An hour before the 2015 Heisman ceremony was about to begin, Deshaun Watson was pacing in his hotel room, waiting for his suit to arrive.
He had a spare hanging in the closet, a sleek, dark, understated ensemble that, in truth, better suited his demure personality, but he'd found a little place in New York earlier in the week that would custom order a new suit -- "just something a little cool," he said -- and they'd promised it would be delivered in time for the show.
That isn't to say Watson was nervous. As a freshman in high school, the kid started Gainesville High's season opener against the defending state champs and threw three touchdowns. On his first college drive, a game mobbed with family members in the stands against nearby Georgia, he uncorked a bullet to Charone Peake in the end zone that he still considers perhaps the prettiest pass of his career. In last year's national championship game, on the biggest stage of his career against the toughest defense he'd ever faced, Watson threw for 405 yards and four touchdowns and nearly single-handedly rallied Clemson to a national title bid that ultimately fell just short. No, Watson doesn't get nervous.
He is a planner, though, always has been. It's part of what drives him. Watson sets a goal, maps out each step required to attain it and works like a madman until it's in his grasp. He promised his high school coaches a state title, and he delivered, with Gainesville's first in more than a century of football. He set out to win a Heisman too, and the folks back in his hometown pushed him to get here. So the suit, the one he'd special ordered, it mattered. It was all part of the plan.
At last, there was a knock on the door. When Watson emerged for the ceremony, he was decked out in bright red. It was a single-breasted jacket with notched lapels over a black-and-white button-down dress shirt with a gold chain wrapped around his neck. It was pure flash -- or, to most folks in his home state of Georgia, the colors of the Bulldogs, the team 40 miles away that had failed to recruit him until it was too late.
The Clemson contingent in New York was a bit surprised to see the outfit, but they went along with it. When Watson was interviewed for television a little later, the question of his color choice came up immediately.
Watson grinned, then found his high school coach, Bruce Miller, and his mom nearby.
"This," Watson said, "is where it all started."
Back in Gainesville, everyone wears red, black and white. They're the school colors, the palate of the town, and on that stage in New York City, they were a tribute to the place Watson came from and the folks who helped him along the way. He wanted them to know he remembered.
For Watson, there's no story that doesn't start at home, and wherever this season takes him -- back to New York for the Heisman or to Tampa, Florida, for the national championship game -- he's grounded by Gainesville. For each step he has taken along his path -- that state title in 2012 or the Heisman ceremony in December -- Watson has lifted Gainesville up with him.
"He's our hometown hero," said Fred Payne, Watson's closest friend and former high school teammate. "To see him accomplish everything he's accomplished, he gives everyone hope. He's a small-town kid with big dreams, and it's a reminder that nothing can stop you if you have a strong mindset. He reminds you to go for your dreams."
When Watson led Gainesville to the state championship in 2012, grown men who'd played on the team a generation before wept in the stands. It was arguably the defining moment in the city's history, but what Miller remembers is a goal-line play late in the game that had little impact on the final score. The play call was for Watson to run it in. Instead, Watson checked off at the line, handed the ball to a sophomore running back named Michael Byrd and jogged to the sideline.
"What happened?" Miller asked him. "The play was for you."
"Yeah," Watson said, "but I wanted Mike to get a touchdown."
In the aftermath, when a stage was wheeled to the 50-yard line and Gainesville's seniors climbed up the stairs and celebrated the long-awaited championship, Watson stood on the field next to Miller's wife.
"Go up there with them," she said.
But Watson refused. He was a junior. It wasn't his time.
He never wanted center stage in his hometown, but these days, it's hard to avoid. Everyone wants to stop and say hello or grab a photo with him. It's not that they want to badger him -- in fact, most worry he's being asked to do too much -- but surely Watson wants to say hello too.
"The town takes such pride in him because anyone who's met him feels like they're his best friend," said Leslie Frierson, the principal at Centennial Arts Academy in Gainesville and Watson's fourth-grade teacher.
Sam Couvillon is a local insurance agent in Gainesville, and when he meets with clients, most conversations start with talk of Deshaun Watson. He'll flash the selfie he took with Watson, and the client will remember watching one of Watson's games or bumping into him around town. Everyone has his or her Deshaun Watson moment.
There was a day during Watson's senior year at Gainesville, after he'd hurt his knee and was questionable to play, when Couvillon was dropping his daughter off at school, and up ahead, he saw Watson. Couvillon pulled over, rolled down his window and shouted after the star QB: "Hey, Deshaun, how ya doing?" Watson hobbled toward the car, crutches under each arm, and he stopped to chat.
"He doesn't just pass you along and say get out of here," Couvillon said. "He stops and has a conversation. And there's countless people who have those stories about him."
Couvillon won a spot on city council a few years back, and now he hopes to organize a Deshaun Watson Day in Gainesville. It's been a tough job so far, because of both Watson's schedule and the potential for bigger celebrations down the road.
"I was talking to the mayor," Couvillon said, "and wondered, if we had a parade, and then he won the national championship, what would we do then?"
When Watson drops by the gym at Gainesville High to work out, Miller does his best to offer shelter, but the current crop of Red Elephants wants to meet the legend. When Watson runs the hill outside the school -- the same one he ran for four years as a player -- the elementary school kids crowd around in awe, and he cuts his run short and stops to chat.
At Longstreet Cafe, the local greasy spoon diner where folks line up for dinner service at quarter to five, Watson was a regular. Longstreet has two locations -- one a few blocks from the high school, the other a few blocks from the football stadium -- so the team met there routinely. As Watson's star grew, he talked up his favorite restaurant, enough that every so often, Longstreet gets customers from out of town who drop in just to eat where Watson did. When he's home, Watson still stops in to chat with the regulars and pose for photos. On the dining room wall at one location hang a half-dozen pictures of Watson. One of the photos is Watson standing under the diner's marquee, which reads "Hometown hero."
When Watson is on TV, the town is glued to its screens. Miller joked that if you wanted to rob Gainesville blind, do it on a Saturday when Clemson is playing.
"There's a lot more people excited and talking about the season," Watson said of his trips home, "but it's not really any different."
What he means is he doesn't want to be treated any differently. Still, the owners at Longstreet have already printed T-shirts for Deshaun Watson Day, whenever that might happen.
The community at 815 Harrison Square is made up of squat, two-story row homes surrounded by a chicken processing plant and a cemetery. In the middle, there are fields where, fittingly, the playground equipment is painted orange and purple.
This is where Watson's journey began.
"Not only did his mom raise him, but the community raised him as well," said Payne, who was one of Watson's neighbors at Harrison Square. "It shaped him, and he's forever grateful for it. There were obstacles he faced early on, but it made him into the great guy he is today."
By the fourth grade, Watson's family had been moved to the other side of town, courtesy of Habitat for Humanity, but he has never forgotten the community that helped raise him. He has tattoos on his arms -- a championship ring with an "815" inscription on one arm, a stopwatch reading "8:15" on the other -- both mementos to his early years and the folks still living at 815 Harrison Square.
Watson used to play football with the older kids between the buildings in the housing complex, dreaming of making it big. Now 8-year-old Jamauri Ivory does the same -- only he pretends to be Deshaun Watson.
"He talks about Deshaun all the time," Ivory's mother, Neisha Morrison, said. "The kids look up to him. It's a blessing."
This isn't lost on Watson.
If there has been a complaint about Clemson's star quarterback the past two years, it's that Watson is so restrained publicly. He isn't controversial, and he offers few memorable quotes. He regurgitates the mantras of his coaching staff, and he defers all praise to his teammates. The kid is just too darned nice.
All of which made it a bit surprising when, in an interview with Bleacher Report during fall camp, Watson opened up on the issue of race.
"People think, 'Oh, he's a black quarterback. He must be a dual-threat,'" Watson told the website. "People have assumed I have to run the ball before I throw it most of my career. ... It's a stereotype put on me for a long time because I'm an African-American."
The thing is, this wasn't out of character. Ask Watson about an injury or a big game, and he'll give you the cliché. But here in Harrison Square, race and prejudice and the limits those stereotypes place on people matter too much for him to ignore them. His success has given him a platform, and he's going to use it -- not for himself but for the kids still living where he grew up.
"He gave his own opinion about how people see it," said Payne, who grew up alongside Watson in Harrison Square. "He knew that people would give him a title like that because he came from where he came from. But he doesn't want you to limit his potential of what he can do."
No one at Harrison Square tried to limit Watson. They witnessed the talent early and saw the drive he had to be something more.
There are dozens of stories, and Morrison's neighbor, Jaqueline Hendrix, happily retold them one humid August afternoon. Morrison's son was leaning out of a car window, listening intently. Amid all the talk of Watson's success, Morrison interjected.
"This place," she said, "can make you or break you."
It made Watson, and she wants to see her son follow the same path. She doesn't want to see limits put on him because of where he grew up or the color of his skin. That's what Watson means here. That red suit, the tattoos -- it's all about them.
"In the back of his mind, I can see him at every snap, every press conference, everything he does -- he never forgets about God, and he never forgets about us," Hendrix said. "You can see it. He may not say it, but in my heart, I know."
When Watson moved into his new house in fourth grade, Frierson, his teacher at the time, bought him a basketball goal for the driveway. She'd been so taken with the kid, with his drive to succeed, and he was finally in a place where he could safely play outside his house. She wanted to be part of that.
Eleven years later, Frierson keeps a photo of Watson's fourth-grade class on the wall of her office. In it, the future star is standing in the back row, tall and confident. She remembers how Watson struggled with reading that year. She told him to simply attack reading the way he did sports, and the next year, he qualified for the gifted program.
Now, when a problem student is sent marching to her office, she points him or her to Watson's photo.
"I say, 'He was right where you are, dealing with the same things you did,'" Frierson said. "He set his mind on what his goal was. He wanted to be a superstar, and he's doing it."
Watson comes home when he can, but his time is precious these days. Still, he has made pregame speeches to his old football team, and he has given thanks at Sunday mass in his old church. He slides into line for the buffet at Longstreet looking for sweet tea and chicken, knowing his meal will likely be cold by the time he's done snapping pictures with fans.
This is home.
"I never forget where I come from," Watson said. "It means everything."
After Watson wore his red suit for the Heisman ceremony, the city wanted to show him the same love, so the school board organized an "Orange Out" day for Clemson's national championship game against Alabama.
When the city council met that day, everyone wore orange. On the community Facebook page for 815 Harrison Square, Hendrix helped spread the word to wear orange in celebration of Watson's success.
Outside Gainesville High, there's a rock formation -- two oversized humps, like hippos emerging from the water. Students usually scrawl birthday messages on them, but on that day, the rocks were painted bright orange with the message "Deshaun won more ... Beat Bama."
In Frierson's elementary school, the entire student population was decked out in Clemson colors. They met for a pep rally that afternoon.
"He's the only one who could turn this red town orange," Frierson said. "I bleed red and black ... and Deshaun orange."