Amid speculation that he was forced out as head football coach at Florida State University, Bobby Bowden announced on Tuesday that he was retiring and that the Seminoles' bowl game will be his last as coach at Florida State. The 80-year-old Bowden coached Florida State to 12 ACC championships, two national titles and 14 consecutive top five finishes in the Associated Press poll, and in 1999, became the first team to ever go wire-to-wire ranked number one in the Associated Press poll.
Although to some observers, Bowden's retirement is a relief, this event drastically changes the way the ACC has been accustomed since Florida State became a member of the conference in 1992. Bowden's teams lost only two conference games from 1992 through 2000 and became the gold standard to which the rest of the league was chasing. Not since Clemson in the 1980's had a team been so dominant of the league like the Seminoles had. Now that Jimbo Fisher, who has been the coach-in-waiting, will take over, it remains to be seen if the luster of Seminole football will see the shine that Bowden originally cast.
The ACC now has no team that sits atop the conference in the fashion that Bowden's 'Noles did. Perhaps the fact that Florida State has slipped down to the middle of the pack of the league was an indicator that the game had possibly passed by Bobby Bowden. The average football that the ACC has come to know in the past couple of years has been mocked by fans of the SEC, Big 10, Pac-10, Big 12 and even Big East Conferences, traditionally known as the "power conferences". ACC teams have fared poorly in 2009 against non-conference competition, culminating in last weekend's embarrassing losses by Clemson to its rival South Carolina, Georgia Tech's loss to its rival Georgia, and Florida State to rival Florida. Bowden's teams would take some losses out of state, but they at least played anyone who challenged them, no matter how far they had to travel. Therefore, the program grew stronger and flourished in the ACC.
As Florida State grew stronger, other teams in the league had to fight hard to keep up with the Seminoles. North Carolina challenged the Seminoles during the Mack Brown era by recruiting speedy athletes who could neutralize Florida State's own speed. And although the Tar Heels came up short, the competition and challenge to get better was evident.
Eventually, though, the rest of the league did catch up with the Bowdens. North Carolina State repeatedly beat the Seminoles, giving rise to the eventual slide of Florida State to the middle of the ACC pack. The Wolfpack's coach at the time, Chuck Amato, was a defensive coach at Florida State before becoming the head coach at N.C. State. He seemed to guess correctly at all that Florida State threw at him. Before too long, the rest of the league began figuring out how to beat the Seminoles. As this became more common, fans of Florida State began getting restless and frustrated with some of the ways that Bowden was running the program. The naming of Fisher to succeed Bowden was a temporary fix. The 6-6 record and an embarrassing loss to rival Florida in the regular season finale last weekend was enough to hear the cries of Bowden's dismissal loud and clear.
So here we are today with the retirement of Bobby Bowden. Regarded as one of the most genuine and classy coaches ever to grace the gridiron - he even has the National Bobby Bowden award named after him through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes - Bowden compiled 388 victories in his 44-year head coaching career, second only behind Penn State's Joe Paterno. Now that he has retired and Florida State is no longer a factor in the national race, at the moment, what does the league do now? Right now there is no leader to push the rest of the league to work harder and strive for a better national presence. And with that, we are far poorer for the retirement of Bobby Bowden.
Stay tuned for more of the Tar Heel sports experience in later articles. Until then, go Heels!
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And one other thing - Keith Cooke has another column, the Charlotte High School Sports Examiner, a great look at Charlotte's high school sports scene.
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