Trinton Sturdivant plans to return to the Georgia football team next season as a sixth-year senior.

It just won’t be as an offensive lineman.

TRINTON STURDIVANT

In an exclusive sitdown interview with The Red & Black on Monday afternoon, Sturdivant revealed there is nearly “a 100 percent chance” that he will be back for a sixth and final season with the Bulldogs after he applies for a medical redshirt to play in 2012.

“Obviously, I would not try to come back and play offensive tackle, but I have made a decision,” he said. “I have skills in the sense that I could possibly move to a different position and see myself excelling in it because of my athletic ability.”

That position?

Tight end.

Sturdivant is confident he can successfully make the move after seeing some reps at tight end during his days at Anson High School in Wadesboro, N.C.

He is also not deterred by tight end being one of the deepest units on the team, where he would possibly fight for playing time against arguably the SEC’s top player at the position in Orson Charles, as well as backups Arthur Lynch and Jay Rome, who was the nation’s top tight end recruit in the Class of 2011.

“Georgia runs a double tight end set, and I would be one of the blockers of the bunch,” he said. “I feel that anything I say that I can do, I will do. I have set a precedent of doing that, and for some reason, it does come easily for me to set my mind to something and do it. I really don’t have any negative thoughts on beating someone out. It’s just the name of the game. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Either you beat him or you don’t.”

What Sturdivant is not as sure about are his abilities as a receiver.

“I have very good hands, but I have not played in such a long time that I don’t currently know how good my hands are,” he said. “But being a lineman, you have to have extremely good hand-eye coordination. I’m thinking that I could do very well catching the ball.”

One thing Sturdivant has yet to do is talk to offensive line coach Will Friend or tight ends coach John Lilly about the possible position change.

“Being that it is in the [middle of the] season there’s too much going on, and I wouldn’t play this year, anyway,” he said.

Part of the reason Sturdivant plans to make the move is the significant amount of weight he has lost since he suffered the injury in April.

His listed playing weight on the official team roster is 310.

Close to six months later, Sturdivant said he now weighs “about 255.”

“I chose to lose this weight, because I have been thinking about my future, and I would like to jog — I’m an extremely active person — and I’m sports-oriented,” he said. “I’d love to play sports in the future with my children. I would like to be active, and I was thinking about my future as far as the pounding on my knee, and the future injuries I could have from all that weight being on my knee.”

And if there is one thing Sturdivant knows about all too well, it’s injuries.

When his latest ACL tear happened in April, however, he was not immediately aware of the seriousness of it.

“I really didn’t know,” he said. “I was being optimistic about things and hoping that I didn’t tear it, but I was in excruciating pain. It was in my right leg, where I hadn’t had any previous injuries, so I was being optimistic about it.”

His two previous injuries had both been to his left knee, both of which he remembers vividly.

“The first one, one of my teammates just completely dove into the knee,” he said. “He was 290 pounds, wrapped my knee all the way around, tore three ligaments, my meniscus, and it was just a ridiculous amount of pain.”

His second ACL tear was much different in how it came about, but both had the same outcome.

“The second one was more non-contact.,” he said. “The knee just buckled. I felt excruciating pain again, but it wasn’t a direct blow to it, so I really didn’t know if I had tore anything.”

His third ACL tear — and the first one to occur to his right leg — took place during a closed scrimmage the week before this spring’s G-Day game, at a right tackle spot he was still trying to get the hang of after spending his collegiate career solely on the left side.

“I had switched positions, playing on the right side and I still wasn’t 100 percent feeling good on my left leg,” he said. “I was compensating [my weight] on the right leg, trying to sitdown and [block] a bull-rush 100 percent on my right leg. I was thinking that the guy I was going against wasn’t going to give me a good rush, because he was a lot smaller than the average guys I do go against.”

That “guy” was linebacker Jarvis Jones, who stands at 6-foot-3 and weights 241 pounds.

“He was in a standup position, and from that position, you usually can’t exert as much force, but my weight plus his weight plus the force was just too much for that one leg, and I was new to the position,” Sturdivant said. “I really didn’t even know how to kick on the right side, since I had never really played it before. It buckled, and it was excruciating pain once again.”

As frustrating as three season-ending ACL tears may be, Sturdivant’s solution has been to keep a positive frame of mind.

“I tend not to dwell on how negative of an impact that it’s been, and on the days that I do, I get maybe an hour, two-hour grief session, and then I put it behind me,” he said.

It doesn’t hurt his optimistic outlook that his fellow Bulldogs constantly send him words of encouragement.

“Most of them always tell me, ‘Oh, I wish we still had you,’ and they’re apologetic about the injury, but that’s the same thing they say all three years I’ve been injured,” he said. “I’ve been blessed to be a good enough player to be put in that position where people actually want me to come back and play.”

Sturdivant said he could have came back and played this season, but that he “came to the agreement with the training staff that it wouldn’t be a good idea given that I have injuries on the other leg.”

He said he is now about “80 percent” recovered from April’s injury, but that he has not been cleared to take part in any “football-type rehab yet.”

Dealing with another ACL impairment has not slowed Sturdivant down away from the field, though.

Set to graduate from the Terry College of Business in December with a double major in finance and management, he has already applied to graduate school to pursue his master’s in sports management.

He also has been studying for the LSAT, “so I’m going to apply to law school as well.”

Another option on the table for Sturdivant is taking his talents to the professional level in the future, but he is still unsure whether he wants to go that route.

“I still haven’t made a concrete decision on whether I would like to go to the NFL,” he said. “It’s just something I have to take step-by-step.”

The road to recovery from his trio of knee afflictions has similarly been a step-by-step process for Sturdivant.

Though it is perhaps perplexing to some, Sturdivant has looked at his latest ailment as a blessing in disguise, helping him to shed weight he no longer wanted to bear.

“The fact is, most people don’t want to live their life at 315 pounds, just walking around, for no reason,” he said. “Now the athletes kinda have to. They have no choice.”

It’s Sturdivant’s choice to give it a go at tight end, eschewing a lifetime of experience on the offensive line.

But if you ask him, he would tell you his decision is really not that surprising.

“I got to the phase where I had to have the change, and if you [knew] me, you would know that I change all the time,” he said. “Everything I do, I’m always changing and that’s my personality. I get bored easily with things. I really am extremely happy that I lost this weight, and I’m happy where I am right now. I could say, ‘I should have left last year,’ and been down in the dumps, but I’m glad I didn’t. The injury has been a very, very positive thing in my life, and I thank God for it, minus the pain and the heartache of my family. Inside, I’m really kind of happy it happened.”