Bowden Is Perfectly Happy With Seminoles’ Success

Bobby Bowden’s numbers at Florida State are nearly as staggering as former Seminole Deion Sanders’ jukes on a punt return.

The coach whom USC faces Saturday in Tallahassee, hurricane permitting, has led Florida State to 11 consecutive seasons of a No. 4 poll ranking or higher.

Bowden and Penn State’s Joe Paterno are the Sosa and McGwire of college coaches, in a race against time to break Bear Bryant’s major college record of 323 victories.

Paterno, 70, has 301 wins. Bowden, 68, has 283.

USC’s Paul Hackett, for the record, has 16.

Paterno figures to catch Bryant first, but Bowden might ultimately set the bar.

“Now, you tell Joe that I’ve got 22 wins I don’t get,” Bowden said in a recent interview in his Doak Campbell Stadium office.

What?

“My first four years of coaching I got 22 wins I don’t get . . . junior college.”

Bowden broke into full grin.

No, Bobby, the NCAA doesn’t count those “Ws” at South Georgia JC.

“I’m actually ahead of him,” Bowden said playfully. “I’ve got to pull that one on Joe one of these days.”

Bowden’s .786 winning percentage in bowl games (16-4-1) is the highest ever. Only Paterno, with 18, has won more bowl games.

Yet, one nugget still eludes Bowden:

The perfect season.

Knute Rockne, Bryant, Bud Wilkinson, Tom Osborne, Lavell Edwards, Paterno-- most of the greats had at least one.

Bowden has flirted with perfection 10 times in his 32 seasons in Division I. He had consecutive one-loss seasons at the start of his career at Division I-AA Samford and has had eight one-defeat years in 22 seasons at Florida State.

Even Florida State’s national championship season of 1993 was smudged with a defeat against Notre Dame.

If not for a play here or a kick there, especially in those exasperating defeats to Miami in 1987, ‘88, ’92 and ‘94, Bowden might have five or six national titles instead of one.

Florida State was 11-0 when it lost to Oklahoma in the 1980 Orange Bowl and 11-0 when it lost a rematch to Florida in the 1997 Sugar Bowl.

There will be no unbeaten season this year in Tallahassee, either, North Carolina State’s Sept. 12 upset of the Seminoles having taken care of that.

“It hasn’t frustrated me,” Bowden insisted. “Not winning the national championship never bothered me. Eleven and one? I can deal with that, I can survive that. I can put food on the table, they won’t fire me. Now, if I was doing that to stay 6-5, it would frustrate me.”

Like Paterno, Bowden shows no signs of slowing. Retirement is not a consideration.

“I won’t go to the doctor, they may tell me something is wrong,” Bowden said during his conference call with USC reporters this week. “I’d just as soon die on the field as pull weeds in my wife’s garden.”

Sometime next year, Bowden should become the fifth major college coach to reach 300 wins, but he says he is not motivated by milestones.

Bowden, who idolized Alabama’s Bryant while growing up in Birmingham, could catch the Bear in 2001.

“I think if I can get close to 300 it will mean something,” Bowden said. “If I can get there. There’s not many above it. But my goal is not to win so many games. I coach because I love to coach, and I like to take every year and try to win all the games. Two-ninety, 300, whatever, I’d just like to coach successful teams as long as my health is good and I’m able.”

OK, so Bowden isn’t perfect.

But he has been close.

Ten times.

COACH

Should Iowa Coach Hayden Fry quit?

Of the four Division I-A coaches over the age of 65--Fry, Bowden, Paterno and Lavell Edwards--Fry seems the one most likely to leave a mess instead of a legacy.

Fry ranks 10th on the all-time major college win list with 230 victories, but if he doesn’t notch No. 231 at lowly Illinois this week, strike up the drum beat.

Facing his biggest challenge since arriving in Iowa City in 1979, Hayden’s green-as-grass Hawkeyes have already lost to Iowa State, Fry’s first loss to the Cyclones in 16 years, and last week were pummeled at Arizona.

With a Big Ten schedule that includes Wisconsin, Purdue, Michigan and Ohio State, the prospects for a winning season fall slightly short of grim.

Oh, next year, Iowa opens the season against Nebraska.

Iowa hasn’t been to the Rose Bowl since the 1990 season. Fry’s team is getting younger, but he isn’t.

The Chicago Tribune already has called for Fry, 69, to retire with dignity rather than face an unceremonious end, such as, oh, an athletic director leaving a pink-slip message on his answering machine.

Yet Fry, a former Marine, isn’t ready to give up the fight. He notes that Iowa has gone to bowl games the last three seasons, winning two.

“I kind of chuckle when they say the pressure’s on me,” Fry said Tuesday. “I’ve got a long-term contract that rolls over every year. My administration and athletic director have been extremely kind to me. It’s my call. But I can assure you if I don’t feel good about my own coaching, I will retire, I will get out.

“I want to make sure the Iowa program is in real good shape, that we got young men returning, that they don’t have to start over like I have this year. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

This is a delicate situation. The logical man to succeed Fry is Bobby Stoops, the former Iowa player and current Florida defensive coordinator. Stoops is one of the country’s hot coaching prospects, but will he be available when Fry finally steps aside?

It would be nice if Fry could script his finish, handpick his successor and walk away a champion.

But not every career ends like Nebraska’s Tom Osborne’s.

“When you analyze it, there’s not a lot of coaches that really get to quit on their own terms,” Fry said.

PAY ATTENTION

Let’s get this straight:

North Carolina State nearly lost to Ohio, shocked No. 2 Florida State, then lost to Baylor?

Notre Dame beat Michigan by 16, lost to Michigan State, which lost to Oregon by 34?

Duke defeated Northwestern, 44-10, then lost to Florida State by 49?

Iowa State lost to Texas Christian, then thumped Iowa?

Stanford lost by 12 to San Jose State, which lost to Oregon by 55? Then, Stanford beat North Carolina?

Oregon defeated Michigan State by 34, right?

Michigan State beat Notre Dame by 22, right?

Does that mean Oregon would be a 56-point favorite against Notre Dame?

The first month of the college season has been more knee-jerk than Wall Street.

What’s going on here?

No doubt, the 85-scholarship limit has leveled the playing field and made upsets more commonplace.

But the better answer is that the emotions of 18- and 19-year-old football players have become nearly impossible to keep in check.

Michigan State Coach Nick Saban says his players’ attention spans are not unlike those of his own children, ages 7 and 11.

“If they don’t get immediate self-gratification in what they’re doing, they can walk away and do something else,” Saban says. “I know in my house, if you don’t have success shooting baskets, you hit baseballs. If you strike out twice in baseball, you say, ‘Let’s go to the pool,’ and if the water’s too cold, you say, ‘Let’s go hit balls on the driving range,’ and if you don’t hit it past the 150 stakes, you say, ‘I want to go home and play Nintendo.’

“There is never, ever, ‘I’ve got to do this.’ ”

How do you convince a North Carolina State team that has defeated No. 2 Florida State that Baylor on the road might be a problem?

The same Baylor that lost to Oregon State, 27-17?

Turns out you can’t:

Final score: Baylor 33, North Carolina State 30.

Handling the around-the-clock emotional changes of a football team might be the modern coaches’ biggest challenge.

Arizona State, a preseason favorite to contend for the national title, lost a gut-wrenching home opener to Washington on a last-minute touchdown pass.

Season over?

The Sun Devils played like it the next week in a shell-shocking loss at Brigham Young.

Arizona State Coach Bruce Snyder says the Washington defeat still lingers.

“There were players around here talking about, ‘Geez, now we lost the national championship,’ like all was lost,” Snyder said.

TWO-MINUTE DRILL

* So, NFL expansion committee, you think Houston is a great football town? Last weekend, the combined attendance for Northwestern at Rice and UCLA at Houston was 35,811.

* With Texas’ Ricky Williams gaining only 43 rushing yards last week, and Kentucky’s Tim Couch throwing four interceptions against Indiana, and Central Florida’s Daunte Culpepper losing at Purdue, does that not make UCLA quarterback Cade McNown the Heisman front-runner?

* Steve Spurrier’s general lack of interest in kickers ultimately cost the Florida coach when Collins Cooper missed a 32-yard attempt in the Gators’ overtime loss to Tennessee. Florida has won five Southeastern Conference titles and a national championship in the 1990s, but Spurrier’s Gators still have never won a game on a kick.

* Dept. of mistakes: Florida’s 11 lost fumbles after three games are three more than the Gators lost all last season. The 1-2 Arizona State Sun Devils have been penalized 32 times for 309 yards, an average of more than one football field of penalties per game.

* With the Holiday Bowl having locked up the Pacific 10’s No. 2 team, the Western Athletic Conference is scrambling to find a bowl spot for its last champion in the 16-school format. Any takers?

* It isn’t true that the Rose Bowl was the last bowl to sell out to corporate sponsorship. The upstart Humanitarian Bowl, home of the Big West Conference champion, has no sponsor, although it would kill for one.

Wouldn’t the Red Cross be a perfect fit?