By Homer Jacobs A Wise Decision After transferring from Colorado, Jeremy Weisinger ends up where he ahould have been all along

Jeremy Weisinger walked into Cain Hall and confidently greeted a group of reporters gathered for R.C. Slocum’s weekly press conference.

"Hi, I’m Jeremy Weisinger," he said, "I’m here to interview with someone...."

It was almost a classic Cadet whip-out, minus the breakdown of his major and hometown. Still, there was the transfer from Colorado clad in the standard white A&M baseball cap, with a closely-cropped haircut and enough "yessirs" to make me wish I was, well, not old enough to be sir-worthy.

He had been on the Texas A&M campus just two weeks, but he seemed like he had been born to jingle the senior spurs or stand alone on Bonfire’s fifth stack since he was a kid.

In essence, that was the case. Weisinger grew up following the Aggies, as friends and relatives before him walked the big campus.

But as Weisinger, a former All-State quarterback from Uvalde, began the recruiting process four years ago, he was caught up in the rampage of the Buffalo, the golden years promised by CU golden boy Rick Neuheisel.

His decision to play college ball came down to Colorado and A&M, and although he loved the Aggies, he felt his quarterback career would best be suited for the pass-happy offense in Boulder

"I liked everything about A&M," Weisinger said. "But I was a quarterback out of high school, and I just like Neuheisel’s offense a lot. I wanted to go up there and try something new and try out that offense. I guess a big influence with me was Koy Detmer. He was from Mission and was up there playing in that offense, and Koy seemed to enjoy it."

So did Weisinger. For a while.

Even as he apparently was in the lead for the starting quarterback job this fall, Weisinger yearned for the scrub brush of South Texas, not the Flat Irons of the front range. As Slocum refers to it down here, Weisinger had that "Highway 6 look" in his eye.

Whatever route Weisinger decided to take, it made a beeline to College Station. After Neuheisel handed junior college transfer Mike Moschetti the starting job during in two-a-days, Weisinger decided there was more to life than football in Colorado.

"It got to the point where I didn’t like living up there," he said. "I’m from South Texas, so moving out there to Boulder was a pretty different place. Obviously, I missed Texas quite a bit. I missed the people down here. Colorado, all that happened up there, it’s water under the bridge for me."

Indeed, Weisinger refused to talk about his relationship with Neuheisel and all that transpired during the summer. He now is focused on making the most of his junior year (which he must sit out) at A&M and one final season on the football field next fall as a senior.

Weisinger is not your typical quarterback if you go by the standard heights, weights and 40-yard dash times. In fact, Weisinger ran a 4.27 hand-held time in the 40 for NFL scouts as a freshman. Even after gaining 20 pounds and breaking his leg last season, Weisinger blistered the track with a 4.36 in the 40 last spring.

And with a 215-pound frame, A&M coaches have decided to make Weisinger a strong safety for the moment. Weisinger hasn’t played the position since his sophomore year in high school, but he doesn’t really care. He’s at home, back home.

"I knew that A&M was where I wanted to come," Weisinger said. "Now that I’m here, I’m very, very glad that I did it. I wish I had done it three years ago, but better late than never. I wish I had 10 more years of eligibility, but I’ve got one right now, and I’m just going to try to make the most of it."

While each case is different, Weisinger’s transfer represents what Slocum has known for a quarter of a century: Home is where the heart is.

Of course, Slocum recruits the state of Texas and would like to see the state’s best players stay here. But Slocum is an uncanny evaluator of the human condition, as well. If he wasn’t a football coach, he would probably be collecting his tenured retirement check from the A&M psychology department about now.

He has seen players like former free safety Patrick Bates languish in Los Angeles before returning home to Texas, where his family and friends could see him play every weekend. He remembers former offensive lineman Jason Matthews greeting his parents at A&M after games, not talking about BYU via AT&T.

"When you go so far away, then it’s difficult for those people to be involved," Slocum said. "If you come to A&M from Houston, you make it through the week, and then your folks are up here. It’s a gradual weaning process. It doesn’t have to happen immediately. You could go off and you’re in South Bend or Ann Arbor and you say, ‘Well, maybe they can come up here for one day or whatever, or maybe not at all and I’ll just see them at Christmas."

Slocum and the A&M program still recruit out-of-state athletes, but the coaches often look for family or other ties to the state of Texas to help ensure a player will be happy at his new home far away from home.

Slocum always stressed family when he recruits. He recalls how his mother and father used to show up for his game days at McNeese State. They were familiar faces in unfamiliar surroundings.

"My mother would usually bring some cookies and a five dollar bill or something," he said. "It made your whole world feel good again."

College football freshmen, especially those headed for a redshirt year, often experience the "Highway 6 look" more than upperclassmen, as is the case with the general student population.

Dat Nguyen had the look four years ago, and redshirt freshman Christian Rodriguez was rumored to have been close to the blink as well.

Slocum has seen the longing look for years, and so Weisinger’s transfer came as little surprise to the veteran coach.

"Jeremy, we recruited him hard out of high school," Slocum said. "I thought the kid fit in here. We’ve got thousands of kids here just like him, who grew up with the same kind of background."

However, in Colorado, Weisinger was one of the outsiders from Texas. In fact, he said fellow Texans on the roster like receiver Cedric Cormier or center Andre Gurode cliqued together, fending off any good-natured ribbing about which state produced the best football talent.

But the cliques were the problem at CU, Weisinger said, not the athletic ability of any of the Texas kids.

"Guys here are a lot more friendly," he added. "Everybody here is pretty open, pretty cool and can say what they want. They’re a lot more personable.

"And A&M can win with in-state guys. I know we can because I’ve seen everybody up there. We had guys from Florida, California, Washington and Michigan. This team here is not any different athletically. They’re maybe better than anybody up there."

And, with the exception of the typical melancholy redshirts, the Aggie roster is full of well-adjusted former high school stars now trying to shape their college careers in front of the home folks.

"I think the deck is stacked when a kid goes out of state," Slocum said. "When you leave that first time, there’s something involved with that.

"A lot of times you’re redshirted, you have all these things going on, and you’re around guys with totally different backgrounds from totally different towns. They don’t have any idea where you went to high school or who you are. (A player) is going through some major growing up in a hurry, and now he’s away from all the stability and support he’s ever had in his life. That’s why a lot of them end up not being successful."

Weisinger would rather acknowledge that he gave Colorado a try, and things just didn’t work out as expected.

"If you think the grass is greener in Colorado, go try," he says. "It could be for some people. Some people up there love it. But I like to hunt whitetail in South Texas. I like to go bass fishing. I like being around friendly people. Those are the things that are important to me other than football."

As Weisinger watched his first A&M practice just before the Florida State game, the seniors in the Corps of Cadets filed around the field for a boot-shined yell practice. Weisinger shook hands with some of the seniors, reminiscing with some about his days as a high school quarterback in Uvalde.

Then he locked arms for the "Aggie War Hymn," and the only the look he had was that of a Fish back in the water.

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