Bowden Takes Long Look at Conditioning

In 42 years of coaching football, a quarter of a century of them as Florida State’s head coach, Bobby Bowden has never seen anything like this year of tragedy in the sport. As he sat in a trophy-filled office Friday morning and contemplated his opening address to his 26th Seminole team later in the day, he said he is frightened.

“It scares you to death,” he said.

What could he say to reassure his team in the wake of a series of player deaths, the first of which claimed Florida State linebacker Devaughn Darling in February?

Darling, who collapsed after a supervised off-season workout, was also the first fatality on a Bowden-coached team. The cause of death remains undetermined.

“I ain’t God,” Bowden said. “I can’t control who lives and who doesn’t. All I can do is to try and prevent this from ever happening again.

“In the past, we coached under Spartan conditions. We always felt we could outphysical and outcondition any other team.

“Now, all of a sudden, we are thinking in ways we never thought before. We don’t want another kid to go down. We are looking inward. We are looking at our program. How did this thing slip up on us? We are not doing anything different than we have done for the last 25 years.

“I don’t know what it is, the weather, the fast food, the health of the players, the fact that they don’t always come in prepared. If players come out unprepared and start two-a-days in that hot sun, they can die out there. So I used to write them a letter, telling them to start working out at the hottest time of day, so that when they came out here, they’d be OK. I don’t even know if I can write that anymore without being sued.”

As the players began to file in Friday on the first day they could report for fall football practices, head trainer Randy Oravetz also prepared to address them, reminding them again of safety precautions they can take.

He presented them with a printed list of 33 substances banned from consumption by the NCAA. Among those substances is ephedrine, which has been linked to serious ailments and even death in athletes. Traces of it were found in Darling’s bloodstream during an autopsy.

Oravetz had tried to revive Darling until an ambulance arrived.

“It shocked me,” Oravetz said. “It rocked me to my foundation.”

Bowden takes pride in the fact that he was one of the first coaches to permit water breaks in an era when that was perceived as a sign of weakness. He brags about the fact NFL teams praise the Seminole program for its success in preparing players for the rigors of professional football.

He cautions that a failure to properly condition an athlete for the battles he will face on the field could result in injury.

“You slack up too much, you’re going to let the other team win,” he said. “And then they’ll hire a new coach. The players don’t want to slack up. They want to be winners.

“And you can make all the adjustments in the world and a player still might go down if he has some defect.”

But, at 71, Bowden is willing to change with the perilous times. Darling died after a session of mat drills, a highly taxing program designed to keep players in shape in the off season. He collapsed in the seventh of 10 scheduled sessions. The other three were canceled and, Bowden vowed, subtle changes would be made beginning Friday afternoon, with more breaks allowed and more concern shown for exhausted players.

“Sometimes you have kids who say they are exhausted, but are crying wolf,” Oravetz said. “It doesn’t matter. They may cry wolf nine times, but, on the 10th time, this might be the one.”

Before they took the field, some players acknowledged they share the concern of their coach and trainer.

“I’m scared,” offensive tackle Ray Willis said. “But you have to know your body and be able to tell yourself, enough is enough.”

The players were scheduled to run 16 110-yard sprints in the early afternoon. But as they began to run across the manicured field, threatening clouds burst and jagged bolts of lightning split the Florida sky.

Tempt the fates?

Not a chance.

The sprint session was quickly canceled and the players were shepherded to cover. Nobody protested.

Facing his team in the late afternoon, Bowden quoted from the Bible.

“Am I my brother’s keeper? Yes you are,” he told his players. “I really want you to watch out for each other.”

Yet amid the sadness and trepidation generated by Darling’s death, at least one player dived into the first day of practice inspired by Darling.

Michael Boulware, who had been penciled in as a weakside linebacker, will move to Darling’s spot on the strong side.

“I’m living his dream,” Boulware said. “When we learned he died, this place exploded. We were hurt bad. We were hurt very bad. But one thing I will take from him is that he never quit. And no matter what comes in my life, I won’t quit until I pass out like he did. He gave everything he had. What a great way to go. He made his mark on my life.”

And, Boulware insists, the memory of seeing Darling collapsed on the floor of the gym won’t play on his mind as he pushes himself harder and harder through this season.

“If it’s my time to go,” Boulware said, “there’s no way around it. I really don’t worry about it. I could die in a plane crash. I could die in a car crash. I could die on the football field. It’s all in God’s hands.”

Today, weather permitting, the players will put on their helmets, complete with a memorial patch for Darling, try to put aside their feelings and their fears, and, under the more watchful eyes of their coaches and trainers and parents and classmates and fans, try to get back to the business of running and sweating and hitting and putting their bodies in harm’s way.

That’s what they’ve always done. Scared or inspired, those here Friday are ready to keep on doing it.

“I figure if we can just get in two full weeks of practice, we’ll get over the hump,” Bowden said.

He didn’t say it with much conviction.