Jul 24, 2018 By Wayne Stewart for The 5 min read

Lawrence “Yogi” Berra got his nickname from a friend who said he sat in a position much like a Hindu yogi, or Holy man. Ringgold football (and baseball) star Charles “Yogi” Jones (Class of 1978) got his moniker from his mom who said he resembled a little bear when he was a newborn. Jones, the cousin of two other fine Donora athletes, Bernie and Ulice Payne, would eventually grow up to be a muscular 6-foot-2 Panther — a Pitt Panther, that is.

In Jones’s Ringgold sophomore season the team featured “one of the top backs in the state, Chucky Fisher, so we were pretty good. We had a heckuva battle with Monessen and Jo Jo Heath.”

Jones, a strong defensive end, went on to become a scholastic All-American who played in the Big 33 game and was on the All-State squad. He topped it off by being named a high school All-American. In great demand, he then visited many campuses including Miami, North Carolina State, Penn State, and West Virginia.

During his days at Pitt, where he “played every position on the front seven,” his team won 42 games and finished in the top 10 each season– and as high as #2 in 1980. One year he had two broken wrists and still played the entire season, and he still led Pitt in tackles with 99.

Highly respected, he was a co-captain with Dan Marino, J.C. Pelusi and Jimbo Covert.

“I played with some Hall of Famers: Marino, Ricky Jackson, Russ Grimm, and Chris Doleman” Jones said. “It was a good time to be there.”

Indeed. Jones, who could bench 400 pounds and squat 500, went to bowl games in each of his four years as a player, including the Gator Bowl when he was a junior and the Cotton Bowl the next season.

Jones also faced some famous opponents — one he’ll never forget.

“Literally, the last play of my career was Eric Dickerson dropping my shoulder out of place,” Jones said. “He’s a lot bigger than advertised at around 6-3, 225, and the fastest thing that was on the field in the Cotton Bowl. I hit him and my shoulder didn’t like it. The last tackle of my career ended in a partial dislocation.”

Jones said the other runner in SMU’s Pony Express that day was Craig James and his fumble-jarring tackle on him was a personal highlight.

After graduating in 1983, Jones signed with the Dallas Cowboys, but injuries shattered his NFL dream. He became a coach next, beginning that occupation at James Madison University. He then coached for the Frankfort NFL Europe team, then scouted for the Cleveland Browns. Next came stints for a Scotland team which featured former Steeler Nick Eason, and then it was on to Berlin.

Jones singled out huge coaching highlights, the times his teams in Europe won it all.

“We won the World Bowl my first year, 1999 with Frankfort — our quarterback was Jake Delhomme — and with the Hamburg Sea Devils in my last year, 2007, the last season for the league. We were in our third season, not supposed to win, but nobody told us we weren’t supposed to beat (defending champs) Frankfort at their home for the title, but we stole the last ever World Bowl.”

Jones is now a defensive coordinator in his ninth year at Bethune-Cookman University.

“It’s very rewarding,” he said. “We build men and win championships. We’ve been the number one defense in the country in Football Championship Subdivision and average being in the top 20 in the country. We’ve been number one in rushing defense, passing defense, and turnover margin.”

BCU plays some tough opponents, too, and that includes Miami, Florida State, and Central Florida.

“Florida won’t play us,” Jones boasted. “We’re one of the few FCS schools to have beaten Division I programs. We beat Florida International University twice. We averaged eight wins a year since I’ve been here, we’ve been to national playoffs three times and we won five conference titles.”

In an early 2018 interview, he stated he is most proud of “graduating from college and raising two children with my wife Jane that have both graduated with higher degrees in college. My son Morgan is in his third year of medical school and my daughter Mallory is an MBA out of St. John’s where she played basketball. She went to the Sweet Sixteen there.”

In high school, she attended the prestigious Oak Hill Academy, a nationally ranked team. “She was ranked the 39th best forward in the country,” Jones pointed out.

One regret: Jones wishes his mother Loretta Jones Manus had lived long enough to see Bethune-Cookman.

“She was a woman very much like (educator) Mary McLeod Bethune — very strong and very determined and dedicated to help children move forward with their lives,” he said.

Despite that regret, it sounds as if Donora’s own Yogi has batted 1.000 in football and in life.