Jameis Winston is finally coming to play in the Bay Area, doing so as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback who wishes he also had come here four years ago to play for Stanford.
Winston, on a Wednesday conference call with the Bay Area media, acknowledged he's second-guessed his 2012 decision to bypass Stanford and attend Florida State, where he won the 2013 Heisman Trophy and national championship. That set him up to become the No. 1l pick in the 2015 NFL draft and win Offensive Rookie of the Year honors.
"When I got accepted into Stanford, me and my family was excited," Winston said. "I actually took my visit out there to make my final decision. When I came to Stanford (and) Palo Alto, I was blown away.
"But I decided to go to FSU."
Winston verbally committed to Florida State in August 2011, but he came "very close" to picking Stanford when coach David Shaw informed him in late January he'd been admitted.
So what was the deciding factor?
"It was really me just not really knowing how prestigious Stanford really was," Winston said. "I look back all the time and see how if I went to Stanford what way my life could have turned. But, you know, you make your decisions and you go with them and you own them."
Winston's Florida State tenure was overshadowed with off-field issues, including allegations of sexual assault (he wasn't prosecuted) and shoplifting crab legs (he was issued a civil citation and ordered to do 20 hours of community service).
To confirm, would Winston, an Alabama native, still picked Florida State if he had a mulligan?
"Yeah, I mean, just because Stanford is a great school," Winston said. "You are who you place yourself around. I would have just loved the opportunity to go to Stanford and be around some of my friends out there."
Shaw, in a 2014 interview with this newspaper's Jon Wilner, hesitated to ponder the hypothetical scenario of Winston in a Stanford uniform.
"It's two different environments; it's two different places," Shaw said then. "I don't know what would have happened.
"... I love Jameis. He's a really, really good person, regardless of what some might think. He's just made some bad decisions. He's had to grow up in public. We're more insulated here. It's just different."
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