In May 2001, a college baseball player named Jordon Hankins drove from Memphis to Martin, Tennessee, determined to find UT-Martin football coach Sam McCorkle.

Hankins had played both baseball and football in high school but had decided on baseball for his freshman year in college. He attended Union University, where he played catcher for a year but couldn't shake the feeling that he missed playing football. He was working on a construction project in Memphis for the summer, building a hotel near the airport. On his day off, he decided he'd drive to Martin and see if he could get himself a spot on the Skyhawks.

He walked into the admissions office and asked for McCorkle, who, in a stroke of luck, happened to be standing right there. McCorkle asked him what he was doing, and Hankins told him he was working in construction to make ends meet.

"I remember that he was very determined," McCorkle said. "And he just walked in there. And in a lot of ways, I was similar to that. So I've always kind of had a soft spot for guys that are going to prove that they can do something and didn't necessarily have everything given to him."

Even though Hankins hadn't played football since high school, McCorkle gave him a spot on the team, kick-starting his career in football. It's nearly 23 years later, but Hankins — Memphis football's new defensive coordinator — remembers it like it was yesterday.

Jordon Hankins as a dual-sport competitor

Hankins is a Tennessee lifer, except for a year as the special teams coach at Marshall. He grew up in Hohenwald and played both linebacker and running back at Lewis County High School under coach Bobby Sharp, who is close with Hankins' family.

Hankins' brother, Randall, is five years older and set many of the Lewis County football records. Jordon, ever the competitor, obsessively tried to break them.

"I was competitive at everything," he said. "I don't think I was good at anything. I'm never going to say I was good."

Sharp was surprised when Jordon Hankins decided to pursue baseball at Union University. But after one year, and after that conversation with McCorkle, Hankins moved to Martin and settled in as a hard-hitting linebacker.

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Jordon Hankins' coaching career starts

Hankins had known for a while that he wanted to be a football coach. He remembers scribbling plays on scratch paper while sitting in high school classes, trying to work out different formations and playsets. He got himself an interview for a job as an offensive line coach at Riverdale High School, but the running back and linebacker needed to study up.

Sharp remembers Hankins going back to the Lewis County fieldhouse to go over offensive line formations and calls before the interview. Sharp left for the night, and when he went back to work the next day, he found Hankins exactly where he'd left him.

"That sucker had been out there all night, working," Sharp said.

Hankins got the job, then worked at Riverdale for four years. He taught, too — his history degree meant he started out teaching about world civilizations, but he got moved to the weight room after one year. He doesn't remember being a bad teacher or anything, but he also concedes he would spend time after class watching film or working on plays when he probably could have been planning lessons or grading papers.

In 2010, UT-Martin coach Jason Simpson was recruiting at Riverdale when he came across Hankins. He offered him a job as strength coach and running backs coach, but it was a tough decision for Hankins — leaving his high school job would mean taking a significant pay cut.

He ended up taking the job and quickly shot up the ranks. He had a slew of different titles during his time at UT-Martin and served as defensive coordinator for his last three seasons before he left for Marshall.

'All about the players'

He came back to Tennessee in 2021 to be Memphis' linebackers coach, returning to a familiar city where his sister lives and where he helped build that hotel all those years ago. When defensive coordinator Matt Barnes left for Mississippi State before the AutoZone Liberty Bowl in December, coach Ryan Silverfield named Hankins his interim defensive coordinator.

Hankins, in less than a month, instituted a completely new scheme that had Iowa State confused, leading to a 36-26 Tigers win in which they allowed zero rushing yards.

Because of that performance, it wasn't a surprise when Silverfield took the interim tag off the next week.

Hankins says he'll approach the job the same way he approached his previous one: putting the players first, no matter what. His constant message on social media is simple: "All about the players." He tweeted it right after the bowl game, as fans were heaping praise on his defense's performance. He tweeted it again after he was named defensive coordinator. You can bet he'll keep on doing it.

Throughout a wide-ranging conversation a couple of weeks after he got the job, that phrase slips into his answers about a variety of different things.

"With coaching, it's all about the players," he said. "This interview doesn't matter. In my mind, none of this matters. The guys that matter are the guys down in the weight room right now. Those are the guys that matter. And that's the reason that I do it."

Said Simpson, who oversaw 10 years of Hankins' development as a coach: "He'll know where every player on defense lives, how much their rent is, if their driver's licenses are up to date, if they've got car insurance. That's just things that he did here."

There's plenty of work ahead. Hankins will preside over a defense that's losing major leadership pieces in defensive end Jaylon Allen, linebacker Geoffrey Cantin-Arku and safety Simeon Blair. There are transfers to assess, recruits to go after and a new scheme to put in place.

Keeping with his overall theme, Hankins said he's not beholden to a specific scheme and will shape it to the personnel he has on his team. That was clear when he changed the scheme before the bowl game, and now he's got time to figure out how to maximize the talent on next year's team. The dry-erase wall on one side of his office figures to be completely covered with potential formations and plays by the time the season rolls around.

And he'll always have his role as a motivator.

"At some point, you're going to have to compete against somebody that's better than you," he said. "Your work ethic has to be the advantage edge that you have. And that's really my biggest selling point. I'm walking proof of that."

Reach sports writer Jonah Dylan at jonah.dylan@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @thejonahdylan.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: How Jordon Hankins went from college baseball to Memphis football DC