Former Bobcat Spergon Wynn remembers his NFL days, treasures his days as quarterback dad
Benjamin Gleisser | February 4, 2021
Spergon Wynn III (B.B.A. ’07) was an All-Star quarterback for the Bobcats and played several seasons in the NFL and the CFL, but his most memorable passes, he says, are those thrown while playing catch with his young sons in the back yard of his Houston home.
“At the end of the day, all the things I’ve done are fine and fancy, but the real important stuff is at home,” he says. “Family is No. 1 to me; everything else is a distant second.”
Let Bruce Springsteen sing about “Glory Days.” Wynn may glance occasionally at the jersey he wore when he played quarterback for the Cleveland Browns – it hangs on the wall of his workout room – but today, he is more concerned with making pleasant memories with his wife, Joslyn, and kids Truitt, 10, and Slaton, 6.
Today, Wynn is the head energy broker at Amerex Energy, a Sugar Land-based company that brokers natural gas and other energy products. He joined the firm in 2013.
Sports and playing professionally had always been an afterthought. He started playing football, basketball, and running track in high school “because I wanted to try a few different things,” he says. His plays caught the attention of recruiters from the University of Minnesota, but two years later transferred to Texas State University before his junior year.
“Minnesota hired a new head football coach, and he wanted to play his own guys, so I followed Coach (Bob) DeBesse to Texas State,” Wynn says. DeBesse (B.S. ’82) played football as a Bobcat from 1976 to 1980.
Wynn was the starting quarterback for the Bobcats during the 1998 and 1999 seasons, where he threw for a total of 3,497 yards (completing 55.1 percent), good for sixth place in the record books. In 1999, he threw for 1,646 yards and 14 touchdowns, and was named to the All-Southland Conference second team.
The Browns picked him in the sixth round (183rd overall) of the 2000 NFL draft because they saw him as a quarterback to develop. Interestingly, Wynn was the sixth of the notorious “Brady 6” – six quarterbacks taken in the draft before Tom Brady went to the New England Patriots as pick number 199.
“I was pretty excited when I got the call from the Browns on draft day,” Wynn remembers. The 2000 season turned out to be disappointing for the Browns, as they lost their first three quarterbacks to injuries. Wynn, the fourth in line, started game 14 against the Jacksonville Jaguars. He completed 5-of-16 passes for 17 yards, was sacked five times — thanks to a virtually helpless offensive line — and left the game with a knee injury.
Traded to the Minnesota Vikings before the next season, he appeared in three games, throwing for a total of 418 yards and one touchdown. He spent the next four years in the Canadian Football League, before retiring in 2006 and returning to Texas State to earn a B.B.A. in marketing.
“I always had that thought in the back of my mind that football was going to be a short part of my life,” he says. “I wanted my life to be pretty well-rounded and decided business would be a good fit for me. Living in Houston, the energy capital of the world, the energy business seemed perfect for me.” In 2011, he earned an M.B.A. in energy risk management and energy finance from the University of Houston.
Putting his professional sports experience to good use, Wynn is cofounding Next Page Sports, a business focusing on marketing and talent representation for college athletes and coaches. He laughs at the part of his Wiki bio that states, “he enjoys amateur competitive eating contests in the Greater Houston Area.”
“I’m a pretty plain man,” he says. “I’ve got no unusual hobbies and I’m not a world-class violinist. I’m about as basic as they come.”
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