JONESBORO -- It's around 8 a.m. on Aug. 27, and Omar Bayless' phone has multiple missed calls and texts.
Bayless awakes, checks his phone and realizes something has happened. He calls one of the friends who has texted him, Deajalon Jones, who has devastating news.
Bayless' longtime friend, Justin Mack, was killed in a shooting a few hours earlier in Waynesboro, Miss., half an hour east of Laurel, where Mack and Bayless grew up and played high school football. Bayless is stunned, then tears begin to flow. He had texted with Mack, 26, just the night before.
Mack's death was another gut-wrenching loss Bayless had to absorb in about 18 months, and the second in about a week's time.
Last year, in the span of roughly five months, Bayless lost a high school teammate to gun violence; both his cousin and uncle died; and another high school friend was killed in a car wreck. On Aug. 19, Wendy Anderson -- the wife of Arkansas State University Coach Blake Anderson -- died of breast cancer, which shook Bayless and the Red Wolves' program to their core.
Four days after Mack's death and 12 days after Wendy's, Bayless and ASU opened the the 2019 season against SMU in Jonesboro, and the senior wide receiver had to pull himself together. Mack's funeral was the same day near Laurel, but Bayless couldn't make it.
The Red Wolves lost 37-30 at Centennial Bank Stadium, despite Bayless playing the game of his life. He finished with 10 receptions for 132 yards -- each career highs at the time -- and caught all four of junior quarterback Logan Bonner's touchdown passes, tying the single-game school record.
Six weeks later, Bayless is the nation's leader in receiving yards with 843 and tied for first in touchdowns with 10. He's on the Biletnikoff Award watch list, and last month, he was named the College Football Hall of Fame's player of the month.
Bayless, who broke ASU's career receiving touchdowns mark two weeks ago, is on pace to shatter both the program's single-season records for receiving yards and receiving touchdowns.
But this season has been about far more than eye-popping numbers, breaking records or becoming the nation's top wideout. It's been about overcoming tragedy after tragedy while remembering and honoring those he has lost.
"They keep me going," Bayless said. "It's kind of like anger and emotions built up, because I can't do nothing about it that they're gone, and I just use that on the field.
"Every Saturday I go out, I look up at the sky. I have a conversation with all those people that's gone, and I get going. That drives me."
Almost walked away
In April 2018, Bayless' former Laurel High School teammate, Vincent McGill, was shot and killed in Laurel. They used to spend lots of time together off the field. McGill was 22.
"That's when it all started," said Bayless, who was in the midst of ASU's spring camp at the time of McGill's death.
Three months later in July, Bayless' cousin, Cedric Wheaton, and uncle, Stephon Stevens, each died a few weeks apart. Wheaton, who was 39, died of a heart attack earlier in the month. Stevens, 41, died July 29 after complications from heart valve surgery, just a few days before ASU's fall camp was set to begin. Bayless had to miss the team's first few practices.
Then in August 2018, another old high school friend, Jabrena Terrell, died in a car wreck. Terrell was 21. Losing four people so suddenly took a toll on Bayless.
He went on to have his best season in 2018, totaling 39 receptions, 566 yards and 2 touchdowns. But not long after ASU's 16-13 overtime loss to Nevada in the Arizona Bowl in December -- a game in which he had 129 yards on seven catches -- Bayless returned to Laurel for a few weeks during the winter break. His mind was burdened with the pain of losing people he cared about, and he wanted to be home.
He was ready to quit football.
"I was so close to not coming back," Bayless said. "I was in a dark place at that time. I [didn't] really want to talk to anybody. Just holding all my anger and hurt inside of me, it just kind of sent me down from everybody and everything that I really wanted to do."
Everyone close to him was telling him he couldn't walk away, especially his mother, Angelia Stevens. She urged her son to seek God and pray.
"He came and talked to me. He's like, 'Momma, I just don't think I can do it. I'm just losing so much here at home, and it just seems like I'm never around when stuff's happening,' " Stevens said. "I'm like, 'Baby, it's not for you, this is not for you. What's meant for you is for you. So you got to take yourself out of it and allow God to work things out for you.' "
Anderson said he was prepared to make the trek to Laurel to go get Bayless if he had to.
"We finally got to a point last year where ... I ask him, 'I need to know that when you go home, you're gonna come back, that I'm not gonna have to come find you, I'm not gonna [have to] chase you down,' " Anderson said.
Anderson never had to go on a retrieval mission.
Bayless came back to Jonesboro after the break. Since that time, those close to Bayless say there's been a gradual change in him as a person. He graduated from ASU in May, and he's returned for his final year of eligibility as a redshirt senior.
"As the days went by, I had to stop feeling sorry for myself," Bayless said. "At some point, you got to just drop the way I feel and just think about others around me. And that's what I did."
There's been more loss since -- first Wendy, then Mack. The fresh wounds haven't been any easier to deal with, but Bayless said the difference now is that he has matured and has a greater perspective of the big picture.
"It's a choice -- either you're gonna dwell on it, or you're gonna overcome it and you're gonna get through it," Bayless said. "I chose to overcome all those challenges that were thrown my way."
'Different role'
As he addressed the media Monday before the season opener against SMU, ASU offensive coordinator Keith Heckendorf was posed a simple question -- who in the Red Wolves' loaded wide receiver room did he think could surprise this season?
Heckendorf's tone shifted when he mentioned Bayless' name.
"Senior year," Heckendorf said, "he's ready to take on a different role for this football team than he has in the past."
No one knew then that role would entail Bayless transforming into one of the nation's dominant receivers, especially considering fellow senior Kirk Merritt -- ASU's leading receiver in 2018 -- was back for another season.
But it's been Bayless who's stolen the spotlight. The 6-3, 207-pounder has caught 44 passes for 843 yards and 10 touchdowns. To put that into perspective, only six college receivers since 2000 have logged at least 40 catches, 800 yards and 10 touchdowns through the first six games of a season. Their names? Larry Fitzgerald, Michael Crabtree, Brandin Cooks, Justin Blackmon, Corey Coleman and Josh Doctson. All were first-round NFL Draft picks.
Bayless has put up at least 130 yards and a touchdown in five of ASU's six games, and against Troy on Sept. 28 he set a single-game career high in yards for the third time this season with 213.
"I'm really not surprised with the success he's having," ASU receivers coach Kyle Cefalo said. "The harder things get, the tougher things get, the hotter practices, the longer we go, the more he just separates himself from everybody else. He just shines in those really tough, adverse situations. I think that goes back to the things he's been through."
The numbers tell only part of the story.
Two of his touchdowns in his most recent outing against Georgia State on Oct. 5 were made with one hand, including one late in the third quarter when he had to nearly reach behind his body with his right arm on a back-shoulder fade and with a defender draped all over him, which drew a defensive pass interference call.
"When you're scared, throw it to him," ASU redshirt freshman quarterback Layne Hatcher said. "It takes the pressure off like there's nothing you've ever seen. Just throw it anywhere around him."
Improbable start
The numbers Bayless has put up are staggering. Perhaps equally so is that he was so close to never coming to ASU or ever playing football at this level at all.
Bayless, who had been one of the top basketball players in Mississippi, didn't start playing high school football until his junior year. He said some friends on the football team persuaded him to give it a shot.
Two years later, the basketball star had broken onto the scene as one of the state's top wide receivers, and multiple Power 5 schools were recruiting him for football.
"You knew he had a knack for just grabbing the ball out of the air," said Tracy Lampley, who was Bayless' receivers coach at Laurel.
It was January 2015 when Bayless' career dramatically shifted. He had been heavily recruited by Missouri, but just a few weeks before national signing day, the Tigers backed off.
As the story goes, Anderson got a call from his friend and Missouri receivers coach Pat Washington, who had been the running backs coach at Southern Miss when Anderson was the offensive coordinator there. Washington told Anderson that he needed to give Bayless a look. Anderson already knew coaches at Laurel, including Lampley, who had played for Anderson at Southern Miss.
Not long after that call, Bayless and his mother were in Jonesboro on a midweek visit. He couldn't come on a traditional weekend visit because of his basketball game that Friday.
Bayless was sold on ASU almost immediately, as was Anderson on Bayless. After returning to Laurel, Bayless called Anderson and told him he was committing. Bayless inked with the Red Wolves on national signing day in early February, closing one of the shortest and wildest recruiting processes Anderson's ever been involved in.
"It was a whirlwind," Anderson said. "All that planning that we do? Screw that."
Four-and-a-half years later, Bayless has become one of the best wide receivers in college football playing for a school that was eerily close to never hearing about him.
'In my heart'
There are still times when Bayless finds himself wrestling with the fact that so many people who were close to him are gone.
He misses the nights before his high school football games, when he and McGill would head to a friend's house to eat dinner and relax.
Or the times he used to stop by his uncle's mechanic shop to see him.
Or the time he watched Mack catch four touchdown passes in a state championship game.
Or the days this year when he'd pop by the Andersons' house to check in on Wendy. Bayless did that often, and he vividly remembers his last visit with her toward the end of this summer.
"We talked about a lot," Bayless said. "It was all just laughs in that room. I didn't know that was gonna be my last time seeing her, but at least I got to see her before she really, truly left."
Bayless said reality hits the hardest at night, the time when he tends to overthink.
But for 3 1/2 hours every Saturday, the pain fades and his mind relaxes. He knows the ones he's lost are still with him.
"All of it is in my heart. The towels [that we wear] ain't big enough to put that many names on it," Bayless said. "It's all in my heart right now, and I just play with [those] emotions within."
Sports on 10/15/2019