BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Anthony Alford’s background is that of the road less traveled.

The Blue Jays drafted the 25-year-old outfielder out of high school, but before he committed to baseball full-time, Alford played football at both Southern Miss and Ole Miss, an experience he cherishes because he knows that it allowed him to be comfortable with the way things are going now.

“If I could have [played] baseball out of high school and things didn’t go the way I planned for them to go, then I would have been like, 'Dang, I probably should go back and play football,'” Toronto’s No. 20 prospect said earlier this season. “I would be second-guessing, but the fact that I got that experience and I got it out of my system, now I’m fully committed to baseball, whether it’s good or bad, whether I’m having a good season or a bad season. I don’t have that thought in the back of my mind.”

But what is on the back of Alford’s mind is finishing a degree he promised his late grandmother that he would get. The native of Mississippi is three semesters shy of graduating with a major in marketing, and after putting it off for a number of years, he plans to take strides toward finishing this offseason.

“That was probably the reason I didn’t come [to baseball] out of high school, because I promised my grandma I would get my degree,” Alford said. “I was the first person from my family to get the opportunity to go to college and my grandma, she did sharecropping and she really valued us getting our education. In my family, if you graduated high school, that’s a big deal. That was equivalent to some guys getting their master’s or graduating from a four-year college.

“So for me to take that next step and go to an actual university and get that college experience, it was big. I wish she would have been able to see me go to college, but that was a promise that I made to her, that I would get my degree, and I made it to a lot of people. They don’t care how my career turns out, but at the end of the day, they want me to get my degree, because that’s something that can never be taken from me.”

One of the people Alford promised is Bill Lott, a fellow graduate of Petal High School, also a two-sport standout and a former second-round pick of the Dodgers, now a mentor to the Blue Jays prospect.

“He never made it to the bigs,” the young outfielder said. “He’s been telling me since I was 12 or 13, when he started training me, ‘I don’t care what you do, you’ve got to get a degree,’ because he doesn’t have a degree. I see him and I know this is what it could be if baseball doesn’t work out and I don’t have a degree.

“At the beginning of every offseason, he asks, ‘Are you going to start school this year?’ He stays on me. I checked in on some schools that offer online classes, and I’ll take a screenshot and send to him and tell him I’m checking, but at the end of the season, I never want to do anything.”

But this year is different. In searching for ways to complete his education, Alford found William Carey University, a school at home in Hattiesburg, Miss., that works on a 10-week trimester system conducive to his baseball schedule.

“My first three years [of baseball] I’ve said I’m going back to school this offseason, and by the time September hits, I’m like I’ll try next year,” Alford said. “But I’m going to do it this year, because I found a school where I can be home and go to class because they have trimesters.

“It’s tough to come in and already be behind when regular school starts in August, so it would be tough to come in [after the Minor League season] in the middle of September and be way behind. So I think I can really get it done now.”

Alford isn’t sure where his degree might lead him, but it’s incredibly important for him to finish what he started.

“I don’t even know what I would do with it, I just need a degree,” he said. “I just think it’s important. Hopefully I’ll make enough money in the game that I won’t really have to use it, but one day, I’m going to have kids, and how am I going to tell them they should go to college if I didn’t get my college degree?

“One day, this game is going to be over for me and I’m going to need something else to fall back on.”