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Where Had He Been Hiding for Four Years? : Fiesta Bowl: Peter Tom Willis set so many records at Florida State, even his coach admits that quarterback should have started sooner.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Considering the accomplishments this season of Peter Tom Willis, Florida State’s record-breaking quarterback, it seems only natural to ask: Why so little of P.T. in his first four years at Tallahassee?

The simple answer is, the Seminoles didn’t need him.

Two seasons ago, with senior Danny McManus at quarterback, the Seminoles were 11-1 and ranked No. 2 at the end of the season. Last season, with senior Chip Ferguson, they were 11-1 and No. 3.

But as Willis rewrote the Florida State record book this season, even Bobby Bowden, the Seminoles’ unflappable coach, was given pause.

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“It makes you wonder if we were playing the right guy the last couple of years,” Bowden said last month.

Eclipsing or equaling 15 school records in his only season as a starter, Willis passed for 3,124 yards and 20 touchdowns, including five in one quarter against Memphis State, while completing 61% of his attempts.

Six times in 11 games, he threw for more than 300 yards, including 482 in little more than a half against Memphis State.

NFL scouts probably wondered, too, why he’d been hidden.

Neither McManus nor Ferguson made it in the NFL, but pro scouts have flocked to the desert this week to watch the Willis, 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds. He will lead the Seminoles (9-2), unbeaten in their last seven bowl games, against Nebraska (10-1) Monday in the Fiesta Bowl.

“More personnel managers have come in to watch us practice than I’ve ever seen before,” Bowden said. “They’re trying to (decide), ‘Is this guy as good as he looks, or was this season a mishap?’ ”

Many think not.

Willis’ emergence has been nothing short of remarkable, said Dick Steinberg, general manager of the New York Jets. Bowden’s clever scheme allows lesser quarterbacks to be successful, Steinberg told the Ft. Lauderdale (Fla.) News, but this season Willis propelled the Seminole attack.

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“This guy can be an NFL quarterback,” Steinberg said. “He has vision, a strong arm and appears to make a lot of the right decisions.”

Willis’ ability opened the eyes of Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne, whose Cornhuskers lost to McManus and the Seminoles two years ago in the Fiesta Bowl, and a year ago lost to UCLA’s Troy Aikman and Miami’s Steve Walsh.

“He reminds me a lot of Walsh,” Osborne said of Willis, who seems to share many of the cerebral qualities that distinguished Walsh, but is said to have a much stronger arm. “He might be more consistent and maybe a little better. He gets a lot of things done on the field.

“Aikman had a reasonably good game against us out at UCLA and apparently had fabulous skills because of where he was drafted, but I didn’t think he was any more impressive than what I’ve seen of Willis.”

Willis, generally regarded as a nice guy who was built to last, has so far resisted telling the world, “I told you so,” but . . .

“I had complete confidence that I could play,” he said. “I’m not going to say that when I came into the season I thought I was going to break all these records, but I felt like I could do what it takes for our offense to score points.

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“This may sound cocky, but I’ve always believed that the cream would rise to the top. I always believed in myself.”

Willis went to Florida State from Morris, Ala., which is only about an hour outside of Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama, and 15 minutes outside Birmingham, where the Tide plays some of its games.

As a kid, Willis sold programs at Birmingham’s Legion Field.

As a senior at Mortimer Jordan High School, he was the state player of the year, passing for more than 2,000 yards and 21 touchdowns.

Alabama, though, showed only marginal interest in Willis, instead signing a pair of quarterbacks from out of state.

“They recruited me, but I got the impression they were stringing me along,” said Willis, who made recruiting trips to Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt and Florida State. “I felt like I was wanted at Florida State and that the offense was suited for me.”

As freshmen in Tallahassee, roommates Willis and Ferguson both expected to redshirt and retain four years of eligibility, but when McManus went down for the season with an injury, Bowden chose to activate the more physically mature Ferguson over Willis, who at the time weighed only 170 pounds.

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It was a decision that set Willis back for four years.

By the time he was ready to challenge Ferguson for the starting job after McManus’ senior year, Willis was at a disadvantage because Ferguson at the time was then headed into his senior year.

Willis moved ahead of Ferguson after the first two weeks of spring practice in 1988, but two weeks later Ferguson was moved back in front by Bowden, who deferred to Ferguson, he said, only because of his seniority.

“That’s something I never understood,” Willis said. “It seems like it’s been an uphill struggle ever since I’ve been here.”

Frustrated but resigned to his fate, Willis spent most of the 1988 season on the bench, used mainly in mop-up duty during Seminole routs, until an injury to Ferguson pressed him into service in a nationally televised game against South Carolina.

In his only start of the season, Willis was nearly perfect against the Gamecocks, leading a 59-0 rout while providing a glimpse of the future. He completed 17 of 20 passes for 271 yards and four touchdowns and, according to reporters who covered the game, threw two passes away and had another dropped, accounting for his only incompletions in an otherwise flawless performance.

“It looked like, all of a sudden, he found himself,” Bowden said. “Those plays he wasn’t making--all of a sudden he was making them.”

Bowden had seen the improvement in practice, but Willis’ performance against South Carolina “erased all doubts,” he said. “He had performed well in practice, but not any better than any of the other quarterbacks--not enough for me to put him ahead of everybody.”

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Said Willis, whose confidence soared after that game: “I had played before, but that was the first time I felt like I helped the team.”

Despite his dismantling of the Gamecocks, Willis returned to the bench the next week when Ferguson returned. Though Bowden might have believed that Willis was the better of the two quarterbacks, he doesn’t allow starters to lose their jobs because of injuries.

“It’s not ironclad,” Bowden said of his policy, “but when you’re winning, you don’t like to change.”

With Ferguson starting, Florida State completed an 11-1 season.

Then, last spring, Willis finally was given the job.

Shoddy play by its defense and special teams caused Florida State to lose to Southern Mississippi and Clemson to open this season, taking the Seminoles out of the race for the national championship. Since then, they have won nine consecutive games, including a 24-10 decision over Miami.

Willis passed for only 145 yards in a 22-14 victory over Auburn, but Tiger Coach Pat Dye said afterward: “We’ve played against Boomer Esiason, Wayne Peace and that (Don) McPherson kid at Syracuse. This kid (Willis) has the best arm and is the most accurate. He’s the best quarterback an Auburn team has faced since I’ve been the coach here.”

Willis closed the season by throwing for 1,163 yards and 12 touchdowns in the Seminoles’ last three games.

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His teammates weren’t surprised.

Said Terry Anthony, who makes up one-fourth of the Seminoles’ highly regarded Fab Four receiving corps: “Ever since Danny McManus left, (Willis) should have been the quarterback.

“If he had started last year, the Fab Four nickname never would have come about because we wouldn’t have had to make any great catches.”

While appreciative of the kind words, Willis won’t second-guess Bowden, other than to say that he was ready to play before this season.

“It’s a great offense, a pro-style offense, and we have a lot of great players at Florida State,” he said, attempting to explain his success. “It makes it a little bit easier on the quarterback.

“But then again, it’s pretty sophisticated and there’s a lot of reading to do. So, maybe it does take the guy who’s playing the quarterback position a little longer to get ready to play.”

Willis, Bowden said, condensed a career into one season.

“Instead of being pretty good for four years,” Bowden said, “he just decided to be great for one year.”

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