“The End of An Era”

Unless you’ve been hibernating in a cave you’ve heard by now that FSU Head Football Coach Bobby Bowden has announced his retirement. I wrote a column a few weeks back about the subject, saying in essence that he should be allowed to coach another year if he wants to, but that I was not convinced that it would be the best thing for the program.

Supposedly Bowden was recently offered two choices for next year, (1) remain in an “ambassador type” role or (2) retire. I suspect he viewed option one as an insult so he choose option two. I also suspect that this whole situation did not play out like Bowden wanted it to, that is going out on top or at least after a real good year so that he could feel like the program was back to where it used to be. He probably wanted to be like his counterpart Joe Paterno at Penn State and prove that he could right the ship. He kept hoping for that one good last run, but it never came.

He has won 388 games, second most in the history of college football. He has won two national championships and will have coached in 28 straight bowl games. For 14 straight seasons, 1987 – 2000, they finished in the AP Top Five and won 10 or more games each year. They only lost 19 games in all 14 years.

It’s been said that the only thing more difficult than getting to the top is staying at the top. In the last nine years they have won 10 games once. They’ve lost five or more games five out of those nine years. In the last four seasons they’ve had 6 losses three times and lost a total of 22 games. Last year things seemed to improve (9-4) and the Seminole nation, including Bowden, felt like we were on the verge of righting the ship. But they finished this regular season 6-6 and need a bowl game victory to avoid a losing season.

Nobody in the Seminole Nation wanted it to end this way. Everyone would have loved it if Bowden could have gone out on top or with the program on the rebound. If anybody ever deserved to go out on top it would be Bowden. And not for just what he has done on the field, but what he has done off the field as well. But life doesn’t always work out that way. We all know, painfully, sometimes life just isn’t fair.

So after 34 years of having Bobby Bowden as our Head Coach he is retiring. Simply Put, it’s been my privilege and honor as a fan to be a part of the Bobby Bowden era, from beginning to end. We likely will never see another era like this again in college football. Tune in next week as I’ll give Bowden some unsolicited advice on his departure.
From the front porch: Coach said life is what it is, not what it was.