FRISCO — Kyler Jordan admits it’s hard to see his alma mater splintering off into multiple high schools, but the Lubbock-Cooper graduate will always support the Pirates over the Patriots.
It was at LCP where Jordan became a standout athlete, in both football and baseball. Growing up in Lubbock, the allure of Texas Tech was hard to pass up, but Jordan wanted to make a decision for himself, signing with the Baylor football team out of high school rather than the Red Raiders.
Joey McGuire played the role of lead recruiter for Jordan at Baylor, taking the head coaching job at Texas Tech two weeks before Jordan signed with the Bears. Entering his fifth and final season of college football, Jordan has maintained his allegiance to Baylor just as he’ll always root for OG Lubbock-Cooper.
“Out of high school I took a big step of faith leaving Lubbock and getting away from home,” Jordan said at The Star during Big 12 media days, “and the whole reason I did that was just to get more out of myself. I feel like going to Baylor has made me grow as a man, it’s made me grow in my faith tremendously. Those two things are super important to me, but just being here is just such a blessing.”
Jordan and Coronado grad Sawyer Robertson even got to spend time together as teammates with the Baylor football team, rooming together for a spell. They had a built-in bond already after their years of competing against each other and attending the same church — Victory Life — and that blossomed in Waco with the Bears.
The Bears will have a new quarterback at the helm this year in Florida transfer DJ Lagway, the highly-touted recruit looking to make live up to his lofty expectations. While Lagway switched schools for a change of scenery — and after the Gators made a head coaching change in the offseason — Jordan said sticking with the Bears his entire career has as much to do with Dave Aranda the person as the Bears’ up-and-down success during his time on the field.
“The things that Coach Aranda preaches every day is who I want to be as a person,” Jordan said. “One of the main mottos that’s really always stuck with me was how you do anything is how you do everything, and I just feel like that can’t be more true.”
Jordan and the Bears have a lot at stake this season. While the Lubbock native will wrap his time at Baylor one way or another, Aranda remains on the proverbial hot seat, the 2026 campaign likely to decide whether the head coach sticks around after the season.
With that in mind, the Bears are taking a do-your-job mentality into the season.
“As a leadership group, I think there’s about 20 of us on it in the spring, we kind of brainstormed kind of what w want to stand on,” Jordan said, “and the motto that we stood on was kill or be killed. Football can be as team-oriented and as physical as it is, but if you’re not going out there and winning your one-on-one, you’re not going to win football games.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Lubbock-Cooper grad Kyler Jordan settled with Baylor football
