Bloodied but Unbowed : Bobby Bowden’s Victory Tour Turns Into a Series of Apologies, but He Has No Intention of Forfeiting the National Title or Resigning

The raffle tickets were drawn hours ago. Sterno flames hiss against the bottoms of now empty silver buffet serving trays. The blue-hair from the Class of ’36 has been introduced, along with most everyone else in the Sweetwater Country Club ballroom.

Isn’t it time for him yet ?

A branding iron is presented. A babbling infant is shooed from the room. A heckler interrupts the longest introduction speech since Jimmy Stewart’s filibuster in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

“We didn’t pay to listen to you,” says the heckler, who has the look of someone who didn’t miss a minute of Thursday night’s cocktail hour. “Let’s hear the coach!”

Charlie Barnes, executive director of the national Florida State booster club, steps back from the microphone, sips from a glass of water, stares at the heckler and then nervously straightens out his notes.

No, this wasn’t how the 1994 Bobby Bowden Championship Tour was supposed to go at all. Not one bit.

A few moments later, Barnes says, “Uh, before I bring up the coach. . . . “

And then he is back on script, waxing poetic about the joys of being a Florida State booster.

“We’re on top of the collegiate world right now,” Barnes tells the audience of 150 or so Seminole supporters. “We have become what so many of you have dreamed we could become.”

But with an asterisk.

Only five months after being named national champions by both polls, the Florida State football program is chinstrap-deep in trouble, beginning with recently published allegations that at least seven Seminole players accepted illicit payoffs last November from would-be agents.

That was followed by news that freshman kicker Scott Bentley, who made the national title-winning field goal against Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, had pleaded no contest to charges of illegally tape-recording a February sexual encounter with a female student from Florida A&M.;

Next, tight end Kamari Charlton was charged with felony rape and assault.

More recently, former Seminole tailback Sean Jackson, one of the players who had admitted accepting gifts from agents, was arrested for an alleged incident of indecent exposure, a misdemeanor.

And just this weekend, it was disclosed that former Florida State cornerback Corey Sawyer, another of the players who had admitted his involvement with agents, apparently paid $29,000 in cash for a sport utility vehicle three days before the Orange Bowl game.

All in all, it is a month Bowden could have done without. Rather than celebrate a championship, he has had to explain it, sometimes even apologize for it.

“When I was at West Virginia and when I was first at Florida State,” he tells the local Seminole Club here on the outskirts of Houston, “I was wanting to be like Alabama, Notre Dame . . . you know, the big programs. I’d say, ‘I’d like to be good enough to get investigated.’ The ideal scenario is to be good enough to be investigated and not be guilty.

“Which brings me to the subject that we might be fixing to try that (scenario) out.”

Jackson, drafted in April by the Houston Oilers, presumably will have his day in court. The same goes for Charlton, who is free on $10,500 bond.

Bentley was sentenced to 40 hours on a county road crew, fined $500, placed on six months’ probation and ordered to pay $150 in court costs. Like Charlton, he was suspended indefinitely from the Florida State program by Bowden.

As for the alleged payoffs by agents, Bowden said the school is cooperating fully with a high-powered Kansas City firm retained by Florida State to conduct its internal investigation. Other than that, there isn’t anything else he can do, except wonder what went wrong.

“Coach,” one of the boosters says during the banquet’s question-and-answer session, “what do you think the NCAA will do?”

Back when the tour started, before the inevitable Crimi-noles jokes began making the rounds, Bowden answered questions about the Florida State depth chart. Now this: police records and possible NCAA inquiries.

“I will be shocked if the NCAA investigates it,” he says. “I would be totally shocked if that happens. We should be totally free.”

Then the sobering disclaimer: “But you never know.”

At issue is whether Bowden, his assistants or Seminole staff members were aware or should have been aware of the illicit payoffs, which included cash and clothing to players. Such a distinction could mean the difference between a sigh of relief or the deadly lack of institutional control and the full-fledged NCAA investigation that comes with it.

Before the revelation about his vehicle purchase, Sawyer had suggested in a Sports Illustrated interview that Seminole assistant Jim Gladden might have known about an agent-bankrolled shopping spree at a Tallahassee sporting goods store. Gladden denied any such knowledge.

According to Bowden, he and his assistants are guilty of nothing more than perhaps trusting their players too much. If anything, he said, the Florida State program is a victim of its own success.

“It only proves to me that everybody is vulnerable,” he said. “Everybody and anybody is vulnerable. I don’t care how clean you think you are, how clean you try to be, you’re still vulnerable to this type of activity. . . . If we had not been the No. 1 football team in the nation, I don’t think this would have occurred.”

But it did occur, leaving Bowden to explain how a handful of his players allegedly received $6,000 worth of team jackets, basketball shoes, baseball caps and sweatsuits--and yet, no one in the Florida State football program had a clue about it.

“We tell our kids over and over and over, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that,’ ” Bowden said. “So it eventually gets down to somebody’s integrity, the integrity of an individual. I don’t think you can stay on top of somebody. I don’t want to follow them around like the FBI. I’d hate to recruit boys and tell them I’m going to do that.”

Even had he not been reluctant to pry, Bowden said, it was doubtful that players who took part in the alleged shopping spree would have worn their new clothes for the coaches to see. And if a player did happen to stop by the football offices with a new pair of Air Jordans, what was Bowden supposed to do?

“Gee whiz, it’s insulting to tell a young minority kid, ‘Hey, son, how come you got those good-looking shoes? You ain’t like me,’ ” said Bowden. “They’re pretty sensitive to that. You don’t do that.”

Bowden said he hasn’t spoken to any of the players involved in the investigation. He said to do so might give the appearance of impropriety.

However, he has addressed the audio-recording incident involving Bentley, the heavily recruited freshman who claimed he taped the encounter to protect himself against possible allegations of date rape. Bentley later played the tape for three friends.

In a conversation with Bentley’s father, Bowden said he was told the son was merely following instructions.

Recalled Bowden: “When I talked to his dad, his dad said, ‘I’m the one who ought to be charged.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Because I told him to do it. I told him if he had any dates down there, tape it.’ ”

Since the incidents involving Bentley and Charlton, Bowden has received letters from angry Florida State alumni, mainly women. In most cases, the letters call for their permanent dismissal from the Seminole team.

In reply, Bowden has said, “I’m not in the business of ruining a young man’s life,” which is why, at least in Bentley’s case, a one-game suspension appears likely. Asked if he could understand why women might find the Bentley case and the alleged actions of Charlton reprehensible, Bowden said, “I have to be sensitive to that, too. I’m not as sensitive to that as I ought to be because I’m more chauvinistic. If I was the other sex, I’m sure I would be more (upset). But I don’t condone it. I don’t condone it.”

In fact, Bowden said he called a team meeting at the end of spring practice to lecture his players on sex. “(I said), ‘Boys, you can’t do this. You’re not supposed to do this.’ Because I’m a little old-timey on that thing, I gave them a real good talking. I read Scripture.

“It wasn’t two weeks later that these other things popped up. So it makes me think I’ve done everything I can do, but somewhere down the line it gets down to them having to say no.”

With the exception of some trouble in 1980, Bowden’s 18 seasons at Florida State have been relatively blemish-free. “St. Bobby” is what they call him, partly in honor of his won-lost record, partly because his homespun ways have endeared him to fans and foes alike.

But the illicit and sometimes illegal events of the last seven months have tested Bowden’s patience, as well as drawn negative attention to a program accustomed to constant success. No matter what happens, Bowden said he has no intention of forfeiting the Seminoles’ national championship or resigning.

“Heck, no,” he said of possible retirement. “I’d be running away from a problem.”

By his own admission, the alleged payoffs and the charges against Bentley, Charlton and Jackson have “put a shadow” on the national championship season. A program’s reputation must be rebuilt. Philosophies--perhaps Bowden’s hands-off policy--might be reassessed.

The whole thing, Bowden said, reminded him of the story of the wife who found her husband and the maid together in a closet:

“ ‘I’m shocked,” said the wife.

“ ‘No,’ said the husband, ‘you’re embarrassed. We’re shocked.’ ”

So Bowden flinches at every late-night phone call. He gingerly reads the days’ sports section. “I just keep living in fear,” he said.

His 30-city national championship tour completed, Bowden has done his best to reassure the faithful, and vice versa. At the banquet, a booster says she doesn’t have a question. Instead, she wants to thank Bowden for conducting himself “with honor, with grace.”

Bowden thanks her and later issues another apology.

“I sure am sorry about what has happened,” he tells the Texans. “I hope we can learn from this thing. But hey, folks, we’ll survive. Don’t you worry about that, we’ll survive.”