Coach Bobby Bowden was passed for the Alabama head coaching job in 1987. Bowden forged Florida State football into a dominant winner, posting 109 victories during the decade of the 90s. Coach Mike Norvell should take Bowden's winning spirit to heart and use it to pull off an upset vs. Alabama
It was his dream job. As a Birmingham, Alabama native, Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden had been coaching the Seminoles for a decade when the most high-profile head coaching job in college football became available in 1987-for the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Bowden had amassed an 86-40-2 record during his first 10 years at Florida State, and was on the very short list of candidates to replace Ray Perkins, who left and went back to coach in the NFL. The other candidate was Bill Curry of Georgia Tech, with a record of 31-43-4. Coach Bowden thought the interview was a formality. It was not. Bowden faced a barrage of questions from a formal search committee.
Coach Bowden bombed in the interview. The committee was not impressed with his unprepared answers to prepared questions. Curry, on the other hand, aced the interview and was offered the job. No one on that committee realized how much that decision would change the fortunes of Alabama football, and the history of college football.
If Bowden had been hired at Alabama, it is a virtual certainty that he would have stayed in Tuscaloosa for next 20+ years, and would have built the Crimson Tide into a dynasty, pre-Nick Saban era.
Instead, that search committee shackled the Crimson Tide with coaching turnover. Five different coaches patrolled the Alabama sideline over a 20-year period: Curry, Gene Stallings, Mike Dubose, Dennis Franchione, and Mike Shula. Saban took over in 2007 and coached 17 seasons in Tuscaloosa, amassed a 206-29 record, and won six national championships.
Gene Stallings brought one national championship in 1992. It was the only one between the legendary Bear Bryant’s last national championship in 1979 and Saban’s first title with the Crimson Tide in 2009.
Coach Bowden’s disappointment in getting passed over for his “dream job” turned into renewed focus and passion, as he planted his own spear in the collective backsides of his opponents and turned Florida State into a true national powerhouse over his 34-year tenure in Tallahassee.
Elite recruiting classes loaded with homegrown talent from the fertile prep ranks of the State of Florida, ferocious physicality on defense, and elite weapons on offense were his calling cards.
With the dawning of the decade of the 90s, coach Bowden and his Seminoles had emerged from the crucible, forged into one of the winningest programs in college football. Florida State won 109 games during the decade, the most in college football.
Bowden coached his Seminoles to a No. 4 ranking or higher in the final AP Top 25 polls every year of the 90s, won two national championships in 1993 and 1999, and one of Bowden’s quarterbacks, Charlie Ward (1993) hoisted the Heisman Trophy.
So, that spirit of the man himself and that of winning football created by the Bowden dynasty will be hanging over his beloved Seminoles like a cloak of invincibility on Saturday. Florida State travels to Tuscaloosa to take on the varsity eleven of the school that had passed Bowden over, the No. 10 Alabama Crimson Tide.
Coach Mike Norvell should use coach Bowden’s story as motivation to win a game that no one associated with college football, fan or otherwise, believes that the Seminoles can win. Like coach Bowden took his disappointment and turned it into motivation to win and become a dominant college football program, so can Norvell and his Florida State team to use the spirit of Bobby Bowden and the winning tradition of Seminoles football to pull off what would be an epic upset.
