about him negative. I know him as Butch Jones, and all he has been is kind and good to our family and been honest. That’s what a parent wants when they go confront Butch Jones, you want somebody to be honest with you.

“And honestly, it was really in the beginning about Jimmy’s and Jarrett’s comfortable situation with Butch Jones, and I just didn’t like Butch. I said, ‘You know, Butch, this is not fair: you’re getting to know the guys, but you don’t know who I am.’ I trailed behind in conversations. And then one particular visit we went down there, and I can tell you he gave me everything but the kitchen sink in terms of his positive energy and what he does for his players and for Tennessee. And I see it, the young men come up to me and say, ‘Hello. How are you Mrs. Guarantano?’ This is not something … you don’t get that all the time. It’s a taught behavior that is going on at Tennessee.”

So, too, is Jarrett’s approach. He is two months from arriving at Tennessee; already he’s ‘Face-timing’ with UT coaches to discuss the playbook. Karen rarely hears her son raise his voice, until Jarrett barks out play-calls throughout the house.

By his own description, Jarrett is “the most laid-back kid you can probably find until football-time, then it’s business.”

The kid with the football pillow? Don’t sleep on him.

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