Jameis Winston and baseball.jpg

Jameis Winston might have been a two-sport star at Texas, not Florida State, if the Longhorns had shown interest in Winston. (The Birmingham News/Mark Almond)

Part 4 of 5-part series on former Hueytown High School star Jameis Winston

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- As the legend of Jameis Winston grew, Winston the person held onto a longterm vision for his career.

That meant playing football and baseball -- even as some people questioned his logic. That meant wanting to play in college at Texas. And that meant determining his style of play in football. He didn't want to simply be pigeon-holed as a running quarterback.

"Sooner or later I'll reach a level where I can't win games with my legs," Winston told The Birmingham News as a high school sophomore. "I want to be a thinking quarterback first."

Because Winston was known in national athletic circles for years, there had to be an early recruiting plan. His first verbal college scholarship offer came from Georgia Tech in the ninth grade. Antonor Winston, Jameis' father, told Warchant.com that he sat in with Hueytown coaches while pretending to be an assistant so he could see what the process was like.

Antonor turned the recruiting process over to Matt Scott, Hueytown High School's first-year coach, for Winston's sophomore and junior years.

"His dad had a lot of vision," Scott said. "I think it would be very common for a dad to really meddle and he was not like that at all. He told me, 'You're his coach, and you know what's best for him in this situation and you guys handle it.'"

When Scott once asked Antonor if he thought Winston was ready to compete against other elite quarterbacks in a national competition, the question frustrated Antonor.

"His dad was getting on me for asking and said, 'You're the coach, you're going to make that decision,'" Scott said. "I appreciated that he sort of put that in my hands. That's how we proceeded and then he didn't really get involved until senior year, which is what he told me he'd do."

When Winston was about 15 years old, Scott decided it was time to have "the talk" with the prodigy. The subject: Outsiders would try to make money off Winston. There was an elite quarterback camp in California that wanted $4,000 for Winston to attend.

Scott told Winston if he wanted to go, they would find the money. But Scott cautioned that the camp needed Winston more than he needed the camp. Scott said he told Winston the camp would eventually promote Winston as the Heisman Trophy winner and a first-round NFL draft pick to future clients.

"Here's a 15-year-old being told to come to this camp in California and he said, 'Coach, you call and tell them I'm not coming and I'm not coming next year, either,'" Scott said. "He got educated in that early. Colleges would say he can come for free on senior day (to visit the school). You don't need him there. You need him there for bait for the rest of (the recruits)."

One school Winston really liked was Texas, but the Longhorns didn't offer him. Winston and Scott even reached out to Texas with phone calls.

Scott estimates he called Texas at least 5-6 times over the course of a few months after Winston's junior year. He remembers speaking to a specific secretary.

"I told them I know you get these calls all the time but I said trust me on this one, you are going to want to relay this message," Scott recalled. "I told her I had left voice mails on all these assistant coaches' phones and never got a call back. I told her that this was a message she wanted to get out there to Coach (Mack) Brown."

Winston told reporters earlier this year that if Texas had offered him, he would be a Longhorn right now. How might current college football history have changed if Texas had pursued Winston?

After Winston's comments, Texas coach Mack Brown publicly said he had someone very close to the program tell him it was a "two-horse race" between Florida State and Alabama. Brown said he was interested in Winston but trusted the person who told him Winston would be a Seminole. Brown also noted that Texas' coaching staff was in transition at the time.

Before Winston's junior year, Winston and his parents told college coaches to only communicate with them through Scott. Antonor told Warchant.com earlier this year that the stipulation was designed to see which recruiters would be bold enough to break the family's rules.

Florida State assistant Dameyune Craig, who now coaches at Auburn, didn't abide by the family code.

"I always knew whichever coach broke away from Coach Scott and came to me," Antonor said to Warchant.com, "that's the one he was going to give the most attention to. ... When Dameyune came, I knew it would be Florida State. Kids can swap and flip or whatever, but when Dameyune came I felt, 'OK, they're first.'"

Check back at 11 a.m. on AL.com for the final story of the Jameis Winston series: Why didn't Winston sign with Alabama or Auburn?