Consider it Joy
Gardner Minshew and Tom Hager
In Partnership with Athletes For God
There's literally no place I'd rather be.
That was the exact thought going through my head last October. Our team was facing # 12 Oregon, and if I couldn't tell it was a big game by the sell-out crowd and a national television audience, I could tell when ESPN GameDay showed up on our campus. Everybody was there...from my mom, my dad, my sisters, to my high school coaches.
Nobody wanted to miss this game. I'm just glad our team gave everybody something to cheer about. We pulled out a 34-20 victory that night, and the last seconds had barely ticked by when 30,000 people rushed down to the field to celebrate with us.
But before we actually left Martin Stadium, I took a moment to soak it all in.
This is exactly where I'm supposed to be right now.
It remains one of the happiest moments of my career. But as I told some of the guys on our team later on, the same guy that was carried off the field that night was the same guy who was getting booed off the field at East Carolina.
My name is Gardner Minshew and I played quarterback last year at Washington State University. Only a few people in Pullman knew that name a year ago, but it's amazing what can happen when you surrender to God's plan.
It was just about a year ago - the day before last year's NFL Draft - when I logged on to my Twitter account and posted this...
I'm spending my time training for the draft these days, but if you would have looked at that tweet a year ago, you might have thought I was crazy. The only people who believed in my dream were probably my friends and family.
And maybe Mike Leach.
When I got the phone call from Mike Leach, I hardly resembled an NFL pick. I had lost more games than I had won at ECU, and had struggled to the point where I lost my position as the starting quarterback. But sometimes in life, whether it was with my tweet or with Mike's phone call, you need to take a chance.
Even though I always believed I could play at a high level, there was only one way to find out.
Back when I was still in Greenville, I posted Teddy Roosevelt's "Man In The Arena" speech on my Instagram page. The speech is profound, because the theme focuses on how it’s not about whether you win or lose, it's that you give it a shot. And when I graduated from ECU and decided to try and play one last season as a grad transfer, that was exactly what I was doing too.
I had considered playing at Alabama to compete for the starting job with Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts, but when I saw a phone called coming from Pullman's 509 area code, I thought this might be my chance.
I had been watching Mike Leach's teams since I was a kid, and I had always wondered what it would be like to play under his Air Raid offense. I got to East Carolina just after Ruffin McNeill and Lincoln Riley (two of Mike's former assistants) had just left, so I never got to play in that system in Greenville.
But when Coach Leach suddenly called, I finally had that opportunity. And for those who don't know about the system, Washington State passes the ball. A lot. It was a detail that Mike made sure I didn't miss.
"Would you like to lead the country in passing?"
It took me all of about ten seconds before I decided to commit to Washington State. I was going to become a Cougar.
I never really tried to guess what God's plan for me was, or even if I was playing for the right school. I just thought wherever He puts me, I'm just going to do the best I can. I believe that He blesses the effort I put in, and if I got an opportunity, I would make the most of it.
The key word there, however, was opportunity. For several years, that was the one thing schools wouldn't provide.
When I graduated from Brandon High School near Jackson, Mississippi, I had no Division 1 offers. Zero. I was able to land a spot on the Troy football team, which is a D1 team in the Sun Belt Conference, but that wasn't on a football scholarship. It also wasn't the greatest of situations for me, because they had an established starter in Brandon Silvers. The year before I got there he broke the all-time NCAA record for completion percentage as a freshman, and since I was only a year behind him, it looked like I would have to wait three years to play.
So I put my transfer papers out there to see if there would be any takes, and nobody was willing to take a chance on me. So with few options left I decided to head over to Northwest Mississippi Community College. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made.
The facilities maybe weren't as big as D1 schools, and we weren't playing on national television, but I had a great time while I was there. I made some incredible friends on the team, and we were also winning. We made it to the National Championship Game, where we would face an undefeated Rochester team.
The thing was, our teammates believed in each other, and we played like it. The game wasn't even close...we won 66-13, and since the game was played in Mississippi, we got to celebrate in front of our fans. To this day it still remains one of my proudest moments as a football player, and the championship ring is resting on my bed back home in Brandon.
After the season ended I transferred to East Carolina so I could play at the D1 level, and I hoped to pick up right where I left off. As it turned out, I won more games in one season in community college than I did in two years at ECU. We went 3-9 my first year and followed it up with another 3-9 season, and at that point my career seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
It was around that time one of my old high school principals sent me the verse Galatians 6:9, which says "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."
Getting that verse at that time was just a Godsend, and the timing could not have been any better. I was feeling down on myself, and to see that, it was just a reminder to keep plugging and keep doing what you're supposed to do, because at the right time God is going to reward your work.
I just had no idea that the turnaround would happen in such a big way.
As excited as I was to head out to Pullman, I understand the context of why there was an opening at the quarterback position.
In January of 2018, Tyler Hilinski - the starting quarterback at WSU - passed away. It shocked everybody across the college football landscape, but I could only imagine the emotions of what it must have been like for the WSU players and the Pullman community.
It really wasn't until I arrived on campus that I understood the weight of what had happened. I knew I couldn't replace Tyler - nobody could - so I decided to just be as respectful of the situation as I could. I stayed quiet at first, and just tried to focus on my lifting and winning the conditioning sprints. But as the days started to turn into weeks, I knew it was time.
I went up to Peyton Pelluer, who was a sixth-year player and team captain on the defense, and asked if I could say something to the team. He didn't just give me the green light...he thought it was necessary.
"Hey, you've got to."
I started to slowly become more comfortable with a leadership role after that day, and by the time fall camp had arrived, I felt comfortable to push my teammates to be great. When it came time for us to state our goals for the season, everybody said they wanted to win the Pac-12.
Except for me.
I said I wanted to go undefeated. I don’t want to let good enough get in the way of greatness, so why not shoot for an undefeated season?
That dream came to an end in Week 4 when we lost to 39-36 to USC at the Coliseum. We had a chance to tie the game in the closing minutes when our kicker Blake Mazza missed a field goal, but we didn't let that divide us. We never made a big deal about it, and just said something like "you're good bro, just get the next one." And sure enough, when it came time for Blake to pull us through, he nailed the kick.
That was the way it was with our whole team...as soon as anybody made a mistake, we just knew they would get it the next time. So when we trailed Stanford 28-14 late in the first half, we never panicked. To doubt yourself is to doubt the abilities God gave you...and He gave me the abilities for a reason.
We tied the game early in the fourth quarter and actually pulled ahead 38-31 when I found my teammate Renard Bell in the end zone with just 4:28 to play. Stanford drove down the field to tie the game at 38-38, but they made one big mistake...they gave Coach Leach 1:25 to work with.
We drove down the field and got to the 25-yard line where Blake came in with just 23 seconds to go. And just like we all knew he would, he drilled it.
The whole season was like that. We never panicked when Oregon scored 20 straight points on us, and we never let our loss in the Apple Cup to UW define our season. We picked ourselves right back up and beat Iowa State 28-26 in the Alamo Bowl for an 11-win season - the first in Washington State history.
Now I’ve turned my focus to the NFL Draft. I know that a lot of money is riding on how my draft stock rises or falls, but I'm not even concerned with what's about to happen. God's taken me too far to ever doubt that He's looking out for me. My motto these days is "too blessed to be stressed" and I'm just enjoying every step of this journey.
The crazy thing to think about is that it was the hardest times of the journey that made me who I am today. Those struggles taught me to find joy in my sufferings, because as Romans 5: 3-5 says, suffering produces perseverance, perseverance builds character, and through character comes hope.
When I was in high school I was the 165th ranked quarterback in my class, and these days I'm realizing that dreams really do come true.