STARKVILLE — Dan Jacobi attended Central Florida with every intention of being a physical therapist.
Jacobi soon learned he was going to take another career path.
As a track runner at Tate High School in Cantonment, Florida, Jacobi suffered a hamstring injury. There was no one there to help him rehabilitate from the setback and give him advice on how to come back from the injury, so he decided to find out himself in college. All it took for Jacobi was for his academic advisor to tell him the best undergraduate degree to prepare for physical therapy was athletic training.
“I fell in love with it and never had any interest to go on to physical therapy,” Jacobi said. “It’s difficult to come back from (an injury) if you don’t know what you’re doing. I needed some help and needed some guidance, and that’s kind of what got me interested in it.”
Jacobi has been the head athletic trainer for the Mississippi State football team the last two seasons. He will be with No. 20 MSU (7-2, 3-2 Southeastern Conference) at 2:30 p.m. Saturday (WCBI) when it plays host to No. 3 Alabama Crimson Tide (8-1, 5-1) at Davis Wade Stadium.
Jacobi is happy with his career decision and likes the freedom of being an athletic trainer.
“It’s something different every day,” Jacobi said. “I’m rarely just tied down in the athletic training room doing rehabs. I like working with an athletic, younger population versus a diverse population that you get in a physical therapy clinic. I like being outside, I get to travel, and lots of things that are exciting about the job.”
After getting his bachelor’s degree in Athletic Training at UCF, Jacobi accepted a position with the Alabama football team and worked on receiving a master’s degree in Health Studies. He finished in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and accepted an assistant athletic training position at West Alabama in 2010. He worked with the Tigers for a season before becoming the head athletic trainer for the Samford football team. He spent two seasons (2011-2012) at Samford before getting the head athletic training job at Marshall in Huntington, West Virginia.
The three stops helped prepare him for the job in Starkville.
“Those are some of the best experiences I had because I came from a couple of bigger places that we really had a lot of resources,” Jacobi said. “When I finished at Alabama, I really needed to go to a place where I maybe didn’t have as many tools and didn’t have as many resources so I could figure out how to do things with less.
“You still have the same goal in mind, you’re still trying to get the athletes healthy, keep them on the field, and able to play. But you don’t necessarily have all the bells and whistles. You learn to do things without as much at your disposal.”
After spending one season (2013) at Marshall, Jacobi accepted the position at MSU. Although working at the smaller schools helped Jacobi, he said the ultimate goal was to get to a place where resources weren’t an issue and he had more than he needed, which is why the SEC always had his attention. He was at Alabama when the football team won the national championship in 2009.
“I always kind of aspired to work in the SEC just because I like the competition of the conference and every week is a challenge,” Jacobi said.
Jacobi didn’t encounter many injuries with the Bulldogs last season when they started the season with nine-straight wins and rose to No. 1 for five weeks.
It has been a different story this season.
Senior cornerback Will Redmond and senior safety Kendrick Market suffered torn anterior cruciate ligaments that ended their careers at MSU. Jacobi said it was emotional to see those two go down.
“None of those guys planned to necessarily finish their college career the way that they did,” Jacobi said. “But 10 years from now, they’ll look back and probably be stronger because of it because of the obstacles they had to overcome.”
Wide receivers Gabe Myles and Joe Morrow have missed a combined five games. Tight end Gus Walley has suffered multiple injuries and has missed three games. Running back Ashton Shumpert has missed one game with an injury.
“Very few athletic trainers do it for the money or the recognition,” Jacobi said. “We do it because we like to help people and we like to take them through a rehab process and see them get back out and do the sport that they like to do.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Ben Wait on Twitter @bcwait
Ben Wait reports on Mississippi State University sports for The Dispatch.
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