Drew Weatherford was mesmerized. Then eight-years-old, he sat enthralled with the guest speaker in front of him at a church in the Citrus Park area of Tampa. The speaker was talking about things like honor, commitment and integrity. And the deep meaning of Christian fellowship.
The speaker — Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden — was also at the peak of his celebrity status. This was 1993. Bowden’s FSU Seminoles were in the middle of a 14-season run of top 5 rankings, including two national championships. “I knew right then and there I wanted to play for him,” says Weatherford, then not even out of elementary school but with the acute self-awareness to know his goal was audacious. “It became a good accountability system for me. The better they became, the more work I knew I had to do. I didn’t want people to be able to say I told you so.”