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My History as a Seminole Fan — Part One

As I sit in my favorite recliner, dejected after watching Florida State lose to a talented—but certainly fallible—Alabama team, I can’t help but reflect on why I’m a fan of this team in the first place.

The Seminoles had a 15-point lead in the first half.

Then we imploded defensively.

And now I’m sitting here with that familiar feeling that comes with caring way too much about the outcome of a football game.

Maybe you know the feeling.

Maybe you’re a Florida State fan, too.

Maybe you’ve sat in the same kind of chair, stared at the television after the final whistle, and wondered why you continue to put yourself through this.

Because that’s the strange thing about being a fan.

It’s easy to explain why you love a team when they’re winning.

It’s harder to explain why you keep coming back when they aren’t.

But as I sit here tonight, I realize that before I can answer why I’m still a fan, I need to remember when I became one.

I need to go back.

All the way back to 1989.

I don’t remember the first time I watched a football game.

I don’t remember the first team I saw on television, the first touchdown I watched, or the first time I understood why people cared so much about a game played on a patch of grass.

I wasn’t much of a football fan as a kid.

I watched sometimes. Usually when I needed a break from schoolwork and wanted something to take my mind off whatever assignment was in front of me.

Football was something that was on television.

Then, in 1989, I went to a Florida State football game.

Everything changed.

I was there with my great uncle, Uncle John, who was a Florida State season-ticket holder. I was sitting high on the west side of Doak Campbell Stadium, leaning back against a chain-link fence.

From where I sat, I could look down into the parking lot beside the Moore Athletic Center.

The Doak I remember wasn’t surrounded by the campus I would eventually come to know. The buildings, the structures, the landscape—all of it would change over the years.

So would I.

But I remember that view.

And I remember a name.

Peter Tom Willis.

I didn’t know much about Florida State football.

I didn’t know that Peter Tom Willis was a senior.

I didn’t know that he was in the middle of one of the greatest seasons a Florida State quarterback had ever put together.

I didn’t know that the program I was watching was standing on the doorstep of an era that would eventually make Florida State one of the defining programs in college football.

I just knew that Uncle John kept yelling his name.

“PT!”

And then another pass would be completed.

And the stadium announcer would say his name.

Peter Tom Willis.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I started listening to the crowd.

That may have been the thing that got me.

There was something about being surrounded by tens of thousands of people who cared about exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

A completed pass wasn’t just a completed pass.

It was a reason for everyone to erupt.

A big hit wasn’t just a tackle.

It was something the entire stadium felt.

And I began to understand that this wasn’t simply a football game.

It was an experience.

I had walked into Doak Campbell Stadium as a kid who casually watched football.

I walked out a Seminole.

I didn’t have the vocabulary for it then. I couldn’t have explained what had happened.

But something had happened.

Florida State had become my team.

And looking back now, more than three decades later, I realize how remarkable the timing was.

I had arrived at Florida State football at the beginning of something.

The Seminoles were already good. Bobby Bowden had already built something special in Tallahassee. But I didn’t know any of that yet.

I was simply watching.

I would eventually learn about the players who came before my time.

I would learn about Charlie Ward.

Chris Weinke.

Warrick Dunn.

Peter Warrick.

Derrick Brooks.

Deion Sanders.

I would learn what Bobby Bowden meant to Florida State and what Florida State meant to Bobby Bowden.

I would learn about championships.

And heartbreak.

About Wide Right.

And Wide Left.

About Saturdays when everything seemed perfect and Saturdays when you wondered why you cared so much about a game that could make you this miserable.

But I didn’t know any of that in 1989.

I knew one name.

Peter Tom Willis.

And I knew that Uncle John loved Florida State.

So I started loving Florida State, too.

Maybe that’s how these things happen.

We don’t always choose the things that become part of us.

Sometimes we inherit them.

Sometimes someone takes us somewhere.

Sometimes we’re just sitting in the right place at the right moment.

And sometimes a kid walks into a football stadium expecting to watch a game and walks out carrying something he’ll keep for the rest of his life.

For me, that place was Doak.

That seat was on the west side.

And that first name was Peter Tom Willis.

I didn’t know it then, but I was about to spend the next thirty-seven years watching Florida State football.

I would watch as a fan.

I would watch as a student of the game.

Eventually, I would watch as a coach.

I would watch players become legends and legends become memories.

I would watch coaches arrive, build, succeed, struggle and leave.

I would watch the game itself change.

And, in many ways, I would watch my own life change alongside it.

Marriage.

Children.

Loss.

Joy.

Years passing much faster than I ever imagined they would.

Through all of it, there was Florida State.

There was always another Saturday.

Another season.

Another team.

Another player whose name would become attached to a memory.

That’s what I want to write about in this series.

Not simply the history of Florida State football.

There are plenty of places to find that.

I want to write about my history as a Seminole fan.

What it felt like to be there.

What I remember.

What I thought I knew.

What I know now.

The players who became heroes.

The losses that still sting.

The games I can still see in my mind.

The people I watched them with.

The places I sat.

The seasons that changed the way I saw the program—and sometimes the way I saw myself.

Because when you’ve been following a team for almost four decades, eventually the team’s history and your own history begin to overlap.

You don’t just remember what happened on the field.

You remember where you were when it happened.

You remember who was sitting beside you.

You remember who you called afterward.

You remember what life looked like before kickoff.

And sometimes, years later, you hear a name.

A song.

A crowd noise.

A familiar voice.

And for a moment, you’re right back there.

For me, sometimes that means I’m back on the west side of Doak Campbell Stadium.

I’m leaning against a chain-link fence.

I’m looking down toward the parking lot beside the Moore Athletic Center.

Uncle John is yelling.

The crowd is roaring.

And somewhere down on that field, No. 4 is dropping back to pass.

Peter Tom Willis.

That’s where my story as a Seminole began.

This is that story.

My View from the West Side Bleachers.