It probably goes without saying that when you are the starting quarterback for the defending national champions on a college campus obsessed with football, you will attract a great deal of attention from the opposite sex. Thus, it should come as no surprise that, numerous times last spring, attractive coeds cosied up to Chris Weinke and asked if he would be interested in going out... with their mom.
"This phenom beauty walks up to me at a bar last spring and tells me she's a big fan," the 28-year-old Florida State quarterback told ESPN The Magazine. "So I get her a drink. She tells me she has a boyfriend, but still she keeps talking to me. So I asked her who she came with and she says, 'Funny you ask, because my mom over there was wondering if you're single.'
"It made me feel totally weird."
Not as weird as playing alongside players born a full decade after him.
To put it simply, Weinke is old. So old that Richard Nixon was still president the year he was born. Or, by comparison, this means Wienke is older than the starting signal caller of 15 NFL teams.
But when Weinke, who played minor league baseball for six years after high school, decided to return for his senior campaign, it did a lot more than raise the average age on the FSU campus. It made the Seminoles a favorite to win the national championship again.
"That put us back in the fight," head coach Bobby Bowden said of Weinke's decision to return. "I think when Chris Weinke decided to come back you'd have to say, 'Uh, oh, Florida State's a contender again.' That's what he does for us."
Weinke's numbers
Weinke has another interesting statistical distinction: He is the only quarterback to start for three years under Bowden. The result is that if he stays healthy this season, he could rewrite the Florida State record book.
These numbers, however, have to stand up to the criticism that they should have an asterisk, given that Weinke is old enough to compete against players a decade younger than him this season.
"The way I look at it is, I took seven years off of football," Weinke said. "How is that an advantage. I'm older, but when you were playing football, I was playing baseball. So I came back a 24-year-old that hadn't touched a football in seven years.... I wouldn't be the starting quarterback if Dan Kendra didn't get hurt."
Anyone who doubts Weinke's statement that the starting job was never guaranteed clearly missed the N.C State game in 1998. Weinke threw five interceptions, one of the major factors in Florida State's surprising 24-7 loss to the Wolfpack.
It was after that game that Weinke learned what football means in Tallahassee.
"I go home and there were 160 emails and 30 phone messages all saying, 'what happened, what happened?'" he said. "Let me tell you what happened, I was terrible. That was it, and that's probably the biggest learning tool for me in terms of why I have been successful. Because I realized on that day that I had to become better, that I needed to be more consistent....
"I didn't throw another interception that year."
Weeks later, Weinke's season, and nearly his career, were ended when he ruptured a disk in the 'Noles contest against Virginia.
"I didn't find out until the Monday after I had my MRI and X-ray how serious it was," he said. "The doctor said, 'You're a centimeter away from being paralyzed from the neck down.'
The neck injury required surgery and a substantial amount of rehab, but Weinke made a full recovery, and led the Seminoles to the national title.
The frightening thing for opponents is that Weinke is in much better shape this season. Through an intense offseason conditioning program, he lost 18 pounds to cut his playing weight down from 245.
"[I lost the weight] just to get quicker and more mobile, and that in turn would help my whole game," Weinke said. "Any time you can move around better or you're a little bit quicker, it's only going to help you as a quarterback.
Having overcome the mental mistakes of his first year and having put himself in the best shape of his career, Weinke returns as a leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy.
But Weinke claims that the most-coveted individual award in college football is not on his mind.
"I haven't thought about it," he said. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world to even have my name mentioned for it. It would be a great honor.... I've thought about being successful each and every Saturday, and then when it's all said and done, it'd be an honor for me to even be one of the finalists to be up there."
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