Last weekend’s NFL draft featured plenty of area college players earning a chance to play on Sundays next season. One pro prospect in particular was intriguing to local fans: Jacob Ford, a defensive end from the University of Central Arkansas. Ford is the son of late Memphis musician Fred Ford, who died in 1999 at the age of 69.
Fred Ford played baritone sax, though he could make other sounds as the occasion required — you can hear him barking at the end of Big Mama Thornton’s 1952 recording of “Hound Dog,” made while Elvis Presley was still getting beaten up at Humes High. He also recorded with Jerry Lee Lewis, Rufus Thomas, Charlie Rich, and B.B. King.
At 6’4″, 250 pounds, Jacob Ford doesn’t blow sax, he records sacks. As a senior at Central Arkansas, Ford notched eight, on the way to earning second team All-America honors for division I-AA. Now he’s got a shot at playing on Sundays in Nashville, as the sixth-round pick of the Tennessee Titans.
