Nearing 80, Bowden still has plenty of fight

Who is he fighting? What is he fighting for?

The question has simple answers, but they are woven together. He’s fighting against the NCAA and time. He’s fighting for his players and tradition.

The NCAA stripped the Seminoles of a reported 14 wins for using ineligible players in 2006 and 2007. Bowden and FSU want the wins back and have appealed the NCAA ruling. Bowden trails Penn State’s Joe Paterno (383) by a solitary victory as the winningest coach in Division I-A college football history.

Bowden says he won’t lose a minute of sleep if he doesn’t get the wins back, though he would like to have them for his family’s sake. It’s the principle of the thing that bothers him and the university.

“I don’t live and die with stuff like that,” Bowden said of the wins record. “I’d love to have it. I’d love for my children and my grandchildren to say that’s their old man up there. But if that doesn’t end up happening I won’t lose a second of sleep over it. If we don’t win it, I’ll accept it.”

There are precedents. Oklahoma had wins stripped when it was discovered that quarterback Rhett Bomar was getting paid for a job he wasn’t doing at a car dealer in 2006. The Sooners appealed, and the NCAA reinstated the wins.

“I’m still thinking they’ll come to their senses,” Bowden said, and then expounded on the impact that the NCAA’s pending decision could mean to his race with Paterno. “They are just going to kill the competition. They take those games away that game’s over. Y’all won’t have a darn thing to write about.”

There’s still plenty to write about, including Bowden’s desire to lead FSU back to the top as it was in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s when the Seminoles went 152-18-1, won two national titles and finished in the top five 13 other times.

The ACC invited FSU to join in 1991, partly to help raise the conference’s profile in football. The ACC has gotten what it wanted, but it’s come at the Seminoles’ expense. The team that has won 12 ACC titles has won only one in the past five seasons.

The coincidence isn’t loss on Bowden.

“It’s not because we’ve gotten that bad, it’s because the conference has gotten so much better,” Bowden said. “They are making us look bad.”

He says the other reason why the Seminoles have a 40-24 record the past five years is mostly self-inflicted: poor recruiting.

For example, Bowden points to starting quarterback Christian Ponder. He is a fourth-year junior, but this is his second season as the starter.

Bowden starts to recite a line of quarterbacks who didn’t start for the Seminoles until they were fourth-year juniors, after they had learned the playbook and gotten used to the speed of the college game.

“I think the [NFL] draft this year, where are the Florida State kids in the draft?” Bowden asked, before answering that only one player was drafted. “They aren’t in there. Used to have four in the first round. And forget the five-star stuff. Some of them five-stars played like one-stars, two-stars.

“We just have to look at and evaluate. We better look at potential better. Do a better job of going by the high school and scrutinizing the kid to see what he really brings to the table, rather than what the newspapers said.”

Bowden says he thinks they are close to getting back to the top, but will he be there to see it?

FSU has named offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher as Bowden’s successor. They’ve even promised him $5 million if Bowden doesn’t retire after the 2010 season. Bowden says he knows when he’s going to step down, but hasn’t yet told school president T.K. Weatherall or athletics director Randy Spetman.

Bowden says having Fisher has helped with recruiting. He knows the recruits doubt if he will be there by the time they leave. Having Fisher as coach-in-waiting eases their minds.

“You know something like that, you’ve got have the cooperation of everybody,” Bowden said. “I’m still the head football coach at Florida State. Jimbo is the offensive coordinator and coach-in-waiting. That’s all there is to say about it. It’s worked good.”

And obviously, if FSU can get back to averaging 11 wins a season, Bowden likely will cement his place atop college football history.

“You can’t stay on top forever. We stayed up there longer than anybody else ever has. We were up there for 14 years. We start to downslide. We will come back. I think now we are on our way back.

“I’d like to go as high as we can go.”

And then Bowden pauses for a second before finishing:

“We can.”