- December 11, 2025
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The lineage before Mason Jordan is laden with winners. Multiple predecessors didn’t just play sports — they performed at the highest levels.
A Super Bowl champion. A national hall of fame inductee. An all-time scoring leader. He calls all three of them close relatives.
Football is his way of carrying forth their legacy.
“From a young age, I just knew it was my passion,” Jordan said. “That’s where I feel most like myself.”
The senior wide receiver has established his own branch on the family tree with Cardinal Mooney football. As a three-year starter and 2023 state champion, he’s become a powerful presence around the program, carving a niche for himself in the passing game.
Jordan has operated as the go-to guy in the slot this season with 608 yards and five touchdowns on 37 receptions entering Dec. 10’s FHSAA Class 2A state championship. Among all Cougar pass-catchers, his yardage and catches rank second-most, while his scores are third-most.
Playing alongside North Carolina signee Kymistrii Young and senior wide receiver Bo O’Daniel, he has proved to be a useful target as they pursue the third state title in program history.
“Everything he does he knocks out of the park because of how much he cares about the people around him,” said coach Jared Clark. “He will work himself to death to make sure he doesn’t disappoint his teammates.”
The Cardinal Mooney locker room features seven early signees to NCAA Division I teams. More than a few elite talents sit on both sides of the ball.
Standing out from the crowd, though, hasn’t been a struggle for Jordan. It’s just what his family does.
John Neidert, his grandfather, won Super Bowl III with the New York Jets as a linebacker — the game where Joe Namath famously made his guarantee the Jets would upset the Baltimore Colts. Neidert played for Louisville in 1965-67 and was inducted into the school’s hall of fame in 1993.
His other grandfather, Richie Jordan, has his own name immortalized in the National High School Sports Hall of Fame. Dubbed the “Fennville Flash,” he earned 16 varsity letters at Fennville High (MI) in 1962-65, and went on to become a three-sport athlete at Michigan State.
Then there’s Mason Jordan’s father — Mick Jordan. He still holds Cardinal Mooney’s all-time scoring record in basketball with 2,069 points, accumulated in 1994-98.
The school has long been synonymous with the Jordan Family in one way or another. In total, six of Mason Jordan’s relatives either attended or are currently enrolled at Cardinal Mooney. And his younger brother, Dalton Jordan, is set to join for the 2026-27 academic year.
But it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Mason Jordan would carry the torch. For a while, he felt no fate to be a Cougar.
“It was kind of up in the air. I didn’t know where I was going to go until I went to Mooney football camp here,” Jordan said. “They just made me feel really wanted, and that was ultimately what led to my decision — coach Clark’s belief in me and knowing that I had a home here.”
His childhood wasn’t spent in Sarasota. He wasn’t even in the state of Florida when he picked up a football for the first time.
Jordan’s origins trace back to Savannah, Georgia, where he resided for his entire elementary education and much of his Pop Warner days. It was when middle school came around that he moved to the area.
The impression he made as a freshman earned him a varsity spot, though there wasn’t much worth remembering. Cardinal Mooney went 4-7 that season and didn’t record a playoff win.
Ever since, he’s seen just four losses total. The Cougars have reached three consecutive state semifinals. Back in 2023 — Jordan’s first year as a starter — he became a state champion, earning an unforgettable feeling.
“It’s truly special, not only for what it means for my school and my community, but also the bonds that you create with your teammates that last forever,” Jordan said. “I still text all those guys on that team.”
Not just ‘ball is on his brain. Alongside fellow senior Layla Larrick, he currently serves as a student community leader, implementing and running the school’s brand-new house system.
Introduced for 2025-26, the system organizes the Cardinal Mooney student body into six houses and another six families within each house, hoping to strengthen connections across grade levels. Each family meets twice weekly for games, activities and/or service projects.
But it’s also changed the pep rallies — dramatically. There’s more energy. There’s more enthusiasm. According to Jordan, they’ve become a staple of the school calendar.
“That’s been a major success. It’s completely transformed them from just something that we do every now and then to a huge thing that the school gets really pumped for,” Jordan said. “You should see the kids’ reactions… they win one game, and it’s like they won the Super Bowl.”
Football, though, remains his greatest passion. He's always felt that pull to sports which his predecessors once felt, too.
Jordan has yet to commit anywhere to play at the next level, though as of Dec. 8, he holds 21 offers from various college football programs.
He’s already assembled an athletic career of his own, following in the footsteps of his grandfathers and father before him.
Wherever he may go, Jordan will be a proud bearer of the family flame.
