Inside the meetings that officially moved the A’s out of Oakland
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Tim Keown, ESPN Senior Writer
THIS WAS John Fisher’s moment. It was a cold and rainy morning at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, with the microphone glitching whenever Kings owner Vivek Ranadive tried to heap praise upon the Oakland Athletics owner, but this was the place — the single, solitary place in the entire known universe — where people gathered to willingly extol the virtues of Fisher.
They cheered lustily, and perhaps naively, for this singularly uncharismatic billionaire. He owns something they believe they want and now — temporarily — have. The moment was the announcement that his historically bad baseball team, a team he systematically dismantled and stripped for parts to maximize profits, will play in a minor league ballpark in their neighborhood starting next season. For how long? Two years, three — whatever works. For how much? Well, for nothing, as it turns out.
On this morning, the first Thursday of April, none of it mattered. They cheered because they are employed by him, or might be soon, or by an entity that might profit from what this man owns. They stood and cheered because they gave this man whatever he wanted, despite knowing people in Oakland will lose their jobs and fans in Oakland will lose their team. They stood and cheered despite the piles upon piles of evidence that any affiliation with this man and his baseball franchise is likely to end in frustration and anger.
Ranadive, the dealmaker and owner of the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, talked about the vision of his “great friend.” The mayor of West Sacramento, Martha Guerrero, addressed Fisher directly: “John, it’s hard work running a team.” Barry Broome, the president and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council (GSEC), touted Sacramento’s civic bona fides and suggested when the time comes for Major League Baseball to consider expansion, they just might have a champion for their city working on the inside. Later, drunk on the zeal of the moment, Broome said, “I think the Fishers are thrilled with the reception they’re getting today.”
He had to take it on faith. The man himself spoke for roughly 140 seconds. He stumbled through the perfunctories before waving his arm behind him, toward the minor league ballpark and each of its 10,000 seats, and ruminated on how exciting it will be to watch “Athletics players or Aaron Judge” hit homers in “the most intimate ballpark in the big leagues.”
His unwillingness, or inability, to name one of his own players is perhaps understandable. This is a man who, for the past year, has created such a toxic environment in Oakland that he can’t attend even a single one of his team’s games. That most basic act of attentiveness — sitting in the stands — is something he can’t do, despite his operatives continually criticizing Oakland’s fans for the same offense. It is perhaps the most joyless aspect of a joyless enterprise.
But here he was, about a week after thousands of fans in Oakland paid for parking in order to remain outside the stadium on Opening Day and yell at him to sell the team. He will bask in the glory of two or three rent-free seasons in Sacramento before he packs up for Las Vegas. It’s the never-ending formula, one Fisher plays clumsily but somehow successfully: There’s always a city overeager for big league recognition, willing to prostrate itself for the opportunity to stare into the void and believe it’s the sun.
John Fisher: hero.
Who would have thought?
And when the brief ceremony was over, and the wind and the rain swept sideways under the concourse down the left-field line, the hero was gone. Vanished. He shook no hands and took no questions. He walked right past the catered croissants and jugs of coffee and disappeared into the gloom of the late morning, the first to leave his own party.
THE VIEWS FROM the waterfront offices of the A’s in Oakland’s Jack London Square are magnificent: ferries coming in and out, light shimmering off the Bay, San Francisco’s skyline nearly close enough to reach out and touch (the site of the team’s abandoned Howard Terminal project is just a slight lean to the north). In a conference room situated to maximize the view, representatives from the team and the city of Oakland met at 8:30 a.m. on April 2, precisely 49½ hours before the festivities in West Sacramento, to discuss a lease extension at the Oakland Coliseum and settle, once and for all, the team’s fate in the city.
It was an upset of sorts that meetings with Oakland happened in the first place. After the A’s pulled out of a $12 billion project to build a ballpark at Howard Terminal — an undoable ballpark/retail/office deal the city was inching closer and closer to doing — last April, the mayor’s office sat back and waited to see if the team was interested in extending its lease. Spurned and exhausted by what it perceived as the disingenuousness of the A’s negotiating stance, the city was in no mood to make the first overture.
By early February, with no movement from the A’s, the city’s representatives assumed the team had found somewhere else to play. The MLB scheduling deadline for 2025 loomed, and commissioner Rob Manfred had decreed only that the A’s would play “somewhere in the West.” A’s president Dave Kaval floated possibilities with varying levels of feasibility: Oakland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, the A’s Triple-A stadium in Las Vegas, Oracle Park in San Francisco.
The city went forward with leases for the Oakland Roots and Soul, the men’s and women’s professional soccer teams in the United Soccer League. And then, in mid-February, the team reached out to Oakland, in a move that echoed the clumsy “parallel paths” approach Kaval announced when the team pitted Las Vegas against Oakland.
“Approaching us halfway through February indicated to us it wasn’t super serious,” Oakland chief of staff Leigh Hanson said. “A normal negotiation would have started two months after they pulled out last April. So much trust had deteriorated, but we thought we’d give them the benefit of the doubt and realize their organization was going through a lot of transition. We felt it was our responsibility to the fans and the city to go forward and try to make it work on our terms.”
By April 2, the city was on its fourth meeting with the A’s, though little progress had been made. In this one, as was the case in each of the previous three, Kaval sat at the head of the table. Hanson sat to his left, directly across from A’s chief of staff Miguel Duarte. Oakland councilmember Rebecca Kaplan sat to Hanson’s left, with Alameda County supervisor David Haubert and Oakland policy chief Zach Goldman across from her.
Kaval spoke first, as had become his custom, and expressed surprise that the city’s lease terms had been reported by ESPN two days before the meeting. Those terms, as outlined on sheets passed around the room on this morning, included a five-year lease with a team opt-out after three, a $97 million “extension fee” and an agreement for the A’s to pay for the field conversion when the Roots and Soul begin playing in the Coliseum next year. The city also wanted the A’s to help secure assurances from MLB that the city would receive a one-year window to solicit ownership groups for a future expansion franchise.
Taken collectively, it was a big ask. Broken down individually, the extension fee was clearly the biggest obstacle for the team. With the A’s, money always is. Kaval said $97 million, payable whether the team stayed for five years or opted out at three, was a nonstarter and wondered how the city had come up with that number. He was told that Mayor Sheng Thao’s team had done its research, and the number factored in the cost the team would incur by relocating twice in the next three to five years, the $67 million annually the team receives from NBC Sports for its television rights for being in the Bay Area — a figure, the city says, that includes just $10 million in ad revenue, meaning NBC Sports subsidizes to the tune of $57 million per year — and the sweetheart $1.5 million rent the team currently pays at the Coliseum.
“This is above market rate,” Kaval said, and Hanson agreed. “It is,” she said, “and your deal now is criminally below market.” The city receives no parking revenue from the Coliseum, no cut of the food and beverage sales, only a small share of ticket revenue. The extension fee, Hanson emphasized, was not to be misconstrued as rent; it was simply the cost of staying in Oakland. “The goal,” she said, “is not to make this the cheapest deal possible. The goal is to make this work for the city.”
“Well,” Kaval said. “This isn’t going to work for us.”
Hanson said she shrugged. “It’s your responsibility to decide where you’re going to play baseball,” she said. “We pick up trash and we do cops and we care about economic development, but it’s not our responsibility to house you.”
This was perhaps the clearest sign yet that Oakland’s patience had worn paper-thin, and that the team would have to agree to city-friendly terms or find another place to play. Although the current administration had been in office just 15 months, the cumulative weight of the past 20 years of uncertainty fell on its shoulders. The benefits of staying in Oakland were self-evident: no relocation costs, no need to uproot employees, that television contract available only in the nation’s 10th-largest media market as ranked by Nielsen. And despite its many faults, some of them self-inflicted by the A’s, the Coliseum remains a big league stadium.
Though the city didn’t present financial terms until the fourth meeting, the basic parameters — a five-year lease with the team opt-out — were on the table. Sources say the A’s, however, never laid out an offer sheet, never presented so much as a single piece of paper with demands or suggestions. At one point during the second meeting, in March, Kaval suggested the A’s might be willing to accept “the Raiders’ deal” — two years and $17 million, the arrangement Raiders owner Mark Davis struck for the two lame-duck years in Oakland before he moved his team to Las Vegas.
“First of all,” Hanson said. “Please don’t call it the ‘Raiders’ deal’ — that brings back bad memories for everyone in this town. And second, that’s not going to work.”
The “Raiders’ deal” was the only negotiation tactic Kaval employed, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. There was still some vigorous back and forth, though. Kaval took exception to the city’s offer of a five-year lease, since the team believes its future Vegas ballpark — start date unclear, financing undetermined — on the 9-acre site of the yet-to-be demolished Tropicana Casino and Resort will be ready for the 2028 season, maybe even a year earlier.
Hanson said the city had worked its own numbers there, too, and those numbers indicated the A’s will need five years, minimum, before the Vegas stadium is completed. Left unspoken, sources say, is that significant doubt remains whether the deal in Vegas will happen at all, and the five-year gambit was a hedge against ever having to negotiate with the A’s again.
By the final meeting, Sacramento was already thick in the air. Kaval had made it known the team was in daily conversations with Ranadive and Sacramento, weekly discussions with Salt Lake City. There were those on the Oakland side of the table who believed Sacramento was a done deal before this meeting began — and they weren’t the only ones. Broome, the GSEC CEO, was in the room during the negotiations with Ranadive, and he told ESPN he knew Sacramento was getting the A’s 10 days before the official announcement.
But after that fourth and final meeting with the A’s, and after Kaval’s visceral objection to the $97 million extension fee, the mayor’s staff left the A’s offices at 9:30 and reconvened at City Hall to review the details. The discussions continued throughout the day, and by early evening Hanson got Thao’s approval to present a revised offer: a three-year lease with a $60 million extension fee.
At 7:15 that night, Hanson called Kaval with the new offer. She said he seemed interested — although he would later say the two sides remained “far apart” even with the revision — and he thanked her for the call. Within 24 hours, rumblings that Sacramento was the choice filtered out through the Twitter feed of “Carmichael Dave,” a Sacramento radio personality well-connected to Ranadive and the Kings. The next morning, Kaval called Hanson at 7:36 a.m. to give her the news. Fisher followed, five minutes later, with a call to Thao. By 10 a.m., at about the same time the A’s were on a flight heading for Detroit, Ranadive was standing at the podium, wind whipping his hair, thanking his good friend.
Afterward, Kaval said the decision to choose Sacramento over Oakland was based partly on the abbreviated time frame and partly on factors out of the A’s control, such as the expansion team assurances Oakland sought from MLB. The team had to act quickly, he said, to ensure the league office could put together a 2025 schedule with something other than “TBD” next to the team’s name. In effect, the A’s created an untenable timeline for Oakland, and then used it against them.
At the end of the workday in Oakland, Hanson gathered the mayor’s staff and headed across the street to Fluid 510, their favorite bar, to toast the end — the end of the negotiations and the parallel paths and the false hope and the reading between the lines. They weren’t celebrating the A’s imminent departure so much as the conclusion of a seemingly endless, and endlessly frustrating, back and forth with a team they never felt they could trust.
FISHER CONTINUES TO fail forward: free rent in Sacramento, $380 million in public money in Las Vegas, no accountability in Oakland. He received unanimous approval from the other 29 owners to move to Vegas. MLB, at the behest of Manfred, waived the team’s relocation fee because — according to a league source — it would be too burdensome for Fisher to pay. “So if we say there’s a relocation fee of $2 billion,” the source said. “Realistically, how are we going to get that?”
It’s difficult to see the value Fisher brings to the other 29 teams. He seems to have benefited from a billionaire’s version of the comfort of low expectations. His front office has fielded playoff teams — cheap, brilliantly constructed playoff teams — but those days are so distant they belong to a different era. His team’s payroll is last in the league, but that doesn’t come close to placing it in the proper context. The A’s 2024 payroll of $60 million is 41% lower than the 29th-ranked team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, in a league where even the Tampa Bay Rays and Detroit Tigers field teams with payrolls of more than $100 million. Since Fisher assumed sole ownership of the team in 2016, the team has had the lowest payroll in baseball three times and has never ranked higher than 24th.
The condemnation of Fisher has been widespread. Former Athletics pitcher and current Mets broadcaster Ron Darling said, on air, that he is “appalled” by Fisher’s behavior over the past six months. Broadcasters from the Tigers and the Angels — team employees — have publicly condemned the abandonment of Oakland. Retired pitcher Trevor May, who played for the A’s as recently as last season, appeared on the “Foul Territory” podcast and said, “Losing fans is one thing, but treating them this way sends a message to all fans.”
There could be other options. Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob said he has a standing offer to purchase the A’s and build a new ballpark on the Coliseum site, the same offer he made when then-commissioner Bud Selig approved the sale of the team to his old fraternity buddy Lew Wolff — and Fisher — in 2005. “And what team does Lacob own?” the league source asked rhetorically, since the answer is a team that left Oakland for San Francisco.
Meanwhile Kaval, ever the optimist, has touted the idea that Vegas will cure all ills, that the A’s will abandon their Moneyball ways and spend like gamblers on tilt when the Vegas money rolls in. Even if that is true — and history provides no indication that it will be — the A’s face three seasons of further belt-tightening before then. In an all-hands Zoom meeting before the official Sacramento announcement, Kaval informed Oakland staff that there would be significant layoffs at the end of the season. Much of the work done by specific departments — marketing, ticket sales, public relations — will be done by employees of the Kings and River Cats.
The city, which has taken so much of the blame, now will find its citizens jobless. And while the A’s have sought a new home for the past 20 years, only the past eight have been centered on Oakland. Of those eight, two were spent on a doomed-before-it-started downtown site at Laney Community College, and two of the Howard Terminal years were slowed by a pandemic. Even then, the city was within $97 million — the original extension fee was a history-rhymes clapback — of providing Fisher with everything he sought for his $12 billion Howard Terminal mini-city.
None of that mattered within the owners’ fraternity, where patience eroded and Oakland, an easy target of scorn, became nothing more than a problem to be solved. “After 15 years of this, owners are on Rob,” the league source said. “They want to know, ‘What’s happening in Oakland? Let’s go, it’s time to s— or get off the pot.'”
IN WEST SACRAMENTO, there are logistical questions that remain outstanding. The physics of the Triple-A River Cats, a Giants affiliate, and the big league A’s sharing a ballpark have yet to be determined. Significant improvements to Sutter Health Park are necessary to comply with the collective bargaining agreement and receive the approval of the Major League Players Association. Lights will need to be upgraded, bullpens revamped and a second batting cage constructed. The home clubhouse is currently beyond the left-field wall, an arrangement that seems less than optimal.
As the rain fell and the wind blew last Thursday, though, unchecked exuberance ruled the day. Broome said, “The only thing I asked of the Fishers is when they win the World Series in the next three years, they put that parade right in the middle of our town.”
He is speaking about the A’s, a husk of a team. Winning isn’t even a talking point, let alone a goal. Just a few years ago, the front office assembled a vibrant, young core — Matt Chapman, Marcus Semien, Matt Olson, Sean Murphy — that could have contended for years if contending mattered. What remains is bound together by baling wire and twine and revenue sharing.
Broome is undeterred. “All we need is a 19-year-old kid named Vida Blue, a 20-year-old guy named Reggie Jackson,” he said. “We just need three, four, five guys. We need to look in the Dominican Republic for a shortstop, for Omar Vizquel.” (Vizquel is Venezuelan.)
In Sacramento, it all feels fresh and new, the possibilities endless. Ranadive, the man who saved the Kings from a future in Seattle in 2013, stood in front of the smiling crowd and said Sacramento is in “pole position” for a future expansion team. He said it will no longer play “second fiddle” to anyone, even though second fiddle is precisely what they will be if Fisher succeeds in his plan to squat for two or three years before moving to Las Vegas. The A’s aren’t even putting “Sacramento” in their name, opting for the location-free “A’s” or “Athletics,” as if attaching themselves to Sacramento might imply something permanent, or real.
What’s in it for Ranadive? An MLB source insisted Ranadive and Sacramento were promised nothing more than a temporary visit from the A’s. “We don’t even have an expansion process in place,” the source said. “The owners have to vote to explore expansion first, and then put a committee together. There are no guarantees.”
Sources close to the negotiations in both Oakland and Sacramento believe Ranadive is making a calculation that Las Vegas is never going to happen. “Vivek is definitely bright,” one source who requested anonymity said. “He made an assessment: Vegas will eventually fall apart and wherever the team is at that moment is where it will stay. He’s not the only one who believes that.”
Wherever the A’s play in 2028, the team appears eager in 2024 to make amends with a fan base it has pushed away in recent years. After walking away from Oakland and choosing nine acres in a Vegas parking lot, the A’s seem to believe fans will embrace the nostalgia of the past 56 years and bid a fond farewell.
“We think there are a lot of people who are excited to come out and see a final game at the Coliseum,” Kaval said. “I’m hopeful that can be a positive experience, and we’re going to do everything within our control to make it positive. New memories can be made, and we have a whole season to do that.”
Kaval is standing a few feet from the podium at Sutter Health Park, far enough under the overhang to be free of the rain. He is talking fast, his eyes big, the words a torrent of spin and hope and his own unique brand of untethered optimism. He is speaking for a fan base that, rightly or wrongly, loathes both him and Fisher, to the point where it stays away from the ballpark or attends games just to protest their very existence. And now he is standing in the concourse of the team’s temporary future home, a nice minor league ballpark near the Sacramento River with views of the Tower Bridge and the city beyond, a 15-minute walk from the Kings’ state-of-the-art arena, ready to cleanse the past.
“I know people are receptive,” Kaval said. “I think it can be done.”
There will be promotions. Cheap seats. Alumni events. Nods to past glory. Family fun. Seventy-four home games remain on the schedule. Come on out, Kaval says, and help the A’s send the old gray lady off with a bang. “It’s baseball,” he says, eyes widening, “and baseball is all about having fun.”
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Andrea Adelson
THE JOKES ARE easy enough to make between “old man” Haynes King and his position coach, the oldest man to ever win the Heisman Trophy.
Twenty-five years ago, when Chris Weinke took home the award as a 28-year-old senior, his age became a nonstop topic of conversation. Today, older quarterbacks dot the college football landscape, their advanced ages met with a collective shrug.
“Sometimes I try and mess with him and say, ‘I couldn’t quite catch you on the age, but I tried. I gave it my all,” the 24-year-old King said of Weinke, his quarterbacks coach at Georgia Tech.
Older players have been normalized, thanks to the transfer portal and the pandemic, which granted freshmen an extra year of eligibility if they wanted it. Nearly 40 quarterbacks from the 2020 class came back this year for one more season at the FBS level. Plus, with NIL and revenue sharing, some quarterbacks are opting to stay in college as opposed to leaving school for the NFL draft. And sixth-year quarterbacks like King and Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia entered the Heisman conversation this year. (Pavia was named a finalist.) Still, if more quarterbacks are 24 years old these days, nobody is quite as aged as Weinke was when he played.
“The landscape of college football has obviously changed,” Weinke says. “But that was a point of contention when I won it. When I walked into the room that evening when they were making the Heisman announcement, I didn’t think I was going to win it, because there was so much chatter that I didn’t deserve to win it because I was older.
“But I’ve got it now, and they can’t take it away.”
Perhaps the conversation around what Weinke did in 2000 at Florida State should be reframed. What made that season so remarkable had nothing to do with age, and everything to do with how he turned himself into a star after his college football career nearly ended. Twice.
FLORIDA STATE OFFENSIVE coordinator Mark Richt was sitting in his office in 1996, when then-coach Bobby Bowden came in with some news. At the time, Richt was closing in on getting a commitment from the top quarterback prospect in the country, Drew Henson. That is, until Bowden told him about a promise he had made to Weinke six years earlier.
Weinke had initially signed with the Seminoles in 1990, joining a quarterback room that included Brad Johnson, Casey Weldon and fellow freshman Charlie Ward. But he also had a lucrative offer to play baseball with the Toronto Blue Jays organization, after being selected in the second round of the MLB draft. Weinke had until classes started in late August to decide which sport he was going to play, so he opted to begin fall practice with Florida State while weighing his options.
He went through fall two-a-days, and with decision day closing in, Richt remembers one quarterback meeting in particular. To make sure his quarterbacks understood what he was teaching them, he would ask them questions.
Richt turned to Weinke as they watched tape and asked, “What coverage is this on this play?”
“Cover 3?” Weinke guessed.
“No.”
“Cover 1?
“No. It’s quarters coverage,” Richt said.
Weinke responded: “Whatever.”
“That was the day before school started,” Richt said. “I said, ‘I got a feeling this kid is going to leave and play pro baseball.'”
Sure enough, Weinke left. But Bowden told him if he ever decided to return to football, he would have a spot waiting for him at Florida State.
After six years of bouncing around the minor leagues and getting as high as Triple-A, Weinke decided to give up on baseball, but not playing sports entirely. He wanted to go back to football. Richt reminded Bowden that if they took Weinke, they would lose Henson.
“Well, I promised him if ever wanted to play football again, I’d let him come back,” Bowden told Richt.
Richt asked to speak with Weinke first.
“I was telling him all the rules and regs, I was telling him about [quarterback] Dan Kendra already on campus and when I’m done giving him my spiel to try to get him not to come, he says, ‘Hey coach, let me ask you one question. If I’m the best guy, will I play?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ He goes, ‘I’m coming.’ We lost the other quarterback to Michigan. I guess we came out OK with Weinke.”
Nobody quite knew what to expect when he arrived on campus as a 25-year-old freshman in 1997, but he quickly became one of the guys, in part because he had a large house off campus and threw his fair share of parties where all were invited.
The larger issue was that he arrived as a baseball player. Weinke had not picked up a football in six years.
Getting his form back would take time and reps. Lots and lots of reps. Former teammates and coaches described Weinke’s competitiveness, work ethic and relentless demeanor as driving forces. He would never settle for anything less than his best effort; and he expected the same from his teammates.
That is why he woke up before class started and went to watch tape with Richt. Why he organized every voluntary 7-on-7 workout and essentially made them mandatory. Because if someone failed to show up, he would go and find them and bring them out to the practice field. He developed such a great rapport with his receivers that he would be able to anticipate where they would be at any given time on the field.
“Our chemistry was like none other,” said Marvin “Snoop” Minnis, his leading receiver in 2000. “He knew what I was going to do before I did. He would have the ball to me before I even got out of my break, and as a receiver, you love that so you can react and make the move you need to make on the defender.”
Weinke played sparingly in 1997 but won the starting job in 1998. Things started well enough in the opener. Then in his second career start, at NC State, Weinke threw a school-record six interceptions, and the criticism began.
“I remember getting back to the house, we had an answering machine back then. The most brutal messages you could imagine, cursing and threats, and ‘You don’t need to play quarterback,'” said Jeff Purinton, who was working in the Florida State media relations department at the time and was one of Weinke’s roommates. “Even going to the store, people would talk trash. Chris just weathered it and used that as an opportunity to learn.”
Weinke rebounded from there, helping Florida State reel off eight straight wins. That last win, against Virginia, was nearly the last time he saw the field.
TOWARD THE END of the first half, Weinke got sacked and felt pain in his right arm. He initially thought he had a shoulder injury. Weinke went into the locker room at halftime, and as trainers began to lift off his shoulder pads, he had a sharp pain in his neck. He was fitted with a brace and underwent further testing.
When the doctor walked in to deliver the results, Weinke remembers asking, “Before you share any news, I just want to know one thing. Am I ever going to play college football again?”
“Well,” the doctor said. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
The doctor said Weinke needed surgery to insert a titanium plate into his neck after X-rays showed a chipped bone lodged against a nerve in a vertebra, ligament damage and a ruptured disc.
“Maybe the better news,” the doctor said. “You were a centimeter away from being paralyzed from the neck down.”
“Mom hears that, and dad hears that. They’re not real excited about me getting back out on the field,” Weinke says. “But they knew that burning desire inside of me that wanted to get back out there and be a part of the team. The doctors told me that I’d be stronger with a titanium plate in my neck, so I was going to do whatever it took. But those were probably the hardest seven months of my life.”
Weinke initially had complications post-surgery and had to be in bed for five weeks. He lost 30 pounds, and his throwing arm atrophied so severely that it became impossible for him to even lift a football. He had to teach himself again how to throw, starting first with a tennis ball. Throwing it 5 yards was a huge accomplishment. Seven hours a day, day after day, he rehabbed, steadily progressing, all the while unsure whether he would make it all the way back.
Then, there he was in the season opener against Louisiana Tech, completing 63% of his passes, throwing for 242 yards and two touchdowns. That was the start of an undefeated national championship-winning season in 1999, as Florida State went wire to wire as the No. 1 team in the nation.
Weinke opted to return for one more season, because he wanted to get Bowden another national championship. After throwing for 3,432 yards, 29 touchdowns and 15 interceptions as a junior and winning the title, Weinke became one of the Heisman front-runners headed into 2000.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, there is one play from that season that remains a part of Seminoles lore: Weinke to Minnis, 98 yards, in a 54-7 blowout win over Clemson in mid-November.
On the second series of the game, backed up near the goal line, Florida State ran what Bowden referred to as a “gym play” — one that was never practiced on the field, but rather behind closed doors inside the gym away from prying eyes. “Or spies,” Richt said.
Weinke dropped back deep into the end zone and faked a handoff to Jeff Chaney, turning his back to the defense and tucking the ball as if he no longer had it. Minnis had gone in motion and made the safety think he was blocking for a handoff, then took off down the middle. By the time Weinke delivered the ball, Minnis was wide open. Easy touchdown. Easy 54-7 win.
“He was so ice cold in that moment,” Minnis said. “The confidence that he had in the O-line to just stand there, then turn around and hit me for the touchdown. For him to make that fake as beautiful as he did and then put that ball on a dime just tells you how great Chris Weinke was and how deserving he was of that Heisman Trophy.”
There was another game that added to his legend: The regular-season final against the rival Gators. Weinke had missed the 1998 game in Gainesville because of his neck injury. Nothing would keep him from playing them in The Swamp in 2000. Not even the flu.
Weinke was so sick the night before the game, he stayed at the home of team doctor Kris Stowers so he would not be around the rest of the team in the team hotel. He rode with Stowers to the game on Saturday, and walked through all the tailgate lots on the way to the locker room. Trainers gave him an IV before the game started, and Weinke proceeded to throw for 353 yards and three touchdowns in the 30-7 win.
Florida State was well positioned to make it back to the national title game, and Weinke was also well positioned in the Heisman Trophy race. But as the weeks drew closer to the announcement of the Heisman finalists, critics waged a campaign against Weinke — saying his age should disqualify him from consideration. That angered his teammates.
“He dominated that year, and it had nothing to do with age,” Minnis said. Added running back Travis Minor: “When he got there, he wasn’t looking like a Heisman Trophy candidate or winner. He really put the work in. You saw the difference from when he first got there to when he had that Heisman Trophy season. He earned everything that he won.”
Florida State knew it had to start working on messaging with Heisman voters as the debate over his age raged on. Ultimately, school officials came back to one main point: It was hard to argue with the stats. Weinke had led the nation with 4,167 yards passing and 33 touchdowns and had the Seminoles playing in a third straight national championship game.
“He was playing baseball for six years. It wasn’t like he was throwing the football every day and training to be a starting college quarterback,” Purinton said. “The other part is he could have died when he broke his neck. There were two points in time where he had to go back and start football over again.”
Weinke said the narrative taking shape around his age “pissed me off.”
“I was playing college football, so if I’m playing college football, then I should be eligible to win any award that they’re giving out in college football,” Weinke said. “That was just a little motivating factor for me.”
Weinke ultimately made it to New York with fellow finalists Josh Heupel, LaDainian Tomlinson and Drew Brees. His teammates watched on television screens from the team banquet Florida State had scheduled for that night.
“Sitting in the Downtown Athletic Club coming out of a commercial break and them announcing your name will ring in my head till the day I die,” Weinke said.
Weinke beat out Heupel in one of the closest votes in Heisman history, taking a 76-point margin of victory. His teammates whooped and hollered for him back home. Weinke took the stage and said, “With apologies to Lou Gehrig, I feel like I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
WEINKE BEGAN COACHING 10 years after he won the Heisman. He first came to know King while working as an assistant at Tennessee in 2020. When King hit the portal in 2022, Weinke had moved on to Georgia Tech. His first call was to King.
“Playing quarterback is kind of tricky,” King says. “The stars have to align, whether it’s people around you and or how you’re playing. Even in my class, there were guys like Bryce Young and Anthony Richardson and C.J. Stroud, already in the league, and I’m still in college like Chandler Morris, Diego Pavia, Carson Beck. Everybody’s timeline is different.”
While the debate over his age has been left to the dustbin of history, what Weinke did that year may never be replicated. In an era of sport and position specialization, quarterbacks rarely play multiple sports at elite levels — let alone leave football behind for six years before coming back to it. In the 25 years since Weinke won the Heisman, Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State is perhaps the only notable quarterback to play baseball and then stick around in college football into his late 20s.
“To go through the things that I went through was clearly the road less traveled,” Weinke said. “Being an older guy and not playing football for seven years, then fulfilling a dream of playing for Coach Bowden, then breaking my neck, and coming back and giving Coach Bowden his first undefeated season, and ultimately having my name called for the Heisman Trophy, I just felt blessed.”
The MLB winter meetings have come and gone, and though there’s always a hope that there will be plenty of action, that’s not always the case. The 2025 meetings didn’t have a $700-plus million deal like last year, but there were still a number of impactful free agent signings, although no groundbreaking trades.
Veteran slugger Kyle Schwarber chose to return to the Philadelphia Phillies on a five-year deal in the first major splash of the meetings. The Los Angeles Dodgers added to an already star-studded roster by signing closer Edwin Diaz to a three-year, $69 million contract that sets a record in AAV for a reliever. The Baltimore Orioles then joined the fun by adding a veteran slugger on a five-year deal of their own in Pete Alonso.
We asked our MLB experts who were on the scene in Orlando, Florida, to break down everything that happened this week. Which moves most impressed them — and which most confused them? Who were the biggest winners and losers? What should we make of the trade market? And what can we expect next?
What is the most interesting thing you heard this week in Orlando?
Jorge Castillo: That a Tarik Skubal trade is likely. Here’s what we know: Detroit Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris can shut down speculation by simply saying he is not trading Skubal and he has not done that. Instead, he noted this week that there aren’t any “untouchables” on his roster. Trading the best pitcher in baseball when you’re trying to compete would upset the fan base, but the Tigers, knowing re-signing Skubal next winter is unlikely, appear open to it.
Bradford Doolittle: Managers’ responses to questions about how they plan to handle the new ABS system were interesting. No one seems fixed on a protocol just yet, but what had not occurred to me is that catchers are likely to be the triggers for challenges for the defense. So instead of the possible reality in which catcher value was undermined by a full-blown automated system, this structure actually will enhance it — and we’ll have a new set of statistics to track.
Alden Gonzalez: Tyler Glasnow‘s name has come up in conversations, and the Dodgers would not be opposed to moving him. He’s poised to make a combined $60 million over the next two years, with either a $30 million club option or a $21.6 million player option in 2028. But the quality of his stuff continues to tantalize executives throughout the industry, and there are certainly a fair share of teams that will bank on him staying healthy enough to make it worthwhile. Maybe he’s part of the package that brings Tarik Skubal to L.A. A longshot, perhaps, but wilder things have happened.
Jeff Passan: The Texas Rangers are in listening mode on star shortstop Corey Seager, which doesn’t mean the two-time World Series MVP is by any means going to be moved but reflects the Rangers’ willingness to overhaul the team beyond their trade of Marcus Semien. To be abundantly clear: Texas isn’t looking to shed the remaining $186 million on his contract. The return would need to overwhelm the Rangers. But they are facing a payroll crunch, and with Pete Alonso landing a $155 million deal and Kyle Schwarber reaping $150 million, Seager’s deal is quite appealing. He’s only 31, he plays an excellent shortstop and of all the position players ostensibly available via trade or free agency, he is the best.
Jesse Rogers: Simply put, that deals for many of the major free agent pitchers aren’t close to being finalized. It almost feels like the beginning of the offseason for starting pitchers, who are meeting with teams to try to ignite their market. There has been a steady pace of signings for relievers — especially at the high end — but other than Dylan Cease, starting pitchers have been slow to agree to deals. That will change — at least in part — because Japanese starter Tatsuya Imai has a deadline of Jan. 2 to sign, but even that is still several weeks away.
What was your favorite move of the offseason so far?
Doolittle: I’m not too excited about any of them so far — not that I think they’re all bad, just nothing tickles my fancy. So the bar is pretty low. I’ll go with the Toronto Blue Jays going big on Cease. Keep that crest wave Toronto is on rolling.
Gonzalez: As a general rule, any free agent deal this time of year tends to be an overpay. And that’s what makes the Dodgers’ deal for star closer Diaz so appealing. Diaz received the highest annual value ever for a reliever, but they were able to get him for only three years (and, as they so often do, defer some of the payments). The Dodgers capitalized on the New York Mets‘ signing of Devin Williams — which opened the door for Diaz’s departure — and addressed their own biggest need with the type of short-term, high-AAV contract that is always their preference.
Rogers: I love Baltimore going for it, agreeing to a deal with Alonso. The Orioles had a bad season in 2025 and are doing everything they can to change their fortunes for next season — even if there are some inherent doubts about acquiring an aging first baseman for big money. The bottom line is Alonso is going to mash in Baltimore and perhaps bring some leadership to a team that needs a veteran presence. I love the big swing here — pun intended.
Which team’s actions (or lack thereof) had you scratching your head?
Doolittle: It’s probably too early to judge any particular team for its offseason in total, but the most perplexing move for me was Baltimore dealing Grayson Rodriguez to the Los Angeles Angels for one year of Taylor Ward. That definitely makes my head itch.
Castillo: The Orioles prioritizing a slugger after acquiring Ward from the Angels was unexpected. Baltimore does not have a shortage of young position player talent. Starting pitching, not offense, was their pressing need — especially after trading Rodriguez for Ward. But the Orioles offered Schwarber a five-year, $150 million and quickly pivoted to Alonso when Schwarber chose the Phillies, landing the former Mets first baseman with a five-year, $155 million deal that surpassed industry projections. The pressure remains on Orioles president of baseball operations Mike Elias to acquire a frontline starter, which he has plainly stated is an offseason priority.
Passan: What the New York Mets did over a 24-hour period to end the meetings — miss out on slugger Schwarber, lose closer Díaz to the two-time defending World Series champion Dodgers and lose Alonso, their franchise home run leader, to the Orioles — felt like a bloodletting.
Collapses like the Mets’ have consequences, and president of baseball operations David Stearns is reshaping them to his liking. Defensive liabilities are a no-no. Record-setting deals for relief pitchers are verboten. How the Mets proceed is anyone’s best guess, but let’s not forget: Steve Cohen is still the richest owner in baseball, and that opens a world of possibilities. But if this period of inaction isn’t remedied through decisive moves — an influx of talent either through free agency or trades — the Mets’ playoff hopes will end before they’ve begun.
After a lot of buzz ahead of the meetings, it was pretty quiet on the trade front. What is one big deal you think could go down from here?
Gonzalez: The Miami Marlins have been engaged in trade conversations around Edward Cabrera, a 27-year-old starting pitcher with three controllable years remaining. And the Orioles have emerged as a front-runner, as first reported by The Athletic. There are a number of starting pitchers available at the moment. Sonny Gray has already gone from St. Louis to Boston, and Cabrera could be next to move.
Passan: A second baseman is going to move. Maybe multiple. There is too much interest in Ketel Marte, Brendan Donovan and Brandon Lowe for a deal not to be consummated. It’s not just them, either. Jake Cronenworth is available. The Yankees have listened on Jazz Chisholm Jr. The Mets’ overhaul could include moving Jeff McNeil.
Marte and Donovan are the clear prizes, with Arizona’s and St. Louis’ respective asking prices exceptionally high. Which is where, at this point on the calendar, they should be. Especially with all of the teams that could use a second baseman (Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, New York Mets) or that would be willing to replace theirs.
Rogers: Where there is smoke, there is fire, meaning Washington Nationals starting pitcher MacKenzie Gore will be moved. His name came up a lot in Orlando and there are enough motivated teams in part because he’s good and affordable. An American League East team, such as the New York Yankees or Orioles, fits for Gore — especially the latter, which might have an extra hitter or two to spare after signing Alonso. Gore fits in Baltimore on several levels.
Who was the biggest winner — and loser — of the week?
Castillo: The Mets were the biggest loser. Losing Diaz and Alonso on consecutive days two weeks after trading Brandon Nimmo is a staggering sequence not just because they are all All-Star-caliber players, but because they were so integral to the franchise and beloved by the fan base. This doesn’t mean the Mets can’t emerge as winners this season. President of baseball operations David Stearns & Co. have time to rebound. They certainly have moves to make. But this was an ugly week for Mets fans, one they’ll never forget.
Passan: The Dodgers were the biggest winner, filling their clearest need with one of the best closers in baseball, Díaz. Cincinnati, in the meantime, is the biggest loser.
Free agents of Schwarber’s ilk rarely entertain the idea of going to small-market teams, but the Reds had a built-in advantage: He was from there. Considering the scarcity of such possibilities, the Reds– one big bat away from being a real threat to win the NL Central — needed to treat Schwarber’s potential arrival with urgency and embrace their inner spendthrift. They had the money to place the largest bid. They chose not to. And they missed, a true shame considering the strength of their rotation and the likelihood that similar opportunities won’t find them again anytime soon.
Rogers: The Phillies were the biggest winner. Where would they be without Schwarber? Perhaps it was fait accompli he would be returning, but until he signed on the dotted line, some doubt had to exist. His power simply can’t be replaced, meaning the Phillies’ whole trajectory this offseason would have changed had he left. Now, they can keep moving forward on other important decisions, such as what to do at catcher and if Nick Castellanos still fits their roster. Checking the Schwarber box removes a major potential headache for the franchise. Conversely, even if it was a long shot, the Cincinnati Reds losing out on Schwarber has to hurt. As important as he is to the Phillies, his impact in Cincinnati could have been even more meaningful. He instantly would have elevated the Reds on and off the field.
Which team is under the most pressure to do something big after the meetings?
Castillo: The Mets for the reasons I stated above. Stearns obviously believed he needed to make changes to the roster after such a disappointing season. But this is a major, major overhaul that goes beyond on-field performance. Diaz, Alonso, and Nimmo were beloved core Mets and key to the franchise’s fabric. The pressure is on Stearns to ensure the jarring changes will produce success.
Doolittle: Cincinnati. The Reds muffed the Schwarber situation in a major way. I’m not sure what their actual chances were of signing him, but they should have at least matched what the Phillies offered. The fit between the player and what he’d add to the city and the clubhouse culture while addressing the roster’s biggest need in an emphatic fashion was a set of alignments hard to replicate. There is no suitable pivot from here. But the Reds need to do something — and they need to stop making excuses for why they don’t.
Gonzalez: The Mets. Their decision to not pay a premium for cornerstone players prompted Diaz to leave for L.A., Alonso to depart for Baltimore and their fans, understandably, to be up in arms. Now, they must react. They still have needs to address in their rotation, but they have to get aggressive with their lineup before all of the premium bats come off the board. Going after Cody Bellinger, and potentially stealing him from their crosstown rivals, feels like the natural pivot.
Passan: The Blue Jays have a chance to seize control of the AL East even more than they did in winning the division this year. Whether that means signing Tucker, Bo Bichette or both, they’re spending in the sort of fashion the Yankees and Red Sox used to — and taking advantage of the window of opportunity that presents is imperative.
Toronto, long mocked for its failures in free agency, is now a destination for players enthralled by the brand of baseball the Blue Jays play as well as the deep pockets of ownership. If you’re going to spend $210 million on Cease, that’s a sign: It’s all-in time, and opportunistic maneuvering would pay huge dividends for Toronto.
Rogers: The Yankees. For once, they are the team that needs to respond after the Blue Jays beat them on the field and now so far in the offseason. Toronto keeps adding while New York should try to at least maintain what it has — meaning Bellinger, or perhaps Tucker, should be in Yankees pinstripes as soon as possible. If the Yankees can add Imai, they’ll match Toronto’s addition of Cease. That would be a good thing. The two teams aren’t that far apart in talent, but Yankees general manager Brian Cashman can’t take his foot off the gas. The pressure is on in New York again.
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