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Andrea Adelson
THE JOKES ARE easy enough to make between «old man» Haynes King and his position coach, the oldest man to ever win the Heisman Trophy.
Twenty-five years ago, when Chris Weinke took home the award as a 28-year-old senior, his age became a nonstop topic of conversation. Today, older quarterbacks dot the college football landscape, their advanced ages met with a collective shrug.
«Sometimes I try and mess with him and say, ‘I couldn’t quite catch you on the age, but I tried. I gave it my all,» the 24-year-old King said of Weinke, his quarterbacks coach at Georgia Tech.
Older players have been normalized, thanks to the transfer portal and the pandemic, which granted freshmen an extra year of eligibility if they wanted it. Nearly 40 quarterbacks from the 2020 class came back this year for one more season at the FBS level. Plus, with NIL and revenue sharing, some quarterbacks are opting to stay in college as opposed to leaving school for the NFL draft. And sixth-year quarterbacks like King and Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia entered the Heisman conversation this year. (Pavia was named a finalist.) Still, if more quarterbacks are 24 years old these days, nobody is quite as aged as Weinke was when he played.
Florida State should be reframed. What made that season so remarkable had nothing to do with age, and everything to do with how he turned himself into a star after his college football career nearly ended. Twice.
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After six years of bouncing around the minor leagues and getting as high as Triple-A, Weinke decided to give up on baseball, but not playing sports entirely. He wanted to go back to football. Richt reminded Bowden that if they took Weinke, they would lose Henson.
«Well, I promised him if ever wanted to play football again, I’d let him come back,» Bowden told Richt.
Richt asked to speak with Weinke first.
«I was telling him all the rules and regs, I was telling him about [quarterback] Dan Kendra already on campus and when I’m done giving him my spiel to try to get him not to come, he says, ‘Hey coach, let me ask you one question. If I’m the best guy, will I play?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ He goes, ‘I’m coming.’ We lost the other quarterback to Michigan. I guess we came out OK with Weinke.»
Nobody quite knew what to expect when he arrived on campus as a 25-year-old freshman in 1997, but he quickly became one of the guys, in part because he had a large house off campus and threw his fair share of parties where all were invited.
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Weinke initially had complications post-surgery and had to be in bed for five weeks. He lost 30 pounds, and his throwing arm atrophied so severely that it became impossible for him to even lift a football. He had to teach himself again how to throw, starting first with a tennis ball. Throwing it 5 yards was a huge accomplishment. Seven hours a day, day after day, he rehabbed, steadily progressing, all the while unsure whether he would make it all the way back.
Then, there he was in the season opener against Louisiana Tech, completing 63% of his passes, throwing for 242 yards and two touchdowns. That was the start of an undefeated national championship-winning season in 1999, as Florida State went wire to wire as the No. 1 team in the nation.
Weinke opted to return for one more season, because he wanted to get Bowden another national championship. After throwing for 3,432 yards, 29 touchdowns and 15 interceptions as a junior and winning the title, Weinke became one of the Heisman front-runners headed into 2000.
Chandler Morris, Diego Pavia, Carson Beck. Everybody’s timeline is different.»
While the debate over his age has been left to the dustbin of history, what Weinke did that year may never be replicated. In an era of sport and position specialization, quarterbacks rarely play multiple sports at elite levels — let alone leave football behind for six years before coming back to it. In the 25 years since Weinke won the Heisman, Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State is perhaps the only notable quarterback to play baseball and then stick around in college football into his late 20s.
«To go through the things that I went through was clearly the road less traveled,» Weinke said. «Being an older guy and not playing football for seven years, then fulfilling a dream of playing for Coach Bowden, then breaking my neck, and coming back and giving Coach Bowden his first undefeated season, and ultimately having my name called for the Heisman Trophy, I just felt blessed.»
