Jay Jones knew where he wanted to play college football from the moment he received his first scholarship offer from Tennessee a little more than a month ago.

He decided to make it official Thursday afternoon.

The Class of 2021 defensive back from Demopolis (Ala.) High School announced his commitment to Tennessee on Thursday, less than five weeks after he earned his first offer from the Vols with a strong showing at their first camp of the year.

The 6-foot-1, 185-pound Jones gave Tennessee its third commitment for the 2021 class, joining four-star wide receiver Jordan Mosley of Mobile, Ala., and three-star athlete Elijah Howard of Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tenn. All three of them have announced their commitments to the Vols within the past two weeks.

Jones admittedly made his decision long before he revealed it Thursday with a post on his Twitter account.

“I’ve been liking Tennessee my whole life. My mind really got made up when I got the offer from them,” said Jones, who has yet to be rated by 247Sports and in the industry-generated 247Sports Composite.

“My grandparents are up there, and they really got me started with Tennessee.”

He said his grandparents, who live in Chattanooga, Tenn., took him to “a couple games” at Tennessee “when I was smaller.” He doesn’t remember much about those games. But he said he visits his grandparents “every summer,” and they made enough of an impression on him that he grew up liking the Vols despite living in Alabama.

His first recruiting visit to Tennessee on May 31, which allowed him to participate in the Vols’ camp, resulted in coach Jeremy Pruitt’s staff extending an offer to Jones while he was on campus and gave him plenty of other reasons to like Tennessee.

“I liked the coaches,” Jones said. “They really try to help you. I believe they can help me a lot.”

Derrick Ansley, the Vols’ first-year defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach, impressed Jones during the camp and throughout his visit to Knoxville.

“He’s an awesome coach, a great coach,” Jones said of Ansley. “He’s a real cool coach. He’s kind of strict, but he tries to help you a lot.”

Jones said he believes Tennessee is on the right track under Pruitt, too.

“I believe they’re going to do amazing,” Jones said. “They’re going to do great with him being there.”

He said he first informed the Vols of his decision “a few weeks ago,” and they naturally “were excited” to hear the news.

“They were happy for me,” Jones said, “and they were happy that I was going to commit to them.”

During Tennessee’s camp, he said the Vols’ coaches liked “my size and how I can play the ball in the air and stuff like that.” He was timed at 4.59 seconds in the 40-yard dash during the camp and also posted a 34-inch vertical jump and a 10-foot broad jump.

“I always knew I could run a 4.5,” Jones said. "I wanted to run a little faster, but that’s the time I got.”

The position he might end up playing in Tennessee’s secondary, he said, likely will depend on how he develops physically over the next couple of years. He started at cornerback during his sophomore season at Demopolis.

“They say, if I grow any more, I’ll probably end up playing at safety or something,” he said.

Jones said he also has received some interest from LSU. Home-state schools Alabama and Auburn have yet to show interest in him, though, and he said he believes there’s a simple reason major programs just recently started to take notice of him.

“I really haven’t gotten to go to any more camps or anything,” he said.

The recruiting process is just getting started for Jones in some ways, but he said he feels good about his early decision. He expects to explore some of his other options, though, as the list of schools pursuing him grows.

“As of right now, this is where I feel I need to go to,” he said. “I’ll still take some more visits just to be sure.”

For now, he said he’s simply focused on Tennessee and looking forward to returning there this season to see the Vols play — perhaps more than once.

“I plan on going to some of the games up there,” Jones said.