I Hope they Serve Gin and Tonics in Hell

Fear and Loathing in Tallahassee...Mr Bowden has cashed his check...exit stage left to my unlikely hero...


I’m not going to even pretend to have any kind of “objectivity” or respectful detachment from this one. It’s all personal and it’s not going to be without a sense of the finality of my misspent youth.
Bobby Bowden announced he would retire as coach at Florida State after 34 years on the job. And while the general tone might sound as if I’m happy, I can’t really allow myself to be thrilled at the end of one mans livelihood in a way that neither he or anyone else quite imagined it would come down.

First, let’s go back to October 5th , and see what I had to say in response to the news story about the chairman of the FSU Board of Trustees saying that Bowden should call it a career at the end of the season–the majority of the other responses were generally negative towards this development, hence my statement about dissent:

oh goody, I get to do what I do best--the voice of dissent.

I've been a Florida State fan for 30 years, and I know how many people admire and love Bowden. But let's face some cold harsh realities.

While he took Florida State from nothing to one of the top 20 programs in America, he is doing nothing good for the school by lingering around solely for the purpose of trying to be the winningest coach of all time. Nothing is going to erase what he has done, nothing is going to take away from all the great wins.

But somebody has to ask the question to him, and expect a straight answer--is his motivation the record, or does he really believe he is acting in the best interest of the school, his players, his coaches, and the fans?

He is paralyzing the program by not coming clean about his intentions, and he is hurting everything that is rightfully his--the reputation of Florida State's football program--by not seeing that by lingering around, just like his idol The Bear did, he is diminishing his accomplishments. It took Alabama years to recover from the post-Bear hangover, and I'm afraid that FSU will suffer the same fate.

He deserves to quit on his own terms, but he owes it to his constituency to make a decision, sooner rather than later.

So, I have to look at the whole picture, and say to him the same thing Oliver Cromwell told the Long Parliament-- In the name of God, Go.


So now that we have established the particulars about my own thinking, let’s delve into the deeper issue, as far as I’m concerned.

I was a Florida State fan long before there was a bandwagon to ride. I was the bandwagon and in the 1970's, there wasn’t the mass exposure of college football that exists today. So it was hard to follow an unknown college football team that you couldn’t actually see, but you knew that it was there. Unless you actually lived in Florida, it was probably a stretch to even be able to name where Florida State University was located. But like everything else I do, I tried to get as much info as I could. And it was a great time to get in on the ground floor of something exciting like a crappy college football team that was turning the corner and beating people they had no business beating. Nebraska, Notre Dame, Pitt, Ohio State, LSU. In a 3 year period, Florida State beat all of them at least once. And they did it by slinging the ball all over the field, reverses, trick plays, the whole shooting match. Bowden never let the consequences bother him, he just kept on throwing the ball.

As the 80's inched along, the Seminoles got better every year. They could never seem to get past Miami, but the rest of the ride was pretty interesting.
But as time went on, Bowden got more cautious. He started to play the percentages more, started to reign in the offense in order to get results rather than entertain. All of which I had no problem with. As long as the score was right at the end of the game, I was all for it.

I don’t want boring, stodgy football. I want action and scoring and winning. And I don’t want excuses as to why I’m not getting it.

There have been many days I sort of felt like Cubs fans do (at least I’m pretty sure they must feel this way) when they wonder “why bother? Why have optimism when there is only going to be a disappointment at the end?” The many times I swore that I was going to give up on them were soon just a memory of instantaneous insanity in the wake of a defeat. I persevered and suffered, because that’s what you do if you love something enough. It’s a bit dysfunctional at times, but it gets you through the day. I never once believed that I was going to be a naysayer, a squeaky wheel to demand change for the sake of change.

But I eventually became that person, as evidenced by the above passage. What that says about me I have no idea. If I can’t stand up for the right of self-determination, what other principle am I going to abandon in the future?

I feel sad for Bobby, because he was sort of like another grandfather to me. You knew he was a bit campy and you might not agree with everything he said, but you loved him just because he was there and indirectly shaped your life in ways that you might not have imagined. But sometimes you had to wonder why he had that look on his face like “what the heck am I doing? I don’t need this”.

You don’t just lose your touch all at once, it just slips away gradually. And I don’t think Bobby ever quite realized that his touch was leaving him as much as it actually did. It has nothing to do with his age or his values, it just sort of happens to everyone.

I don’t think I’m prepared to blabber on in a sentimental way about him, because he’s not dead. I don’t have a sense of loss, but I feel like part of my life has ended in a way I wished had been different.