MIAMI — Throughout Indiana football’s historic 2025-26 season, Amare Ferrell took a meaningful moment before running out on the field for each game.
After the safety put his jersey and pads on, he hung up a different jersey in his locker, whether at Memorial Stadium or on the road. The custom IU jersey has his No. 1 on both the front, with “Tawanna J.” on the back.
That jersey has hung in Ferrell’s locker during every Indiana game this season. The junior hugs and kisses it before putting it up, and then runs out on the field. The jersey is the first thing he sees in the locker room at halftime and after games.
Ferrell’s ritual and custom jersey honor his mother, Tawanna Jackson-Jones. She was Ferrell’s rock, until she unexpectedly passed away on Aug. 6, 2025.
“This season has probably been my hardest season, definitely, with what I had going on at the beginning of the season,” Ferrell told The Daily Hoosier during the CFP National Championship media day. “But I’m just grateful to be here. It shows the adversity that I been through, and I’m still being able to overcome that adversity.”
Ferrell asked Indiana staff to make the jersey for him ahead of the season-opener. They created another for him during IU’s postseason run with a Rose Bowl patch and a Peach Bowl patch on it. He wants to get the jerseys framed, eventually.
Jackson-Jones wasn’t ill; this wasn’t something Ferrell knew was coming. He texted with his mom the night before her passing, and she told him that she’d call him the next morning. That was Ferrell’s last interaction with his mom. He woke up on that fateful Wednesday and got the unthinkable phone call from his father.
Tawanna Jackson-Jones was a stay-at-home mother who cared for Ferrell in Lake City, Fla., which sits in the middle between Jacksonville and Tallahassee. She passed away at 45 years old.
She was extremely invested in Ferrell’s football career — her other son, Ta’Davius Freeland, played in high school but not in college. So she poured herself into Ferrell’s athletic journey, attending every game along the way, from Pop Warner games at five years old to Big Ten games with Indiana. And outside of sports, Ferrell described Jackson-Jones as a very loving person.
“She would do anything for you. If she didn’t know you, she would give the clothes off her back, just for you,” Ferrell told TDH. “And that’s just how I was raised: always give back, and if people need something, you always make sure to help them, because you never know when you might need a favor.”
This tragedy occurred one week into Indiana’s fall camp. The Hoosiers wouldn’t take the field for their season-opener against Old Dominion for over three weeks. But fall camp is a grind, as the team gets prepared for a long season ahead.
Ferrell, 20, left IU for three days to be with family during the difficult time. Things felt different when he returned to Bloomington and got back on the field. But he dove back into football as much as possible in the aftermath of losing his mother. It helped Ferrell keep his mind off everything away from the sport.
IU teammates and coaches supported Ferrell, both in the immediate aftermath and as the season’s gone along. Ferrell said he particularly leaned on Jamari Sharpe, J’Mari Monette, Jah Jah Boyd, and Byron Baldwin Jr. in getting through the situation.
But few, if any, within the program could offer the sort of empathy safeties coach Ola Adams could. Adams’ father passed away while he was in college, playing football and track & field at Concord (W.Va.) University in the 2000s.
Adams knew Ferrell would be able to distract himself when he was on the field or around the IU football facility. He was more worried about the junior’s well-being dealing with the situation when he was away from football.
“When you lose somebody that close to you, there’s just going to be some ups and downs. They don’t always show on the field. They can show just when you’re sitting back in your dorm room by yourself. … I always checked on him when he was away from football,” Adams told TDH. “Football is like a sanctuary; you’re able to step out there on the field and kind of block everything out. But as soon as you step off that field, you have to deal with that grief.”
Ferrell is quiet and reserved, but Adams could tell how hard this was for the junior. Adams described Ferrell as a mama’s boy, and he knows first-hand the challenge of moving on in life after losing a treasured parent a relatively young age.
Indiana’s safeties coach encouraged Ferrell to hang on to some of the pain, and try to channel that energy into on-field motivation. The junior has battled through the tragic circumstances to turn in another good season for the Hoosiers.
Ferrell has four interceptions this year, becoming the first Hoosier to do that in consecutive seasons since Tracy Porter in 2006-07. Three of his four interceptions this season came in Indiana’s first five games, when his grief was fresher. The junior has also recorded 47 total tackles, two tackles for loss, and seven passes broken up this season.
“I honestly don’t know how he got through it, because I don’t know the feeling — I don’t know nobody that know the feeling. It just showed where his mental is, how tough he is as a person,” Indiana safety Louis Moore told TDH. “To have that at such a young age, and then go out and perform and do what he’s doing, it’s a credit to him. I know he’s making his mama proud too, though. He’s making us all proud.”
Ferrell recently signed back with IU to return for his senior season next fall. But before that, he’ll embrace his Tawanna J. Indiana jersey one more time this year, before the CFP National Championship on Monday night at Hard Rock Stadium.
When he steps on the field, he’ll tap his chest twice, look to the sky, and say a prayer. These rituals help Ferrell feel connected to his mother on the field, as if she’s out there with him, protecting him.
The junior knows his mom would be proud of Indiana’s road to this stage, one win away from a national championship that few could’ve foreseen when he committed to Tom Allen’s Hoosiers in 2022. And he knows Jackson-Jones would be proud of her son’s individual journey to get here.
Ferrell called it a blessing to play for a national championship, but added that Monday will be emotional for him — just as every game, every practice, and every day has been since early August.
“She’s on my mind every day. … It’s a blessing, but it’s definitely emotional because this is the year we’re playing for a national championship, the year that she’s not here with me, physically,” Ferrell told TDH. “I know she would definitely be happy to come down to Miami for this game, just spend some time down here, just getting ready to watch us play.”
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