In mid-January, Oregon defensive lineman Arik Armstead announced he had decided to quit basketball in order to focus solely on football. Nearly three months later and moving forward, Armstead will be seeing a familiar hoops face on the other side of the line of scrimmage.
Ducks point guard Johnathan Loyd, the Oregonian reported earlier in the week, has decided to make the jump from the hardwood to the gridiron. Loyd began practicing with the team Monday as a wide receiver.
While Loyd played four seasons of basketball in Eugene in four years, he still maintains one year of athletic eligibility as he didn’t use a redshirt season. In 2009, Greg Paulus used the same “loophole” in moving on from being a Duke point guard to starting quarterback at Syracuse.
As for Loyd’s football talents, the Las Vegas Sun wrote that "[d]espite taking two years off and joining Gorman’s football team three weeks into [his senior] season, Loyd has become one of the most valuable players on the {Las Vegas Bishop Norman] Gaels’ star-studded roster.” During his brief time spent on the football field that year, Loyd returned five punts for touchdowns.
Loyd, though, proclaimed his first love to be basketball coming out of high school, a sport in which he would go on to set the UO record for games played in a career (144).