COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’91 : Football for Sale : At Florida State, Bowden Has a Product Some Believe Is the Best in the Country

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. —  Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden sits in the vast leather chair behind the great wooden desk in his plush wood-paneled office and considers his 38-year career. In bare feet.

You were expecting what, wingtips?

Forget it. Bowden is 61, going on Huck Finn. Any more relaxed and he would slide off the chair, which, of course, is what he almost did back in 1989, minutes before the 12th-ranked Seminoles were supposed to play Miami, the eventual national champions that year.

Assembled before their legendary coach, eager Seminole players waited for his precious words of pregame wisdom. Instead, they found Bowden, oblivious to the pressure, snoozing in front of the locker room blackboard. Someone glanced at assistant coach Chuck Amato, who whispered, “I’m not waking him up.”

So there Bowden slept, until finally a Florida State aide yelled, “Seven minutes to kickoff, Coach Amato!”

Bowden’s eyelids popped open and the Seminoles went out and beat Miami, 24-10, handing the Hurricanes their only defeat of the season.

Southern gentleman-polite, but without a formal bone in his body, Bowden treats everyone as a drinking buddy; or as he would treat a drinking buddy if Bowden drank--he doesn’t touch the stuff. His peers respect him. His players adore him. His athletic director, Bob Goin, credits him with saving the Florida State football program from certain demise and the athletic department from financial ruin. That would explain why Goin happily and hurriedly gave Bowden a lifetime contract shortly after the Alabama job opened in 1990.

“If I hadn’t moved when I did, he might have been gone,” Goin said. “It was that close.”

Recruits are spellbound by Bowden’s charm. At visit’s end they don’t know whether to call him “Sir” or ask him to stay for a game of Nintendo.

Families trust him. Jamie Dukes, a former Florida State offensive lineman who plays for the Atlanta Falcons, discovered that his mother used to send letters to Bowden. Each one began, “Robert, I want you to take care of my son.”

Robert did.

Most of all, Bowden trusts himself and his instincts. He knew, for instance, it was time to leave the cold of West Virginia for the warmth of Florida State in 1976. His first hint? A season earlier, Mountaineer fans had hanged him in effigy.

He also knew that a wide-open offense sold tickets, that defense won games and that publicity salvaged programs. Fifteen years later, Florida State is still thanking him for bringing the formula to Tallahassee.

So revered is the coach that someone recorded “The Ballad of Bobby Bowden.” If you can’t find it in the stores, you can hear it on, “Bobby Bowden: Building a Tradition,” a new two-hour videotape chronicling his storied career.

If that isn’t enough, hard-core Florida State souvenir shops also carry copies of “Seminoles of FSU,” a song Bowden recorded six years ago with then-Florida State President Bernard Sliger. Don’t ask.

“It was about the team,” said Bowden, who described the venture as the most ridiculous thing he has done as a coach. “Something like, ‘We’re the Seminoles . ... We’re going to fight till the end.’

“Good song,” he said. “It would be nice at my funeral, but somebody else would have to sing it.”

At the moment, people are busy singing Bowden’s praises. And with good reason.

Only seven others have won more Division I football games than Bowden. Bo Schembechler, who retired at Michigan two seasons ago, and Joe Paterno, who still prowls the Penn State sideline, are the only living contemporaries with a numbers edge. Schembechler is forever stuck on 234, Paterno starts the season with 229 and Bowden begins the year at 205.

With three more victories, Bowden slips into the seventh spot, past Vanderbilt’s Jess Neely. Barring an upset, he should have those three by Sept. 14, with more to come. After all, Florida State is the consensus favorite to win what would be Bowden’s first national championship.

Bowden is like no other coach in the college game. He might be the only guy in this business of mega-egos without an enemy and the only guy without a true friend.

“I don’t get close to them,” he said. “I don’t have a coaching friend I go see all the time, or we go to New York together or we go across the ocean together. I don’t have nobody like that. I’m kind of like that with everybody. My family is about the only thing I’m close to.”

Bowden respects Paterno more than any other coach. He also has high regard for Brigham Young’s LaVell Edwards and Fresno State’s Jim Sweeney. But love them like brothers? Lean on them for advice? No way. Bowden said he learned a long time ago that the only thing you can depend on is your faith, your family and yourself.

And you want funny? Bowden is the Jerry Seinfeld of coaching. One-liners and publicity gimmicks are his specialty.

When asked what he would have done had the eccentric and controversial Deion Sanders returned to Florida State, rather than joining the NFL, Bowden said, “I’d turn pro.”

Informed on his arrival of the intense rivalry between Florida State and Florida, Bowden said: “I’m telling you, if I can’t find a way to beat them, I think enough of Florida State to say maybe they ought to find someone better. Right now, though, I can’t think of anybody.”

When Sanders signed a contract with the New York Yankees, thus requiring the star cornerback to forfeit his football scholarship and pay his own way during his senior season, Bowden noted: “Best walk-on I ever had.”

And when his Seminole offense sputtered one season, Bowden told reporters, “The good news is, our defense is giving up only one touchdown per game. The bad news is, our offense is too.”

Bowden has been interviewed while wearing a white glove and sunglasses, his own personal tribute to Michael Jackson. And he allowed NBC cameras to venture into the Seminole locker room during his pregame speech at the 1981 Orange Bowl.

Said Bowden that night: “OK, men, the thing I’m going to ask you is just do the best you can do. You ain’t got to block a kick . . . but I wish you would.”

Bowden even allowed the network to put a microphone on him during the game. Florida State lost to Oklahoma, 18-17, but won plenty of admirers.

And there’s the trick. Bowden didn’t become class clown because he wanted to, but because he needed to. Every stunt had a purpose.

When Florida State and Miami were looking for a way to publicize their game one year, Bowden and then-Miami coach Howard Schnellenberger decided to give the media a photo opportunity it couldn’t ignore. Schnellenberger flew to Tallahassee a few days before the game and met Bowden in a boxing ring. Both men wore suits and boxing gloves and posed happily for the cameras and minicams. It was a silly scene, but it made the 6 o’clock news and sold tickets.

Bowden was also the guy who gleefully endorsed some of those early Florida State road schedules, including the famed 1981 stretch in October that featured Nebraska, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Louisiana State. Florida State won three of those five games and established itself as a team that would play anyone, anywhere at any time.

“I felt like Florida State needed all the credibility we could get, and I think all that stuff paid off,” Bowden said. “The intent was to sell. When I came to Florida State our intent was to sell, not buy. We’re not going to buy players to win. We’re not going to cheat. We’re going to sell. So every opportunity I had--if I had to get miked, or let people in the dressing room or let them film our halftime talk--I did stuff like that. I don’t do that now.”

He doesn’t have to, not with a record that includes nine consecutive bowl appearances without a loss--8-0-1. In each of the last four seasons, Florida State has won 10 games, good enough to finish No. 2, No. 3, No. 3 and No. 4 in the final Associated Press polls. In short, Bowden is nobody’s fool.

Look at his offense--state of the art. He understood the power of the pass long before Houston’s John Jenkins began running up scores on the helpless.

“Bowden was way ahead of his time when it came to throwing the football,” Oregon Coach Rich Brooks said.

Bowden also recognized that a strong defense is the backbone of any team. In the last five seasons, opponents have scored 17 or fewer points in 37 of Florida State’s 60 games. Only three teams--Miami, Nebraska and Clemson--have scored more than 31 points against the Seminoles in that time.

A better indicator of Bowden’s reputation is the number of coaches who visit his practices. Hardly a spring workout goes by when a fellow coach isn’t in attendance, making notes and diagrams.

In 1977, then-Tulane Coach Larry Smith used Florida State’s defensive scheme as a blueprint for his own. Two seasons later, Tulane was in the Liberty Bowl and Smith was bound for Arizona, thanks in part to the teachings of Bowden. Even today, it isn’t uncommon for Smith to send some of his USC staff to Tallahassee to observe the Seminoles’ offense and defense.

“(Bowden has) kind of been a father to me in a coaching way,” Smith said. “He is all football coach.”

That’s not entirely true. How many coaches study the tactics of great generals in battle and adapt the thinking to football? Woody Hayes comes to mind. Add the surprising Bowden to the short list.

Mr. Carefree--or so he would have you think--is a student of military history. He has read book after book examining the bold moves made by two World War II heroes in particular, Germany’s Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and the U.S. Army’s Gen. George S. Patton.

By examining the two tank commanders, Bowden has developed a specific coaching philosophy. It extends from the way he calls plays to the way he emphasizes depth, to the way he evaluates players, to the way he treats his assistants. It isn’t unusual for Bowden to read passages from those books to his assistant coaches. Day after day, Bowden preaches the lessons taught by those generals: mobility, leadership, unpredictability.

“(Rommel and Patton) were so much alike,” said Bowden, who keeps figurines of each man in a cabinet behind his desk. “The ones that are great are the ones who are daring. If someone asks me what kind of offense we’ve got, I say, ‘One of audacity.’ It’s one of those things where someone says, ‘You wouldn’t dare?’ And I’d say, ‘Oh, yes, we would.’ ”

Rommel, said Bowden, was the more brilliant of the two commanders. But Patton, he said, his eyes sparkling, “had a little more audacity.”

Bowden will try anything in a game: reverses of every kind, flea-flickers, fake fumbles, pitches on kickoff returns, onside kicks, fake punts and two-point conversions when logic dictates otherwise. His inspiration comes from watching reels of film, attending a prep game--”High school coaches are the bravest people in the world,” he said--or challenging his assistants to submit the wildest plays they can imagine.

“I’ve always wanted a guard-around pass,” Bowden said. And he’s serious, too.

His most famous stunt is the “puntrooski” he pulled against Clemson in 1988. With the score tied at 21 and only 1:30 remaining, Florida State had fourth and four on its own 21-yard line. At worst, figured the home team Tigers, they would have the ball on their own 35-or-so-yard line with plenty of time to drive and kick a field goal.

Instead, Bowden had the center snap the ball to one of the up men, who then put it between the legs of blocker LeRoy Butler, who held it there and went 78 yards before Clemson realized it had been had. Florida State kicked a game-winning field goal two plays later. ESPN commentator Beano Cook later called it “the greatest play since ‘My Fair Lady.’ ”

Of course, Bowden might have cost Florida State at least one national championship with his daring decisions. A failed two-point try against Miami in the waning moments of their game gave the Seminoles their only loss of the 1987 season. That was the same week that CBS announcer Brent Musburger asked Bowden in the pregame production meeting what the Florida State coach would do if he were down by a point with 10 seconds left.

“I’ll kick it, no question,” Bowden answered. “We’ll go for the tie.”

When it came down to it, though, Bowden couldn’t play it safe. Too much Patton in him. Afterward, he told his team that the loss was his to bear. Before he could say another word, Seminole players drowned him out by yelling, “No!”

Bowden is a self-made coach. His uncle, George Hendricks, gave him his first football when Bowden was 7. His father used to take him to local games in Birmingham, Ala. On occasion, they would climb atop the garage roof and watch the Woodlawn High School team practice in the distance.

When Bowden was 15 and hardly taller than a broomstick, he used to grab an apple and a handful of raw peanuts from his mother’s kitchen, walk a block to the Howard College football field in Birmingham, shinny up the goal post and watch the varsity practice from atop the crossbar. He would sit there until darkness or until the Howard coach noticed him, whichever came first.

He became a Little All-American quarterback at Howard--now known as Samford University--and earned his first head coaching job there. Eventually he became an assistant at Florida State, stayed at Tallahassee for three years and then accepted the head coaching position at West Virginia. Everything was fine until 1973, when he went 6-5 after a Peach Bowl appearance the previous year. In 1974, the Mountaineers finished 4-7, one of only two losing seasons in Bowden’s Division I-A career.

Several influential West Virginia boosters tried to engineer his firing. Angry students hanged him in effigy, while others draped sheets from their dormitory windows. Scrawled on the sheets was, “Bye-bye, Bobby.”

The Mountaineers finished 9-3 in 1975, but Bowden had seen enough. He left for Tallahassee and the warmth of the South.

Bowden likes to tell the story of the bumper stickers. At West Virginia, they read “Beat Pitt,” at Alabama “Beat Auburn” and at Florida State in the mid-’70s “Beat Anybody.” Bowden has done that and more. According to Goin, Florida State’s athletic program has gone from a $4-million deficit eight years ago to a $4-million reserve fund in 1991.

“What (Bowden) has done, we’ll never be able to measure,” Goin said.