It can be difficult to identify just when an epoch concludes, but a handy date for the end of FSU’s historic run is Septemas the Seminoles walked off the field in Chapel Hill, NC, in stunned shame. And for 14 consecutive years, Florida State had finished the year ranked in the top five, a once-in-forever achievement never before and not since by anyone. By the end of 2000 there had been nine Atlantic Coast Conference Championships, one each for every year the ‘Noles had been in the ACC. For the three years of 1998, 1999, and 2000, the Florida State Seminoles had played in the national championship game, winning it all in 1999, a perfect season, 12-0, and FSU was ranked #1 from the first game to the last. As Florida State has recently completed a far more successful 2013 season with another redshirt freshman taking snaps, perhaps it is time to reconsider the tempestuous college career of Chris Rix. But in 2001 FSU football was about to head south and a 19-year-old kid was going to shoulder much of the blame. Bobby Bowden had been the head coach at FSU since 1976 and had never named a freshman quarterback he had never had the need.
According to some reports Weinke had not been especially helpful to the younger QBs on the team, but that really didn’t matter because no freshman was going to be starting. He was a freshman who burned his redshirt during Chris Wienke’s senior season, a Heisman-winning campaign that ended with a loss to Oklahoma in the national championship game. In 2001 Chris Rix was the quarterback for the Florida State Seminoles. After any article on Florida State football the anonymous comments section-the hairy anus of the internet-came streams of invective laced with expletives and unburdened by common decency, directed at a man who for much of his time as starting quarterback could not legally purchase alcohol. The t-shirt was clever if mean-spirited, but almost genteel compared to what followed news articles on-line. X is vulgar, the rating on pornography, but also marks the spot, is a crossroads and an indicator of mystery as in X-files or X-factor, or even the unknown: solve for X. R-I-C-K-S would not have had the same punch. That, of course, was the point, to make Christopher Charles Rix’s name a four-letter word. Accidents, acts of God, and yes, shit, happen. The verb to happen implies a lack of intention, the randomness of an event. The "Rix Happens" t-shirts were a succinct expression of fan discontent. A story from the fan post section that we should have promoted to the front page a while ago.