The upcoming 2026 season is the start of a NEW ERA for SDSU. Sons of Montezuma is putting into focus our top San Diego State football players for you to know heading into the PAC 12 era.
- Name: Jelani Whitmore
- Position: Cornerback
- Class: Senior
- Height/Weight: 6’0″, 185 lbs
- Hometown: Rialto, California
- Experience: Seventh-year senior; 24 games played, 10 tackles (8 solo) and 1 interception lifetime numbers at SDSU
Thousands of collegiate athletes earned an extra year of NCAA eligibility due the COVID-19 virus. Jelani Whitmore, a cornerback of the ’20 recruiting class, is one of those student athletes and enters his seventh year at San Diego State.
The 2025 season was meant to be Whitmore’s final season at SDSU, until a non-contact knee injury suffered at last year’s annual Fan Fest Scrimmage sidelined him for the year. The injury warranted a medical redshirt, preserving his fifth year of eligibility.
Prior to the injury, Whitmore had not seen regular action lined up in the secondary. His sophomore and junior seasons were mainly spent on special teams. The height of his career came during Week 6 of the 2024 season, an interception at home against Hawaii in a 27-24 winning effort.
Of the seven Aztecs that made up the 2025 cornerbacks room, only four were seniors including Whitmore, as his injury was a significant blow to depth and leadership. Two of those four seniors were Bryce Phillips and Chris Johnson, a pair of eventual NFL names that Whitmore did not end up sharing the field with.
One, he is the only senior cornerback that returns to the Aztecs in 2026. Secondly, the expectations are for him to lead a position group that was essential to the 9-win season in 2025; all while having zero starts in his six-year college career and coming off a severe knee injury.
That is why Whitmore is one to watch in 2026.
Something to keep in mind is defensive coordinator Demetrius Sumler. After coaching a decade at SDSU, eight of them coaching the cornerbacks, Sumler enters his first season as the playcaller.
It certainly helps that Whitmore’s coordinator comes from a cornerback coaching background. Sumler has developed so many outstanding defensive backs for SDSU that given Whitmore’s unorthodox journey, it speaks volumes how much the staff feels about his potential that he is able to finish his time once and for all still here in the red & black.
In the end, due to the limited action we have seen from Whitmore, it is hard to gauge what type of player he is. However, according to his bio on goaztecs.com, he “was a track and field star, who won a league title in the 400 as a high school junior in 2019.”
The track experience suggests what is expected of a defensive back, a speedy athlete.
Projected to be given the opportunity of starting minutes in his final college season at a position that was crucial to SDSU’s lockdown defense and 9-win season in 2025, keep your eyes on No. 16 Jelani Whitmore in 2026.
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