Patience of Jobes tested at Gator Bowl

Story by Chris Graham
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Dad was a standout at Texas Tech – “a stud, pretty much.”
His older brother played for the Red Raiders – still knows some of the guys on the team from his years in Lubbock.
Heck, his mom was a cheerleader there.
The Jobes bleed red and black. But tomorrow, they’ll be wearing the orange and blue that their son Staton has on his back.
“They’re behind me. For sure,” said Jobe, a redshirt freshman walk-on who caught 15 passes for 156 yards and one touchdown, a fourth-quarter score against Georgia Tech that provided the winning points in a 28-23 triumph in September, in his first year in Charlottesville.

Jobe had a chance to walk on at Texas Tech after catching 44 passes for 1,003 yards and 10 touchdowns as a senior at Westlake High (Austin, Texas) – but then at the last minute he was told that the receiver-rich Red Raiders didn’t have any more openings on offense.

“I was offered the same thing here, and Virginia was always my number-one choice. I’m obviously very happy with my decision,” said Jobe, who grew up rooting for Texas Tech even without knowing that his father, Jeff, a surgeon, had done much of anything on the football field in his heyday.

Turns out that dad started in the 1973 Gator Bowl for Texas Tech – but Staton Jobe expects his parents, if not his brother, Taylor, who played at Tech from 1999 to 2003, to be on his side tomorrow.

“They’ll definitely be supporting Virginia. They’ll be in orange and blue. As for my brother, he won’t give me a straight answer. It’s kind of hard – I know he’s rooting for me, but it’s also kind of hard for him to root against the team that he was playing for for five years. He still knows some of those guys,” Jobe said.

Chris Graham is the executive editor of The SportsDominion.