Alan Bowman likes magic. No, he really likes magic.
The affection began six years ago in the quarterback's first season at Texas Tech -- and what turned out to be Kliff Kingsbury's last.
"Coach Kingsbury, before every position meeting, has to start with a video," Bowman remembered. "So you have to come up with a cool video to show. It was either a cool music, or a crazy nature, video. I would like the magic videos. I would watch 'American's Got Talent.' That's how it started. Magic."
So when the now-Oklahoma State quarterback flew to Las Vegas last month for Big 12 Media Days, he paused to recall his wonderful life.
"Even to be here is awesome," Bowman said. "Fly on a private jet with Coach [Mike] Gundy and stay at the Bellagio. What are we doing?"
For one, hitting the laptop for David Copperfield tickets.
"But nobody would go with me," Bowman said. "There's this one site, last minute, $100, 10 rows back. I just like magic. I've never been to a magic show."
But his current life is something close to it. Bowman is about to begin his seventh season of college football. Cares are few. Pressure? How bad can it be for an athlete who suffered two collapsed lungs in one season?
The NCAA has dealt him – and those of his kind -- a sort of get-out-eligibility-free card. Bowman is part of sub-classification of hybrid long-haul athletes created by a combination of the transfer portal, one-time transfer rule and COVID-19.
Heading into the season, CBS Sports talked to a handful of those long haulers about their experiences as their eligibility has extended to six, seven -- and in one case -- nine years.
The NCAA says players have five years of eligibility to play four. That all went out the window basically in 2020 when the association awarded an extra year of eligibility for athletes impacted by the pandemic. Injuries, redshirts and newfound freedom in the portal also conspired to make Bowman's college experience -- while not perfect -- something close to ideal at age 25.
"What else would we be doing," Bowman rationalized after talking to fellow seven-year veteran Cam Rising of Utah, "selling insurance?"
One school official contacted for this story took a look at a long-haul player's bio and declared him a "sixth-year, redshirt junior." He was kidding. That extra COVID-19 year of eligibility created the term "super senior." Those featured here are more like super, super seniors.
What was once an anomaly is now almost commonplace. One of the most famous lines from Animal House comes from John Belushi -- as "Bluto" -- reacting to being thrown out of school.
"Seven years of college down the drain," he lamented.
Now you can't get rid of 'em.
They are to be pitied, honored and respected for grinding this long. They almost always have degrees. What else is there to do while in ... school? Bowman has an undergrad in business management from Texas Tech and a master's from Michigan in supply chain. He is pursuing another master's at Oklahoma State.
"If I haven't personally gone through it, I know somebody who has," the quarterback said.
When Rising takes the field for Utah's season opener on Aug. 29, he will have gone 574 days without taking a live snap. The Texas transfer blew out his knee in the 2023 Rose Bowl against Penn State.
"There is a lot of meat left on the bone," Rising said.
Careful with that bone analogy, Cam. Fourteen snaps into the 2020 season, he injured his shoulder. The quarterback says he has gone through four rehabs on various body parts since high school. He took two redshirt years. The knee injury vs. Penn State resulted in an amalgam of tears -- MCL, ACL and MPFL, plus a meniscus.
One of Rising's points of reference is former Oklahoma State quarterback Brandon Weeden, who played until he was 28. Weeden was allowed to return to college football after turning pro as a minor league baseball player. The two have talked. At least Rising is still playing. The average NFL career lasts 2 ½ years. Utah's firestarter quarterback is about to triple that in college.
"It got me out of the 'victim' mindset," Rising said.
Last year, all 85 Utah scholarship players received a Dodge Ram pickup as part of their NIL deals. Rising is such an NIL veteran, having partnered with Toyota, that he has a choice on what kind of free car he wants to drive.
"I'm debating if I want to do that [with Dodge] or go a different direction," Rising said.
Because he can.
Michigan's Jack Tuttle is competing for the starting quarterback job in his seventh season of eligibility. Per 247Sports, the 25-year-old has outlasted these coaches who pursued him as a high school senior in 2017 before he enrolled at Utah in 2018:
- Nick Saban (at Alabama), now retired.
- Mike Riley (at Nebraska), now on the College Football Playoff selection committee.
- Todd Graham (at Arizona State), now a TCU offensive analyst.
- Steve Addazio (at Boston College), now an ESPN college football analyst.
- Mike Leach (at Washington State), who died in December 2022.
"Is this still college football?" Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell asked last fall. "I don't know. I'm not sure it was meant to be six years, seven years."
Try nine years. Cam McCormick's stay in college is among the longest ever ... for anyone. The Miami tight end has been around for eight versions of the iPhone since enrolling at Oregon in 2016. In that span, he has played in 41 career games for four coaches and two teams.
The three-star prospect out of Bend, Oregon, started with the Ducks in the last year of Barack Obama's presidency. Since then …
- 2016: Signed with Oregon and redshirted following a high school knee injury.
- 2017: In January, he was among a handful of Oregon players hospitalized after a strenuous workout. Experts told CBS Sports the strength coach involved wasn't properly certified. That strength coach was eventually fired at South Florida in 2022. That same season, McCormick played in a handful of games as a redshirt freshman, catching six passes, including his first career touchdown.
- 2018: Suffered a season-ending broken leg in Week 1.
- 2019: Missed a second consecutive season due to complications with the leg recovery and further surgeries.
- 2020: Ankle reconstruction surgery, COVID-19 season.
- 2021: Suffered a season-ending Achilles injury in the second game of the season while playing on special teams.
- 2022: Caught 10 passes in 13 games for Oregon.
- 2023: Transferred to Miami, catching eight passes in 13 games (11 starts).
- 2024: At age 26, McCormick is in the tight end two-deep at Miami.
The further we get away from COVID-19, logic would dictate, the closer we get back to traditional eligibility. The rules haven't changed. NCAA still says players have five years to play four.
How those rules are applied and massaged have definitely changed. A lot of these extended careers started with players being redshirted as freshmen. It became easier to redshirt overall in 2018 when the NCAA allowed players to participate in up to four games and still retain that season of eligibility.
Add in the transfer portal that same year and one-time transfer rule in 2021. It was a bad (legal) look during that time that more and more transfer waiver appeals began being turned down by the NCAA. Subsequently, more and more lawyers got involved. The NCAA ultimately saw the futility in restricting player movement.
As part of the new one-time transfer policy, the association essentially rubber-stamped a coach's ability to run off players. The same month COVID-19 hit the U.S. in March 2020, players began receiving that extra year of eligibility.
Quarterback JT Daniels might have been the original super-senior poster boy. The former five-star prospect from Southern California played for four teams in six years. He revealed to CBS Sports earlier this year his story that included the difficulty in transferring credits. That opened the door to a look at how academics have been impacted in the expanded transfer era.
"I'm glad they're giving more power to the players," Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel said.
The Ducks' Heisman Trophy candidate is beginning his sixth season with his third team in his third conference. Over the span of his career, accepting a car evolved from being an NCAA violation to being routine in the NIL era.
Through his NIL deals, Gabriel has donated uniforms to his Hawaii high school, bought chains for his teammates and treated his offensive line to an outing that included pedicures.
"I was a COVID baby and an NIL baby," Gabriel said. "Maybe I'm a conference realignment baby as well. I try to adapt and use things to my advantage."
Oregon State is not the program Jaden Robinson signed up for in 2018. It lost its conference (Pac-12), coach (Jonathan Smith) and loads of prestige. The Beavers will compete for at least the next two seasons as a de facto independent involved in a Mountain West scheduling agreement.
"I was kind of in shock," Robinson told CBS Sports as he watched the Pac-12 break up. "I was like, 'There is no way this is happening right now.'"
Now entering Year 7 of his career, the defensive back from Seattle was already used to change. As a first grader, he and a friend made the bad decision to steal a bag of Cheetos from a convenience store in their Oakland neighborhood. When his mother found out, she moved the family to the Pacific Northwest. He was caretaker for his younger brother growing up. For a time, the family lived in a housing shelter. The Seattle Times named him the male high school athlete of the year as a senior.
Robinson eventually came to Oregon State at age 17 in 2018. He played two games in 2019, seven during the COVID-19-impacted 2020 season, then missed the 2021 season because of shoulder surgery. In his first four seasons, he played in all of 11 games. In the last two seasons, he played in 24. The program was turning around. The 2022 10-win season was the program's third ever.
"Going through this it prepares me for a lot," Robinson said. "I've been depressed. I've gotten hurt. I've seen life through a lens without football."
Now as a redshirt senior (and then some), Robinson wondered out loud recently about pursuing an NIL deal with Cheetos.
Hey, times change.
And sometimes they don't. Bowman continues to wallow in the long haul. He's playing behind one of the most experienced offensive lines in the country. Tailback Ollie Gordon II is a top Heisman candidate. Being a Mike Gundy quarterback is never a bad thing; Bowman is coming off a career season in 2023.
In his seventh year, Bowman hasn't run out of eligibility or ideas. The red-haired native of Grapevine, Texas, is thinking of turning his handlebar mustache into an NIL opportunity.
"And it's friggin' orange," Bowman said. "We're the Cowboys. Why not?"
Yep, matching the facial hair with the school colors. That's magic.