Bobby Bowden: The Chief Deserved Better

T.S. Eliot once wrote in "The Hollow Men," " This is the way the world ends; not with a bang but a whimper." Now writers have been quoting him since he quipped that original passage, so I suppose it's cliche to use it once again, but as it applies to Bobby Bowden, it seems apropos.

Tuesday morning, Bowden's 34 year reign as the Chief of the Florida State Seminoles came to an end. It did not come with fanfare, or fireworks, or an undefeated season, or a banquet, or a punch of an opposing player (a la Woody Hayes...now that was going out with a bang). It came with another 6-6 season and a 6th straight drubbing at the hands of rival Florida. This was followed by days of speculation about his future, then a meeting with FSU president TK Wetherell, then an ultimatum to Bowden: come back as head coach in name only and hand over all decisions to coach-in-waiting Jimbo Fisher or don't come back at all. Bowden decided not to come back at all rather than be humiliated as the figurehead of a struggling regime.

So the second winningest coach in Division 1-A history and the face of Florida State football for 34 years surrendered to Wetherell, a former player no less. This is a sad, sad thing for Bowden and college football in general.

I had the pleasure of meeting the man and sharing a plane ride with him between Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Bowden is a good, simple man to the core. He has spent his life embodying a caricature of an old southern football coach. He has been married to his wife since they were teenagers. When he sneaks away from her, he enjoys Baby Ruths and longcut chewing tobacco. He had a more personal connection to the fan base than many coaches have in today's college football landscape where coaches offer to leak confidential inormation to alumni for increased donations (Dennis Franchione at Texas A&M kind of reminds me of Scientology).

Each offseason he would travel all over Florida on the "Bowden Tour" cultivating his alumni base, telling stories, signing autographs, and more recently defending his coaching philosophy. When some little old lady from Williston asked Bowden why he couldn't control defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews's mouth (Andrews could commonly be seen on TV yelling "horseshit!), Bowden responded, "Do you know how long it took me to get him to say horseshit?" He was a man who to all outward appearances lived a simple, happy football-obssessed life. He was kind of like Brett Favre would be If he weren't completely full of shit.

There is no denying that FSU's teams had been going downhill for some time. Aside from the obvious annual massacre in recruiting and on the field at the hands of Florida and Urban Meyer, FSU built a trend of having an enormous reservoir of unrealized talent. Take a look at the number of first and second round draft picks from FSU from the last 10 years (since Bowden's last national title) and compare that to the results of the seasons in which they played for the Noles. There is no conceivable reason that all of that stockpiled talent performed so poorly other than a lack of adequate coaching to pull it all together. And this is wherein the rub ultimately lies for Coach Bowden. Great recruiting, great football mind, great fundraiser, 7-6 results with 10-2 talent.

But still, the man deserved better than what he got. Before Bobby Bowden, FSU football wasn't much of anything. He built that place. Joe Paterno was able to fight off similar swipes at his head in the early 2000s. But Bowden could not silence the ever-enlarging number of FSU alumni who refused to donate to the athletic boosters and the university at large unless Bobby was gone.

Nole nation seems to be very excited for the Jimbo Fisher era to begin. Well, let's see how that worked out at Michigan (after Lloyd Carr) at Notre Dame (after Lou Holtz), at Virginia (after George Welsh), at Tennessee (after Phil Fulmer), at Nebraska (after Tom Osborne), at Kansas State (after Bill Snyder, although he's back), or at any other university I am neglecting where a longtime, successful coach was wished gone by some alumni (maybe not in the case of Osborne or Snyder) who then were even less happy with what they got.

Be careful what you wish for Noles fans. Jimbo Fisher is no panacea just as Bobby Bowden was no pandemic. He was a good man who shouldve been able to coach until he died on the sidelines if he so desired.

In the end, it may be the Noles fans whimpering rather than Bowden himself.

Bowden was great for Florida State and more importantly he was great for college football. For all intensive purposes I have never heard or read a bad thing about Bowden the man before. But this isn't about that. This is about Bowden the Coach. And Bowden the Coach has not been up to the task of his job the past half the decade as his program has spiraled into mediocrity. I'll echo Stewart Mandel's sentiments that, yeh, maybe he deserved better, but one more year, though, where every other person associated with Florida State football -- from anointed successor Jimbo Fisher; to 100-plus players and a class of potential recruits; to hundreds of thousands of disgruntled fans; to an athletic department whose coffers suffered when a reported 25,000 Doak Campbell seats went empty for the 'Noles' final home game -- would be forced to wait in limbo and watch another year of bad football solely so the revered coach could enjoy a proper farewell tour.