Mason Fine’s dream was to be a high school quarterback. The problem? He couldn’t throw a spiral. 

Fine grew up in Peggs, Okla., a small town with a population around 600 which was roughly an hour east of Tulsa. He gravitated towards basketball and baseball in elementary school, starring as a pitcher and shortstop on the diamond and as a combo guard on the hardwood. 

Fine’s passions changed in fourth grade when he wandered back into the house on a random Saturday in the fall after shooting some hoops and driving his 4-wheeler. He sat down and started watching the Oklahoma Sooners football game while he was taking a break. That break turned into an hour. And then longer. The kid who hadn’t paid much attention to the sport was captivated by a young running back in Norman. 

“That young running back’s name was Adrian Peterson,” Fine recalled. “I turned to my dad and said, ‘I think I want to try football.’” 

Peggs was too small for an organized Pop Warner or little league football organization so Fine traveled 25 miles south to Tahlequah for a combine heading into fourth grade. His baseball experience made him a natural thrower of the football, even if it always came out wobbly. He ran some drills and threw the ball around with the other new kids joining the league and was eventually drafted by a team called the Jets. 

Fine was excited about the new journey but his inexperience with football became apparent when he showed up to the first practice with his helmet in one hand, his shoulder pads in the other, and pants with pads in all the wrong places. His coach helped him out, fixing his pants and teaching him how to use his helmet to carry his shoulder pads in the same hand. 

Fine was hooked. As his passion for football grew, his love of baseball faded. By the summer after sixth grade, Fine abandoned baseball for good and was in his dad’s ear about passing camps that could help Fine figure out how to throw a spiral. 

“I liked having the ball in my hands every play and throwing the ball around,” Fine said. “For a little league team, we threw the ball around quite a lot. From there, it took off. I caught the football bug after my first year playing and it was crazy because by that next summer, I just didn’t love baseball anymore. I thought it was slow and boring compared to football.”

Fine attended a few local high school camps in the summer of the sixth grade but it was the Oklahoma mega camp that proved a turning point in his development. He spent three days listening to Josh Heupel and on the two-and-a-half-hour car ride home from Norman, he wrote down everything he could remember on a sheet of paper. His dad, Dale, added some notes from what he had heard on the side. Fine printed that paper out when he got home and put it next to his bed, where he’d read it every night before falling asleep. 

Dale, who had never played a down of football in his life, did what great dads do – support their son’s dreams. He came home every night from his job with the Marshal’s Office for the Cherokee Nation and threw the ball with his son in the front yard for 30 to 60 minutes. 

And for two years, Fine couldn’t throw a spiral despite hundreds of hours in the front yard with his pops. That changed on one random summer night heading into eighth grade. 

“I felt something come out of my fingerprints, and it was a spiral,” Fine said. “From that one night, I could just pick up a ball, flick it, and 90 percent of the time it would be a spiral. Maybe not a perfect spiral every time, but a spiral. Before then, it was ducks.” 

Fine never looked back. Peggs didn’t have a high school so he attended Locust Grove, which is about 10 miles north and began his prep career in 2012 for newly hired head coach Matt Hennessy. Fine played some wide receiver as a freshman, though Hennessy found some creative ways to use his young pupil’s arm. 

Fine became the starting quarterback as a sophomore and ended his high school career as the all-time leading passer in Oklahoma history and the first player to win the state’s Gatorade Player of the Year award twice. 

Yet, no FBS offers followed those accolades. Fine’s lack of size kept the colleges from calling. That is until Seth Littrell, an Oklahoma native himself, arrived at North Texas. He knew Fine’s head coach and ran a similar Air Raid offense to that of Locust Grove and decided to take a chance on Fine. 

Fine says his freshman year with the Mean Green was filled with ups and downs. He started nine games as a true freshman, throwing for 1,572 yards and six touchdowns to five interceptions in 2016. The game was too fast and Fine was struggling to keep up despite the extra time he spent watching film, in the training room, and on the practice field. 

But the years he spent learning how to throw a spiral had taught him a valuable lesson. He knew a breakthrough was on the other side of the work, so he kept at it. And on day three of fall camp heading into his sophomore season, the game slowed down. He could see the safeties rotate and read the cornerbacks' leverage. He could spot the apex of the outside backer and predict with near certainty if the defense was about to blitz. 

“I remember sitting on a bench after practice drinking a smoothie after dinner and looking out of the practice field and smiling,” Fine said. “Up to that point, it was such a grind and I was just trying to survive. But then it clicked.”

Fine arrived at North Texas as an undersized underdog. He left as the program’s all-time best quarterback. He led the Mean Green to back-to-back nine-win seasons as a sophomore and a junior and left Denton, America as the program’s all-time leader in passing yards (12,505) and passing touchdowns (93).

But the NFL scouts ignored the production at North Texas for the same reason that college recruiters ignored it at Locust Grove. Fine was small. He was 5-foot-10 and under 200 pounds and even massage therapists couldn’t help his hands reach nine inches. 

A strong performance at the East-West Shrine Game wasn’t enough to earn an NFL Combine invite, so Fine began preparing for a pivotal Pro Day at North Texas. He trained at North Texas and was in the best shape of his life, clocking 6.9-second L-Drills and a 3.9 5-10-5 shuttle. 

Fine traveled to San Diego to work out with Drew Brees and to develop a script for the upcoming Pro Day and was ready to do what he does best – prove the doubters wrong. He always believed in controlling the controllables and blocking the rest of the noise out, and that strategy had worked in high school and college.  

But something far beyond his control arrived when he flew back to Texas. 

“I land back in Dallas from San Diego, and boom, that is when COVID hits,” Fine said. “Pro Day is cancelled.”

Fine was forced to interview with prospective NFL teams through Zoom, something he knew would hurt his draft stock because teams needed to see him throw and move in person to overcome fears about his size. His name was never called in the 2020 NFL Draft, so he stayed ready for any opportunity.

That opportunity came in August when the Chicago Bears invited him to a tryout. He arrived in the Windy City by plane and was immediately whisked away to a hotel room by the Bears staff and quarantined for three days. He couldn’t leave the hotel other than for daily COVID tests. He tried to stay active in his hotel room by taking drops and throwing a football into a pillow on the couch. He was even doing two-yard sprints inside the room. All of his meals were delivered to his room. 

On his fourth day in Chicago, Fine finally got his opportunity to throw in front of NFL personnel. It didn’t go as planned. 

“I just didn’t have a good day when I finally got the chance to throw live for an NFL team,” he said. “That was the last time I heard from an NFL team.”

Fine did hear from the Canadian Football League and signed a three-year contract with the Saskatchewan Roughriders late in 2020. He spent most of the first season on the practice roster and didn’t make his first CFL start until 2022. Fine started four games in the 2023 season after Trevor Harris suffered an injury and was starting to turn the corner before a hamstring injury cost him four games and the starting job. 

Fine signed a new two-year contract early in 2024 but was eventually cut in the summer and offered a spot on a few practice squads. He decided to walk away instead. Back at home, he started to ponder what was next. He made great connections at North Texas and could’ve chosen a lucrative path in the private sector, but he couldn’t give up football, even if he knew his playing days were over. 

“I knew I wanted to be around football and coaching seemed like the logical next step for me,” Fine said. “I couldn’t see myself going down another career path and being happy. Maybe my heart wasn’t 100 percent into playing and being a practice squad guy, but I still love the game, I enjoy it, and I decided to get into coaching.” 

Fine is now heading into his third year as a full-time coach. He was the offensive coordinator at Salina High School in 2024 and the OC and QB coach at Muskogee High School in 2025. This offseason, he took a job as the OC and QB coach at Bartlesville High School, roughly 90 minutes from Peggs. He’s now working for his old high school coach. 

It is a full-circle moment for Fine. His path to football glory started by throwing the ball around in small-town Oklahoma. That’s led him right back to Oklahoma, where he’ll still get out there and remind the new generation of quarterbacks that he can still throw a spiral. After all, he worked too hard for too long to completely put those lessons in the rear-view mirror. 

“I still got it,” Fine said of throwing the pigskin around at practice. “The arm is almost 30, but it is still going good. I might not be able to throw as many reps as I used to, but those first 50 reps are still locked in.”