QB Mike Winchell Today

Saw this article in a newspaper:

He sits in a booth at the back of a Dairy Queen, wearing a clean white shirt and black baseball cap, working a day-old beard.

His hair is graying slightly, there's a little more weight on his 6-foot frame and golf is his sport of choice.
But he's still Mike Winchell.

Quarterback of the legendary 1988 Odessa Permian football team that has been immortalized by the book and movie Friday Night Lights, Winchell, 34, doesn't receive much attention anymore. He hasn't thrown a football in months. And he's worked for a surveying firm in Decatur for about six years.

But he's still the guy former teammate Don Billingsley called reserved and quiet. He remains humble about his football accomplishments. And he continues to have a "nervous energy about him," said Brian Chavez, another former teammate.
"Same Mike as always," said Pat Winchell, his mother.

The man may have stayed the same, but the environment is different.

Winchell moved to Decatur eight years ago, trying to escape the place he still calls home, to be with his three sisters and mother. Winchell has never married – "I'm unmarriable," he said, laughing. Everyone in Decatur knows who he is, though.
"They treat me like one of the regulars here," he said.

He plays a lot of golf in his spare time – he's got a 5 or 6 handicap – and stops by his mother's house every night for dinner. Football simply isn't a part of his life anymore.

"Hell, I don't know, that's just the way it ended up, and here I am," he says with a thick West Texas accent. "I would've never dreamed it would've ended up like this."

After passing for nearly 2,000 yards and 24 touchdowns in that memorable 1988 season, which ended with a loss to Carter in a state semifinal game, Winchell seemed like a college prospect. But he didn't receive any scholarship offers, so he walked on at Baylor, where he quickly realized he was never going to play. Sick of football, he left a year later.
"Kind of just solidified what I thought," Winchell said. "My heart wasn't in it."

Winchell said he knew his career was over after the Carter game, which Permian lost, 14-9. He tried to play in college because "people wanted me to. They didn't want me to have any regrets.

"I'd had enough," he said. "I don't have any regrets."

When asked about his best memory, Winchell pinballed around the subject, talking about the grueling practices, playing with 160-pound offensive linemen and his awe of the training staff.

"It's nothing you want to go back and do," he said of Permian's excruciating practices. "But you'll always bleed a little black and white after you've been through that program."

The screen version of Friday Night Lights, released last fall, stirred up bad memories for Winchell, who called the movie "accurate in spirit."

"Certain parts in there kind of just hit you a little where you don't want to get hit," said Winchell, who was whisked around the country as part of a promotional tour last summer. "It's just when you're in it, you're like, 'Oh God, here it comes.' "
Winchell graduated from Tarleton State in 1995 with a degree in marketing. Since college, he's been a car salesman, a waiter and a surveyor – but never a football player.

"Mike's always been his own man," said Gary Gaines, Winchell's coach at Permian. "Mike could do anything he wanted to do, and Mike does what makes him happy."

So what's in store for Winchell, 34 years old but seemingly decades removed from his football glory days?

"I don't make no plans no more," Winchell said, sitting up in the Dairy Queen booth. "Just whatever comes tomorrow, I guess."

Delayed follow through on golf club promise

Although Mike Winchell didn't help with production of Friday Night Lights, he gave numerous media interviews at the request of Universal Pictures, the movie's production company. Winchell said Universal Pictures agreed to give him a new set of golf clubs for his time.

So he waited for the clubs to arrive. And he waited. And he waited some more.
For 15 months.

"They kept telling me, 'Oh, we've ordered 'em,' " Winchell said. "And when they wanted me to do something, 'Oh, well, here's a few of them, we want you to take a day off of work and do these radio interviews,' and, 'Oh yeah, here's some of your clubs.'

"They took a while to get here."

Winchell was upset, but he finally received his full set in late May after more than a year of discussions with the movie company.

"I don't mind being called stupid, but you do it enough times and it's eventually going to make you mad," Winchell said.
Universal Pictures officials did not return calls seeking comment.

"You realize this is a business and 'Oh, we don't need you anymore, so you get it when you get it,' " Winchell said.
Winchell, who said he didn't mind the media requests, assured he was not angry at the movie company.
And the golf clubs?

"I haven't hit them yet," Winchell said, a big smile creeping across his face. "They made me mad, I might throw 'em. That's a touchy subject."