Bobby Bowden stepped down from his duties as head coach at
Florida State on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
After 31 years of patrolling the Florida State sidelines, College Football Hall of Fame coach Bobby Bowden will step down from the head coaching position of the Seminoles, according to Florida State Examiner Corey Dowlar and confirmed by early reports from ESPN. The announcement will come today. Florida State offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher, who has been waiting in line for the position, will fill Bowden’s vacancy as head coach.
Bowden steps down having won 388 games and 21 bowl games, second only to Penn State’s Joe Paterno in both aspects. Bowden guided Florida State to a pair of national championships (1993, 1999) and 12 ACC championships (1992-2000, 2002-2003, 2005). Bowden was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2006 and is one of four active coaches to have been inducted.
Early in his coaching career Bowden served as an assistant football coach and track and field coach at Stamford University (Howard College at the time) in Birmingham, Alabama. From there Bowden took the role of athletic director at South Georgia College as well as taking head coaching positions for the football, baseball and basketball programs. Howard welcomed Bowden back as their head football coach, where Bowden went 31-6 before heading to Florida State to take an assistant job under Bill Peterson.
Bowden next took an assistant’s job at West Virginia, where he would become head coach in 1970. Bowden went 42-26 with the Mountaineers but his most notable moment came after the tragic plane crash that decimated the Marshall University football program . After Marshall had lost their football team in the crash Bowden asked for permission from the NCAA for his West Virginia team to wear Marshall football jerseys and play the Thundering Herd’s final game against Ohio, but the idea was turned down. Instead West Virginia players added green crosses and the initials “MU” to the back of their helmets in honor of those lost.
Bowden will be remembered most for his work at Florida State. In 1976 Bowden took the head coaching position at Florida State, and the rest is history. At the helm of Florida State’s program Bowden is still the only coach to have achieved 14 straight seasons of 10 or more wins (1987-2000). Florida State finished in the AP top five for 14 straight seasons, which has never been duplicated (1987-2000).
For Bowden the decision to retire was a tough one, and one that has been fueled by pressure on, and from, the University for quite some time. Once the top college football program in the land, Florida State is no longer one of the top two programs in the state of Florida. After a decade of dominance in the 1990’s with a pair of national championships and nine straight ACC championships, Florida State has won ten regular season games just once since 2001. The Seminoles have lost in their last four appearances in a BCS bowl game and in the mean time their top rivals, the Florida Gators, have surpassed them in every way possible.
The coaching career of Bowden has not been without a dash of controversy either. Fourteen of Bowden’s victories may be removed from the record book as a result of possible use of an ineligible player or players from 2006 to 2007. In 1993 nine Florida State football players violated NCAA rules by going on a shopping spree at Foot Locker using money from agents. While this may have come under the regime of Bowden, he was not directly involved in either incident.
Time will tell what the legacy of Bowden will be, but two national championships and the long stretch of dominance in the ACC will not be easy to look past when Bowden comes up in discussion.
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