There is a cinematic symmetry to the College Football Playoff semifinal showdown between Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston. The quarterbacks are the two most recent Heisman Trophy winners, potential top-five NFL draft picks and unquestioned winners from opposite corners of our college football nation, and now they are set to square off over a high-stakes prize amid the picturesque Rose Bowl gloaming before a transfixed audience on New Year's Day.
There's no question who wears the white hat and who wears the black hat. Whether it's dismissed as a trumped-up media trope or painstakingly supported by available evidence, the inescapable perception is Mariota is the good guy and Winston is the bad guy.
Mariota is a humble, soft-spoken shunner of the spotlight. Winston is boisterous and a treasure for TMZ. Mariota likes to hang out with his family. Winston likes to hit Tallahassee's hot spots. Mariota's worst documented off-field transgression was a speeding ticket, though he was driving 80 in a 55 mph zone on his way home from a speech at the local Boys & Girls Club.
Winston? Well, where do we start? BB gun battles that caused thousands of dollars of damage to an apartment complex? A report of his stealing soda from a Burger King? Stolen crab legs? Shouting obscene sexual lyrics from a table at the FSU student union? And then, of course, the accusation of rape for which he was never charged but certainly hasn't been cleared in the court of public opinion, even if he wasn't penalized by an FSU student code of conduct ruling handed out Sunday.
In some ways, there is a trickle-down effect to both teams in terms of perception, as both are steadfastly aligned with their celebrity signal-callers. The Ducks are awash in Mariota's pure Heisman glow, while the Seminoles have become defiant in their backing of Winston and have taken on an us-against-the-world mentality. It seemed like everyone was rooting against Florida State this season, in large part due to Winston's notoriety, and the defending national champions appeared to take particular pleasure in prodding along a now-29-game win streak with a series of fourth-quarter comebacks.
"You can't watch SportsCenter because they're gonna down us and throw us under the bus and say we're nothing," FSU defensive tackle Derrick Mitchell Jr. told ESPN.com's Jared Shanker. "But you got to stay focused and spend your time doing other things."
Instead of being a distraction, instead of turning players against Winston, the negative publicity galvanized the Seminoles with common motivation and purpose. They've seen him smirking at the media storm while the wins piled up, and they lined up behind him, whatever color hat outsiders put on them.
"A lot of the stuff that went on, especially the Jameis stuff, if you're not mentally strong, a coach like Coach [Jimbo] Fisher, if he's not doing what he's doing for us, it can get in your head," Mitchell said. "You can get mentally weakened. I think [Winston] does a great job. When you see a guy like Jameis and it's not fazing him at all and he's still poised and himself, it's easy."
Meanwhile, Mariota's teammates gush about Mariota as a player and person.
"He's the best player I've ever seen," outside linebacker Tony Washington said. "I go against him every day, and every day he does something ridiculous. He's a spectacular player and person."
It shouldn't surprise anyone, however, that there are shades of gray to this hero versus villain setup, particularly with Winston.
Mariota is praised for being a good student and earning second-team Pac-12 all-academic honors. Well, so is Winston, who was admitted to Stanford out of Hueytown (Ala.) High School. Winston was on the ACC academic honor roll the previous two seasons. Mariota is praised for his work with the Boys & Girls Club. Winston also has been involved in community service, and a recent story about his and a handful of other Seminoles' befriending 17-year-old Jayse Simpson, who has a serious heart condition, was apparently discovered without any effort by FSU or Winston to manufacture good publicity.
The majority of Winston's troubles could be written off as the mistakes of an immature, egotistical and enabled athlete, but those incidents are cast in a darker light due to the rape accusation, an ongoing controversy that seems unlikely to be resolved with any clarity. What is clear is Fisher and his players -- the entire FSU program, really -- have chosen to believe and back Winston.
The two most recent Heisman Trophy winners have met three times before, including quarterbacks twice in the BCS era with national titles at stake. After the 2008 season, it was Florida's Tim Tebow versus Oklahoma's Sam Bradford. After the 2004 season, it was Oklahoma's Jason White versus USC's Matt Leinart. But neither of those matchups featured the can't-miss NFL talent of Winston vs. Mariota, a pair of 6-foot-4 athletic specimens who can make all the throws. Nor did they include a provocative protagonist/antagonist narrative that particularly whets our appetites and eclipses any recent matchup of college superstars.
In 2013, Winston led the nation in Total QBR, ESPN's metric for measuring a quarterback's effectiveness. Mariota was second. This fall, Mariota led the nation in Total QBR, with Winston fading to 16th. That said, Winston's efficiency rating against ranked teams of 176.0 is better than Mariota's 163.7. Winston, who has never lost a college game, also is a maestro of the fourth-quarter comeback, which was first showcased in last season's win over Auburn for the national title. Even though his team has been mostly dominant, Mariota, by the way, isn't too shabby in the fourth quarter, either. He has completed 83 percent of his passes in the fourth this season -- a stout 13 yards per attempt -- with six touchdowns and no interceptions, which works out to an extraordinary efficiency rating of 241.4.
"I think a key component to this is that you have two of the greatest of all-time at their positions, and great teams, and guys that the team has 100 percent confidence in whatever they do," Oregon coach Mark Helfrich said.
Although it's unlikely the white hat/back hat conceit thrust upon this game will evolve into something like Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West," with Charles Bronson's a dramatic showdown with Henry Fonda -- Mariota does not, for one, play the harmonica -- you can bet one of the first questions folks will have after reading the final score is how the two QBs stacked up comparatively.