The whirlwind hit Jordan Travis right between the eyes — the ones he could barely keep open the early morning of Feb. 6. When Florida State’s quarterback pulled into his driveway at 4:30 a.m., the exhaustion weighed on him like a 300-pound defensive lineman.
In the space of less than 40 hours he had been whisked cross country in a private plane to the Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Arizona — courtesy of an NIL benefactor — rubbing elbows with celebrities and athletes before flying right back to Tallahassee, Florida, in time for … what?
“Sociological Theory,” Travis recalled of that first-thing-Monday class. “It’s a tough class, especially to sit through.”
So he didn’t. The leader of the Seminoles’ breakthrough 2022 season — a Heisman Trophy hopeful and tireless worker aiming to lead one of the best stories of the season — deserved to sleep in this once.
He couldn’t be blamed.
Already holder of a bachelor degree when he graduated last May with Jameis Winston (among others), Travis had earned the trip. It was a brief glimpse at the NFL’s biggest party after turning around FSU and his own career last season.
He couldn’t be excused, either.
“I had to do bear crawls,” Travis told CBS Sports of his punishment for missing class.
The quarterback smiled the whole time as he crawled length of the field and back at the command of coach Mike Norvell. It was Travis’ way of telling his coach that nothing would break him.
“I irritate [Norvell] a little bit because I’m always smiling,” Travis recalled. “He doesn’t watch many people do bear crawls. But he wanted to watch me. I just sat there with a smile on my face every single yard I did.”
Norvell got it. He knew what was happening but still needed to enforce the accountability factor. If he…
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