NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Auburn needed several weeks and two miracle plays before it truly believed it had a shot at playing for a national championship.
Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston envisioned this possibility from the opening week of the season.
Winston, a redshirt freshman who recently was awarded the Heisman Trophy, opened the season with a sensational performance against Pittsburgh. Taking the field for the first time in his career, Winston shredded the Panthers with 25-for-27 passing for 356 yards and four touchdowns.
Winston noted that he was eager to get the year rolling after sitting out all of 2012 while then-senior quarterback EJ Manuel guided the Seminole offense.
“Well that game was really just out of anger and out of happiness of me just being on the football field again,” Winston said. “When you love this game so much and you’ve got to sit a whole year off, I mean, it kind of hits you into the heart, and it’s like a reality check, like ‘Hey, bro, you were sitting on the bench last year.’
“When I came out to that game, I was like, I’m ready, and I had the weapons around me to help me do that. That’s when, I mean, I realized as a player — back in the spring I realized we’ve got a great team, but I realized as a player, hey, we’re out here gelling, we’ve got this little thing about us, and that’s when I knew right then, FSU is going to bring that swag back because we went out there and just showed the world, hey, look at us, we’re here, we’re here to make a statement.”
Quarterbacks coach Randy Sanders said the debut performance set the stage for Winston to have a season that has exceeded most expectations.
“I was a little bit in awe, I think, like a lot of people, just the poise and composure that he had,” Sanders said. “You saw it every day in spring practice, through the summer, through the fall. But for it to show up on game day that way, that was nice to see. And he had two incompletions, one of them was a throwaway, and the other one could have been ruled a completion on the sideline. I think it was a catch Kenny (Shaw) made on the sideline.
“But the way he saw things, the accuracy he played with, and then our guys getting open, catching the ball and making plays around him makes it much easier.”
The BCS Championship Game is scheduled for Monday at 7:30 p.m. CST in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. Asked about the magnitude of the game and the opportunity to finish the season with a spotless 14-0 record, Winston said he wanted to win as much for his teammates and coaches as for himself.
“This game means so much to me, like we’ve got people, like Telvin (Smith),” Winston said. “Telvin won a lot of championships in high school but this is still the most important game to him in his life. When you’ve got the opportunity to play in a national championship game and your team is the only team on television, and then this game on my birthday, we’re not going out there just to play around. We’re not going out there to take anybody for granted.
“We’re going out there to play a great game. We’re going out there to do what we came here to do every single game, 13 games. It’s not over yet. We’ve got a 14th one, and why not end this year with a victory?”
Winston faced several questions Friday about the investigation into a sexual assault allegation late in the season. He said that his teammates rallied around him and prevented the investigation from pulling the team apart.
“Well, it goes back to the teammates,” Winston said. “My teammates aren’t looking at me anything differently because they know I did nothing wrong through the whole process. But at the end of the day, that kind of brought us closer together as a team, because, ‘Dang, our quarterback is going through this situation,’ and ‘Dang, people still are not leaving us alone after we’re having a successful season.’
“But that brought us closer together as a team. That was a changing point in our whole team because that was a time we needed to get over the hump. We were playing against a Syracuse team that had confidence, and they were coming into our house and they had confidence that they would beat us. It got us back refocused to where we needed to be at.”
Senior receiver Shaw added: “Looking at the situation from the outside in, you would think it would hurt the team, but we used it as a time to get stronger. We stayed close to Jameis because we knew the allegations wasn’t true and all that. But we just got stronger and we didn’t miss a beat.”
Winston said he spoke with Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel when the two were in New York City for the Heisman Trophy presentation. Manziel has been a lightning rod for attention since winning the Heisman in 2012, particularly after signing hundreds of autographs for a memorabilia dealer last year.
“He just told me to stay myself,” Winston said. “When you think about the things that Johnny went through and then you see the things that he does on the field, it makes you forget about the things that’s happening, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make football be my getaway, and that’s what he’s done a great job of. That’s why I’m glad I’ve got a team like this because they allow me to let football be the get away because when I look in their eyes, they’re like, ‘We’re ready to fight.’
“That’s what we’ve got to do as individuals. We’ve got to fight for the rest of our lives because life ain’t fair. ... We’ve got to live our lives on a day-to-day basis. What’s wrong with dreaming? I’ve dreamed about this my whole life and I’m going to keep dreaming until the day I die. ... We control our own destiny, and that’s how I’m going to live my whole life, no matter what goes on, no matter what I go through, and that’s how I expect everybody in this room to live.”