By his own admission, Luc Bequette was the “butt end of all the old-guy jokes” from his teammates at California last season. Unsurprisingly the 24-year-old defensive lineman received countless new nicknames along these same punchlines too. “Some were pretty creative, like the Professor, or Ph.D.,” Bequette says. As for others? “The freshmen called me Grandpa. But I always had to remind them that if a senior is a grandpa, and a fifth-year senior is a great-grandpa, and sixth is a great-great, then I’m really more like their great-great-great grandpa.”
Kids these days, got no respect.
As a seventh-year senior, Bequette represents an unprecedentedly geriatric generation that returned for one last hurrah in 2021, Van Wilder–style, when the NCAA decided not to count the 2020 season against anyone’s eligibility due to the pandemic. Including Bequette, at least 17 of these great-great-great grandpas were harrumphing through FBS locker rooms in 2021, according to Sports Illustrated’s tally, compared to what The Athletic reported as “only a handful previously in college football history.” And that doesn’t include plenty more FCS geezers like Eastern Washington offensive lineman Tristen Taylor, whose claim to graybeard fame is that he spent not one but two seasons on the same EWU roster as Cooper Kupp.
