The coaches who said there will never be another Bobby Bowden knew exactly what they were talking about.
None of them can imagine still working at 80, let alone for more than three decades in one place. Except for Bowden pal and fellow octogenarian Joe Paterno at Penn State, that kind of job security no longer exists. In this day of revolving-door athletic departments, few can spare the time just to dream about piling up more than 300 wins in one place, or being in the hunt for a national title 14 years running. Mostly because they’re running scared.
“If you spend 34 years at the same place,” said South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, a frequent Bowden rival when he was at Florida, “you’re doing something right.”
For all that, we’ve known for a few years now that Bowden’s tenure at Florida State was going to end unhappily. He was more CEO than coach the last few seasons. He went from being called “eccentric” to “out of touch” as the losses accumulated and the difference-making prep stars in Florida continued bypassing Tallahassee for Gainesville.
n the job past his expiration date, you have to remember two things. The first is simply because he could, because Bowden’s football program did more to raise Florida State’s profile than anything that was going on in it’s classrooms or labs, and that buys a lot of loyalty.
The second is that Bowden was already 47 when he took over the Seminoles and 64 before he won the first of his two national championships. He didn’t preach patience as just a virtue, but as a way of life. What he didn’t count on was outlasting most of his biggest boosters.
“Nothing lasts forever, does it?” Bowden said during a video interview conducted by school officials. “But I’ve had some wonderful years here at Florida State, you know it. Hadn’t done as good lately as I wish I could have, but I’ve had wonderful years, no regrets.”
Throughout the taping, he couldn’t have looked more relaxed. At another moment, though, Bowden concedes, “The first championship was more of a relief,” but to those who remembered it, a “lifeline” was closer to the truth. It came on New Year’s Day, 1994, against Nebraska in an Orange Bowl game that seemed to end not once, but twice.
5 yards out and Florida State won 18-16.
“So,” Bowden recalled at the time, “I got to celebrate twice.”
It seemed like small compensation at that moment, considering how many times errant kicks by his own guys in big games lost him shots at the national championship; and how, at the start of the 1980s, Bowden set out to make Florida State a national powerhouse by scheduling the best teams in the land – at their places.
A memorable stretch of consecutive road games at Nebraska, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and LSU ended with the Seminoles winning three of the five and Bowden being nicknamed “King of the Road.”
No coach, at least none with an established program, would even consider that kind of itinerary today. Pete Carroll at Southern California comes closest and he might also have the best perspective on what a remarkable job Bowden did building a program nearly from scratch.
When Carroll arrived at USC in December 2000, “Florida State was everything in college football,” he recalled Tuesday. “They kind of gave us the example of what you shoot for over the long term.”
Dominating as the Trojans have been for most of the decade though, Carroll’s slide into the Pac-10 conference pack this season means the Trojans’ string of consecutive top-five seasons will end at seven – half of what Bowden’s teams accomplished from 1987-2000.
asons since at Florida State, 34 in all, 12,377 workdays – according to an ESPN tally – and still counting, depending on which bowl game the Seminoles wind up playing.
“When you think about Florida State University, that’s who you think about,” junior quarterback Christian Ponder said.
And Bowden will be the guy his coaching brethren remember when they talk about the good old days, about how loyalty isn’t what it used to be, forgetting that he had exactly one losing season – his first – during the entire stay at Florida State.
“We won our share,” was the closest thing Bowden said Tuesday to a boast. “We didn’t win them all, but we did win our share.”
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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org.
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