Legendary

Jordan Lee was not the legend who I expected to come back to BASS this year. Part of that is just his age – at 32 has enough time lapsed to merit the title. I mean, Jim Brown retired from football at 29, and while his accomplishments were epic, I don’t think he got “the L word” bestowed upon him until much later. Rocky Marciano left boxing undefeated at 33 and wasn’t fully appreciated until much later. Those semantics aside, Lee won two Classics back-to-back and that was enough to qualify, so I can’t quibble with his return. He’s one of the handful who really did well consistently at BPT, so he must have his designs on bigger things to leave one sure thing for a restart.

At some point, BASS will have another Legends spot or two open up. I have it on good authority that Lee was not the only one who inquired about making that return, although I can’t confirm the names of the specific anglers. Nevertheless, there are a whole bunch who fished BPT last year who might explore those waters. They include, in no particular order, past AOYs and Classic winners such as:

• Ott DeFoe
• Edwin Evers
• Justin Lucas
• Takahiro Omori
• Chris Lane
• Alton Jones Sr.
• Cliff Pace
• Casey Ashley
• Mark Davis
• Skeet Reese
• Gary Klein
• Luke Clausen
• Randy Howell
• Boyd Duckett
• Timmy Horton

On top of that, there’s the recently retired (from competition) KVD, who has more chits to turn in than any of them.

Some of those guys would never seek out a return on principle, or because of pride, or because they truly see BPT as beneficial to their careers. Others might not have enough time to get to the front of the line. And there are still others, I’m sure (an overlapping group) who burned serious bridges on their way out the door and wouldn’t be provided an easy path, no matter what their qualifications.

And that doesn’t take into account people like the retired George Cochran, or Energizer Bunny Roland Martin, both of whom have multiple titles.

It’s not for me to tell BASS how to run their business, and there’s no greater lesson here than that if you catch ‘em consistently, life on tour moves much more easily. Jordan Lee had options because he’s so incredibly talented and accomplished. For all the changes we’ve seen on the tours – from getting rid of co-anglers, to the addition of new technology, to the bifurcation of the field, the one thing that never changes is that catchers catch, and they call the shots.