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Jordyn Adams spent nearly eight years chasing a dream on the baseball diamond. Now he’s headed back to the football field. The former five-star recruit has enrolled at SMU and plans to join the Mustangs football program, a source confirmed to CBS Sports.
Back in 2018, Adams was one of the most talked-about high school athletes in the country. Playing at Green Hope High School in Cary, North Carolina, he finished his prep career ranked as the No. 3 wide receiver in the 2018 class and the No. 14 overall prospect in the nation. The only two receivers ranked ahead of him? Amon-Ra St. Brown and Ja’Marr Chase, both now established NFL stars.
Adams had originally committed to North Carolina with plans to play both football and baseball. That all changed when the Los Angeles Angels drafted him 17th overall in the 2018 MLB Draft and signed him for more than $3 million, pulling him away from college altogether.
What followed was a professional baseball career that lasted nearly seven years. He worked his way up through the Angels’ farm system before making his big league debut in 2023, appearing in 17 games for Los Angeles that season. He came back for 11 more games in 2024 before eventually moving on to the Baltimore Orioles and Milwaukee Brewers organizations.
His last game came on May 20 with Triple-A Nashville.
Over his MLB career, Adams played in 38 games, collecting 13 hits, one home run, and five RBIs. The bulk of his career, though, was spent in the minor leagues, where he appeared in 678 games with more than 2,400 at-bats. Throughout it all, the athleticism that once made him a football recruiting sensation never really went away.
After a brief stint in the Brewers organization wrapped up last month, Adams decided against chasing another baseball opportunity. Instead, he’s going back to the sport a lot of people always believed he could’ve played at the highest level.
How is Jordyn Adams still eligible to play college football?
It’s a fair question, and right now the answer is that he is. Because Adams went straight into professional baseball out of high school and never enrolled at North Carolina or played a single down of college football, his eligibility situation is different from that of a typical college athlete who used up years of eligibility on campus.
That said, the NCAA is actively debating changes to how eligibility works. Last month, Division I leaders discussed an age-based “five-for-five” model that would give athletes five years of competition starting right after high school graduation or their 19th birthday, whichever comes first. If that proposal gets adopted, it could significantly affect situations like Adams’ going forward.
He’s not the first player to walk this path, though. Former MLB outfielder Monte Harrison joined Arkansas in 2023 after spending nearly a decade in professional baseball. Brandon Weeden, a former first-round pick, became Oklahoma State’s starting quarterback in 2010 after years grinding through the minor leagues. And then there’s Chris Weinke, arguably the most well-known example, who spent six seasons in pro baseball before enrolling at Florida State and eventually winning the Heisman Trophy in 2000 at age 28.
Adams is walking into SMU with a different kind of résumé than most college wide receivers. It’ll be worth watching whether the talent that made him a consensus top-15 recruit six years ago is still there waiting to be unlocked.
