14 Mondays and 98 total days stand between the fans and Florida State football. In order to make the offseason more bearable, we’re doing a countdown that highlights players, games, and specific moments from FSU football history. On Sunday, it was the 1999 national championship season where the Seminoles went wire-to-wire as No. 1 in the polls.
Today, its the 98-yard touchdown pass from Chris Weinke to Snoop Minnis in the 2000 contest against Clemson.
The Tigers came in to Doak Campbell Stadium with a No. 10 ranking and 8-1 overall record. They were led by FSU head coach Bobby Bowden’s son, Tommy Bowden, who was looking for revenge after coming very close to upsetting the Seminoles in the 1999 contest. They went up by 11 at halftime before losing 17-14 to the Seminoles, who captured Bobby Bowden’s 300th career victory. Florida State would eventually go on to win the national title.
The 2000 match-up between father and son was dubbed “Bowden Bowl II” and many anticipated a close contest. Instead, it turned in to a 54-7 blowout, helped in large part by a stunning touchdown from Chris Weinke to Snoop Minnis in the first quarter.
Florida State went up 3-0 early, but Clemson felt momentum shifting its way. Punter Jamie Somaini booted a 74-yard kick to the Seminoles’ 2-yard line and the Tigers dug in for a potential defensive stop.
That’s when Bobby Bowden called one of his patented trick plays: this one was a play-action fake where Weinke turned his back to the line of scrimmage. He then quickly snapped around and hit a streaking Snoop Minnis down the middle of the field. The result was a 98-yard touchdown that sparked a complete route of Clemson.
Bowden was quoted after the game as saying “That’s called a `gym’ play’…that means we don’t work on it outside where someone might see it. We work on it in the gym. It worked, and we had a feeling it would.”
Weinke would later win the Heisman Trophy for his spectacular 34-touchdown season. Minnis had a similarly impressive year with 1,340 yards receiving and 11 touchdowns.
Florida State would go on to appear in the Orange Bowl for the 2000 national championship, where it lost to the Oklahoma Sooners in an ugly 13-2 game. Minnis was suspended for academic reasons and did not play.
Here’s the video of the trick play. As a warning, the sound peaks at a very high level. We suggest turning your speaker volume down very low.
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