Dynasties Past and Present Clash in Tonight’s BCS Title Game

When I think of Chris Weinke, I think not of a tall, blond quarterback, but a short, red-haired mom.

She was a college classmate. In a room full of unspoiled dreams and fresh mouths, she was our most unusual classmate.

Unusual because she was old.

The red-haired mom was around 28, which at the time seemed like 50. She had a child, which at the time seemed like a dozen.

She was one of us, but she wasn’t. She engaged in less small talk. She took better notes. She worried more about tests.

We were having fun, full of ourselves, certain that somewhere out there, the real world was saving us a seat.

She knew better. She knew that sometimes the real world was about musical chairs. She knew that sometimes you wander aimlessly before finding that seat.

That knowledge made her seem strange, somehow tainted. We looked at her oddly until the day she walked into a classroom and announced she had just qualified for her degree and would begin a new job in a new field the next week.

We looked at her different that day because she was weeping.

Tonight for Florida State’s football team, Chris Weinke, 28, does the same thing.

He will walk into the room that is Pro Player Stadium and announce that after four years of jokes and jeers and odd looks, the unusual classmate is leaving with a degree and a life.

He may make this announcement in the form of a second consecutive national championship, a victory over unbeaten Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl.

Even then, his circuitous journey complete, some people will not allow him his moment.

They will say that college national championships should come with age restrictions. That it is unsafe to allow adults to play tackle football with children. That the Heisman Trophy race was unjustly won by someone with a seven-year jump on the competition.

Oh yeah, they will chortle, Florida State’s quarterback now will have plenty of stories to tell his grandchildren--two of whom are visiting next week.

To which I say, they have no idea.

Certainly, the story of Weinke’s returning to campus after six years of failure elsewhere is one of the most unusual in college football history.

Not because of its unfairness, but because of its dignity.

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The message sent by Florida State tonight is expected to be loud and clear--sports’ greatest current dynasty dances again with a 14th consecutive national top-five finish--but the signals from Weinke will be mostly paradoxical.

He calls the huddle of one of college football’s original hip programs, yet its occupants view him as a horn-rimmed dad.

He is one of the best quarterbacks in college football history, yet his lack of speed and athleticism dooms him to a probable career as an NFL backup.

For many of Florida State’s NFL-style seniors, tonight is the just the start. For Weinke, it is clearly the finish, and what a finish it must be.

He must beat Oklahoma without the 11 touchdowns of favorite wide receiver Marvin “Snoop” Minnis, who was declared academically ineligible.

He must implement a game plan guided by distracted coordinator Mark Richt, who will leave immediately after the game to assume his new duties as head coach at Georgia.

If the Seminoles don’t win easily, some will say Weinke has failed. If they do win easily, some will say he cheated.

“Yeah, the media says we’re a 12-point favorite, [but] it’s going to be a dogfight,” he said this week. “That’s the way we’re approaching it from that side of the ball.”

Weinke doesn’t depart from those cliches much, nor does he apologize for them. His career doesn’t translate to a press release. His story will not fit in a sound bite.

“The intangibles he brings to the game, you can’t really put into words to describe it,” Richt said. “A lot of times, you have a leader of the offense and a leader of the defense, but I think everyone would say he’s the leader of this football team.”

A leader who, in his first appearance at Florida State in 1990, lasted all of five days. You know the story. He took one look at teammate Charlie Ward and ran off to play minor league baseball.

This is where that story apparently confuses some.

No, he didn’t leave Florida State to get rich. He left to be a first baseman, and in six minor league seasons never advanced past double-A Knoxville.

No, he didn’t return to Florida State in the fall of 1996 as part of a master plan. He returned as a baseball failure. Like thousands of others who struggle in their first careers, he returned to college to find a new one.

Yes, he had invested wisely, running his $375,000 of baseball bonus money into a million-dollar nest egg, but that didn’t make his return bogus. It made it real.

He was out of place in the classroom, in the locker room, even in the film room.

Richt acknowledges now he tried to dissuade Weinke from accepting Coach Bobby Bowden’s 6-year-old offer of a scholarship. There were better quarterbacks being recruited. The old guy would take too much time.

“You could see the rust,” Richt said. “His accuracy was not very good at all. He had no touch.”

Ah, but Weinke did. He had the touch of a man holding onto that second chance, a man lunging for that last chair.

He has won 32 of 34 starts, despite having thrown six interceptions in one game and having been nearly paralyzed by a hit in another.

If that neck injury had not kept him from playing in the national title game two years ago against Tennessee, he might well be leading Florida State to its third consecutive championship tonight.

As it is, he could be the first quarterback to start every game during consecutive national titles since Steve Davis of Oklahoma in 1974-75.

But hey, he’s a cheater, right?

I know a short, red-haired mom who would disagree.

We rip athletes for leaving school too early. Now we’re ripping them for staying too long?

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.