Dynasties Past and Present Clash in Tonight’s BCS Title Game

The coach is 71, the quarterback is 28, and the offensive coordinator is leaving to coach the University of Georgia.

Is this the end of the Tallahassee dynasty as we know it and the beginning of another Norman conquest?

Tonight’s bowl championship series national title game between No. 1 Oklahoma (12-0) and No. 3 Florida State (11-1) in the Orange Bowl at Pro Player Stadium could signal a changing of the guards . . . and the centers . . . and the trophies.

In basketball, the Lakers passed the end of the 1980s to the Detroit Pistons, who passed the 1990s along to the Chicago Bulls.

Tonight’s game sort of has that transitory feel.

“You’re the only team living in a dynasty,” Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden said he told his team. “ ‘Don’t let it end. Don’t let it end.’ This is something we are aware of. We hope we can keep it alive.”

Florida State is wrapping up more than a decade’s worth of unprecedented success. After years of near misses, Bowden finally won his first national title in 1993 and has flirted since with several others.

This is Florida State’s third consecutive national title appearance and the fourth in the last five years.

After losing the first BCS title game in 1998 to Tennessee, a game star quarterback Chris Weinke missed because of a neck injury, Florida State rebounded to defeat Virginia Tech last season in the Sugar Bowl and finish 12-0.

Last season, Bowden kept an empty picture frame on his office desk for the team photo of his first unbeaten team.

That goal fulfilled, Bowden stuck another empty frame on his desk this year, hoping to fill it with a photo of his first team to repeat as champions.

“I’m always looking for something to motivate the boys with,” Bowden said.

This, though, could be Bowden’s last stand.

There are 25 seniors on this season’s squad, among them Weinke, tailback Travis Minor, three offensive linemen, the tight end and seven of nine starters on defense.

In the five-year scholarship cycle, Florida State’s seniors have amassed a 56-5 record, their 91.8% winning mark ranking as best in school history.

“I believe there have been eight dynasties through the years of college football, and we’re the only running dynasty at this time,” senior Florida State center Jarad Moon said. “But we know coming into this game that we’re only going to be remembered for our last game. That’s going to be our legacy.”

The benchmark of Bowden’s program has been its unparalleled consistency.

Florida State has finished the last 13 seasons ranked fourth or higher in the final Associated Press poll and has not lost more than two games in a season since the 7-4-1 1986 season.

Bowden’s greatness has been measured in his ability to restock his roster without missing a beat. His pipelines in the state are oil-refinery deep and, like Joe Paterno at Penn State, Bowden has been able to keep his staff together.

For the second consecutive season, though, Bowden is losing an important assistant. Last season, Chuck Amato left to become coach at North Carolina State. Now, offensive coordinator Mark Richt is leaving to coach at Georgia.

“I’m lucky I haven’t lost more than I have,” Bowden said of his coaches. “We’ll replace them with good people. Nothing lasts forever.”

Including coaching icons.

Bowden shows no sign of slowing, has no plan to retire and, as usual, will boast one of the nation’s most talented rosters next season.

But it will be untested.

“Like I tell the alums, I’d rather have inexperienced skill than experienced no skill,” Bowden said.

He has said losing would eventually chase him from the game, but he’s dropping hints that he’d even be willing to stick out a subpar year.

“I don’t think at my age I could stand a lot of losses, you know?” Bowden said. “Now, does that mean if you have a losing year or don’t have a great year, like you’re having now, will you get out then? No. I think if that happens, I would like to try to rectify it the next year. Then, if I couldn’t, then, it’ll be just some young guy taking my place.”

Florida State’s experience is the reason the Seminoles are double-digit favorites against top-ranked and unbeaten Oklahoma.

To every season, turn, turn, turn.

Twenty-one years ago, Oklahoma was the superpower and Florida State the upstart.

In the 1980 Orange Bowl, Barry Switzer’s Sooners crushed Bowden’s Seminoles, 24-7.

The next year, Oklahoma and Florida State met in an Orange Bowl rematch. Bowden thought he had the better team, but lost, 18-17.

Bowden didn’t have yet what it took to beat Switzer, and a lot of that sentiment may be driving the oddsmakers this season.

You must admire the Sooners’ spunk.

When quarterback Josh Heupel was asked if the Seminoles’ experience in national title games would be an advantage tonight, Heupel huffed, “They haven’t played us in the national championship game.”

But the sense is that it is not quite time for the Sooners and Coach Bob Stoops.

Success has come too quickly, only two years removed from the worst four-year stretch in Oklahoma football history.

Stoops is what Bowden was. Stoops is 40, hungry, ready to pounce. The Oklahoma coaching staff looks like a boys’ choir; toddlers roam the offices as if it were a day-care center.

Stoops has “family nights” during the season so that his coaches, at least one night a week, can watch their babies grow up.

You sense the clock ticking on Bowden and time standing still for Stoops.

You think Stoops can afford to wait and that Bowden cannot.

You think Bowden will win this game, but that Stoops will win the next one, and perhaps the next. And that another circle will have come full.

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