As the future of college football continues to rapidly unfold and rewrite itself before our eyes, a legend who helped build the sport has passed.
“I don’t think the college football system, as it exists now, will allow for the emergence of another Bobby Bowden,” said Ben Brown, author of Saint Bobby and The Barbarians. “He came into his own in a relatively uncynical age of college football where a coach can quietly build his expertise and his program.”
I was struck by the part of the quote that said, “…in a relatively uncynical age…” because when I think of Bobby Bowden, I think of my grandparents and the rest of the fading “Greatest Generation.”
They were not cynical people, they were genuine to the core. They knew humility and greatness. They stressed a standard in the level of politeness in conversation and deed which we struggle to live up to on a day-to-day basis. I’m not trying to overdo it here. Sure, they had their faults, but these traits were quite common amongst folks I knew from that generation.
So why has it has become increasingly difficult to not be at least somewhat cynical in modern-day times, specifically as a sports fan?
Athletes and coaches are no longer held at the distance they once were from the eyes of public. Men who were once considered heroes have had their legacies torn down over and over again. Many of these legacies did not last because they were not true. They were just an image which was sold to the public.
- Michael Jordan did nothing but win titles and smile for ads as he racked up millions of dollars throughout his playing career, but the public was shielded from his ruthless treatment of teammates. He didn’t have to address angry tweets from Will Perdue about being punched at practice in real time. If that had occurred, His Airness would have had a different experience during his playing days and instead of universal adoration he received on a daily basis. Jordan would’ve been picked apart to the same degree that we see applied to LeBron James and other NBA superstars today.
- An entire generation of baseball players from my childhood are being blackballed from Cooperstown by old school writers who feel they need to punish players for their steroid use in an effort to protect the integrity of the game which those same writers failed to protect in the first place. Bob Costas still gets to wax poetic about the majesty of Mickey Mantle, who played in an era of greenies, while the summer of 1998, the height of my love for baseball, is no longer allowed to exist.
- Joe Paterno’s program was sullied by the Jerry Sandusky scandal, and the cover-up and controversy sank both his program and legacy in one fell swoop.
Though these three examples vary significantly in degrees of seriousness, a decision was made at some point along the way to protect the image of a player, a game, or an institution. The image had to be protected because it did not match reality. I can name countless other examples of the same type of effect occurring in business, entertainment, politics, and everyday life where an “Image is Everything” mindset clearly dictates decision-making at the highest levels.
The life of Bobby Bowden was the antithesis of all that has driven an increase in cynicism within our society. There wasn’t an image to protect because he did not cultivate an image. Bobby Bowden was the definition of, “What you see is was what you get,” and his passing has been met with nothing but love and praise toward the 34-year Florida State football head coach from friends and rivals alike.
“Coach Bowden coached a long time there. He made FSU football what it was,” former Gators Head Coach Steve Spurrier noted in an interview after his induction into the South Carolina Football Hall of Fame last month, “I was at Florida for 12 years, 11 of those years they were in the Top-4 in the nation. 11 out of 12 years!
“We had to play them in the last game of the season and I used to say, ‘How come Tennessee doesn’t have to play these dudes the last game of the season like we have to,'” Spurrier added in typical Spurrier fashion.
Spurrier or Bowden were never particularly beloved by the other fan base during what was a scorching hot stretch of the Gators-Seminoles rivalry in the 1990s, but Bowden had a way of commanding respect from the Orange and Blue despite the sky-high stakes which existed between two of the most successful programs in America at the time.
Unlike the Spurrier-Fulmer dynamic, which resembled Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Bowden’s ease with Spurrier’s quips and comments to the media gave fans a glimpse into the character of a man who was quite comfortable with himself and his program. The way he dealt with the occasional zinger out of Gainesville should have been a model to other coaches at that time.
Spurrier may have had some fun at the expense of Bowden’s program once in a while, but their mutual respect was on display in a September 2020 interview conducted by the Florida Rising Stars Project.
“They played probably the toughest schedule back in those days, cause they played Miami and Florida,” Spurrier said of Bowden’s 1990s FSU teams, “I tell people all of the time, if they’d have dropped one of us two, he would’ve had maybe five or six national championships. That’s how good those teams were back in those days.”
Spurrier continued, “We had some good teams down here at Florida and Coach Bowden, he won more than I did at that time, so you gotta say he’s the best.”
Later in the interview, Bowden said, “We went down to play in The Swamp. We were undefeated, I think we might have been 11-0 or 10-0 [it was 10-0 in 1997] and if we win the Florida game, we’re going to win a national championship or at least we’re going to play for the national championship and that son of a gun beat us…and he used two quarterbacks!”
In the 22 years of Florida State football history which preceded Bobby Bowden, FSU had entered into the rankings only four times and had yet to finish a season in the final rankings.
Bowden willed FSU to the top of college football by putting his program through the ringer. The Seminoles signed up for six consecutive trips to LSU throughout the first part of Bowden’s tenure before the Bayou Bengals kindly returned a single trip back to Tallahassee. In 1981, Florida State scheduled five-straight road games at Nebraska, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Pitt (as in No. 3 Pitt led by Heisman finalist, Dan Marino), and LSU. How many coaches (in any era) would agree to such a grueling stretch of games?
Makes whining about two-for-one deals while building a program look pretty weak.
Before his time in the Sunshine State’s capital, Bowden had a successful head coaching tenure at West Virginia, but what will likely stand out most in the history books was a kindness he showed to the Mountaineers’ in-state rival, Marshall, while the Thundering Herd rebuilt their program after a tragic plane crash in 1970.
Bowden, who had a connection with an assistant on the Marshall staff, helped the new coaches install the veer offense and memorialized the fallen Herd players with green crosses on the helmets of his West Virginia players. Bowden may have felt an extra layer of empathy toward his rival because he could have been on that ill-fated flight.
From a November 2020 article by Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel:
Bowden could have easily been the head coach of that Marshall football team when it went down in a Southern Airways DC-9 on Nov. 14, 1970; killing all 75 aboard in what is still the deadliest tragedy in American sports history.
Two years earlier, as a highly regarded assistant at West Virginia University, Bowden was offered the Marshall job. His good friend, Ed Starling, was assistant athletic director at Marshall and clandestinely drove to Bowden’s house in Morgantown, hid his car in Bowden’s basement and spent all day trying to convince Bowden to move to Huntington. Bowden was intrigued and was about to accept the offer, but something told him not to go, to hold out for something better.
“I’ve thought about that a lot over the years,” Bowden told me once. “That could have easily been me coaching that team, and I’d have been wiped out just like all the others. I’ve been lucky, very lucky. There were a lot of people I knew on that plane. A lot of good people.”
Bobby Bowden was a man of deep Christian faith.
I was struck by the peace that Bobby Bowden expressed after his diagnosis, and what a testament that is to his faith. I’ve seen a lot of people today express what a good man he was. I hope they’ll also take note of what a faithful man he was as well. RIP https://t.co/RNwOqhEj68
— Will Miles (@WillMilesSEC) August 8, 2021
One of Coach Bowden’s favorite scriptures was Proverbs 4:23, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; For out of it are the issues of life.”
“When the Bible talks about the heart, it’s not talking about a muscle that pumps blood,” Bowden told a 2013 audience at Liberty University. “It’s talking about your will. I will! I can do anything! I will do it! It’s talking about your mind and your emotion…that’s your heart.
“Your heart is full of little hidden seeds of thought. Everything you do starts with a thought which becomes words which becomes action which becomes habits – you’re known by your habits – then your habits become your character and your character determines where you spend an eternity.”
Rest in peace, Coach Bowden. You were a great coach and a better man.
