Over the next week, Warchant.com will continue to unveil our list of the Five Greatest Recruiting Classes in Florida State football history.
* First installment: Discussing the grading criteria, which classes just missed the cut
* Second Installment: Class No. 5 -- 1989: T-Buck, Charlie & Company
* Third installment: Class No. 4 -- 2011: The making of a champion
* Today: Class No. 3 -- 1997: Weinke, Janikowski and a lot more
* Coming Friday: Class No. 2 -- ???
Odds are there will never be another college football player quite like Chris Weinke.
Sure, there have been dual-sport stars who have gone the minor-league baseball route, realized they weren't going to be a major-league star and then come back to give college football a try.
That in itself isn't completely rare.
But usually, they aren't gone from the sport for six years. And never do they end up being as good as Chris Weinke.
The Minnesota native, who was originally part of the 1990 recruiting class, wound up setting all kinds of records during his Florida State career. He led the Seminoles to the national championship in 1999 and won the Heisman Trophy a year later.
He played minor-league baseball for the Toronto Blue Jays for six full seasons, making it as high as AAA. He hit 69 professional home runs, including a career-best 18 in 1996. But after that season, despite being seemingly close to fulfilling his big-league dream, he gave up the sport and went back to school.
When Weinke left Florida State in the summer of 1990 -- he had practiced for four days -- for a six-figure signing bonus with the Blue Jays, Bobby Bowden told him that he'd always have a spot if he decided he wanted to give college football a try.
It took a while, but Weinke eventually took Bowden up on that offer.
The rest is history.
There are way too many college highlights to just choose one for Weinke, but I thought the one below was fitting. Not only was it him answering a touchdown with one of his own -- something he did almost every time the opponent either tied the game or took the lead -- but it was that celebration aimed at the other sideline.
Weinke did that a lot. He did that in the national championship game against Virginia Tech, he did it against Miami, he always did it against Florida. Any time an opponent challenged him or his team, he almost always answered. And then he let them know about it.
That was his personality. It's how he came back from having one of the worst games a college quarterback has ever had (six interceptions in a 24-7 loss to N.C. State) to finishing the year without throwing another pick. And then winning the national championship and Heisman in the two years that followed.
That's not normal. But then again, nothing about Chris Weinke's college career was normal.
