FSU gives Bowden the ultimate sendoff -- a victory

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Eighty years young and having coached in, ahem, parts of seven different decades, Bobby Bowden was just getting warmed up.

Roughly 45 minutes had passed since his coaching swan song had ended at the Gator Bowl on Friday, yet he leaned back in his chair, adjusted the microphone, and launched into another comical anecdote relating to his colorful career. He was just getting started.

Bowden was holding court and telling tales, probably for the last time, and the audience was rightly lapping up every word of it. It takes a spell to wrap up a career that began in 1959, after all.

His wife of 56 years, patiently seated nearby, could see it was time to bring the hook. Ann Bowden stepped onto the podium, planted a soft kiss on her husband's cheek, and told him, "Time to go home, baby."

In unison, the eyes of about 200 people got a shade wetter, and an equal number of throats a tad more constricted. With that, one of the most illustrious careers of college football's modern era came to an emotional close. Typical of his career, Bowden managed to send 'em off wanting more.

Before a bowl-record 84,129 fans, Florida State spanked favored West Virginia 33-21 and sent the old man into retirement with an emphatic, energizing and deserved victory, the 389th of his colorful career.

He went out in classic Bowdenesque style, cracking self-deprecating jokes, bending a few facts intentionally to entertain listeners, and mixing in more brutal honestly than most coaches would offer over an entire season.

"I'm interested in this retirement business," he cracked. "I don't have to set my alarm anymore. I can sleep in when I want. I'm ready to look for a new job."

Even the last laugh was on us. Everybody figured Bowden would get carried off on his shield, especially when favored West Virginia jumped to a 14-3 lead. Instead, he got carried off on his players' shoulders, a hero's exit.

"They must have sent the littlest guys we had," Bowden cracked. "They couldn't even lift me up."

No worries. For any college football fan who appreciates what Bowden has meant in Florida and the Southeast, the day was uplifting enough for everyone. It began with a scene that Bowden said nearly caused him to cry -- the appearance of an estimated 350 former players, who joined fans as Bowden led the team in a walk into the stadium before the game.

Roughly 4,000 fans braved a driving rain and 50-degree temperatures some 2 1/2 hours before kickoff, a group that included Chris Weinke, who watched the parade procession that passed before him with both a warm feeling in his heart and a lump in his throat.

Miserable weather or not, fans turned out in dripping droves to give him one last loud, symbolic salute. Which, this being FSU, came in the sidearm form of a thousand tomahawk chops. Weinke, who quarterbacked the team to the 1999 national title and won the 2000 Heisman Trophy, was one of the ex-Seminole players who was on hand for the legendary coach's last stand.

Weinke spotted a T-shirt on a rain-soaked fan that served as an epitaph of sorts for one of the longest-tenured coaches in the game's modern history.

"That shirt says it all, 'The End of an Era,'" he said. "Because it totally is. It's a sad day for college football."

It was a spectacularly bittersweet moment for anybody associated with the program, which has gradually skidded sideways since Weinke's era ended nearly a decade ago. Bowden, stubborn yet cracking wise to the end, has finally been pushed aside after a 6-6 regular season. When the coach learned he would be leading the team's processional walk into the stadium as prelude to his final game, he joked, "As long as it don't lead to the cemetery. Make sure that thing leads to the stadium."

He arrived in an unmarked police vehicle, siren blaring and lights flashing. It was a Chevy SUV, painted midnight black with tinted windows to match, so, knowing Bowden, he was probably making hearse jokes.

Cheryl Simmons, a 52-year-old housewife from Thomasville, Ga., stood along the metal rail erected to keep fans from mobbing Bowden during his grand entrance, with a hand-lettered sign reading, "God Bless Bobby." Her garnet-colored sweatshirt was soaked to the core.

"He's just an amazing man," she said.

Many of her brethren were probably still hung over from the previous night's revelry, but they braved the cold for their coach, reaffirming that the unpretentious Bowden is an iconic figure in many ways to many folks. In an era when idolizing sports figures is a dangerous proposition -- see: Tiger Woods -- Bowden does not have a disingenuous bone in his body.

"It's hard for people who don't know Bobby to understand that, because we're so used to other people disappointing us these days," Weinke said. "What you see is what you get. Not one ounce of that has changed since the day I first met him."

That was back in 1989. There were plenty of familiar faces in the gauntlet of garnet and gold that Bowden toured entering the stadium. The players included NFL legend Derrick Brooks and former quarterback Danny Kanell. Deion Sanders and Warrick Dunn also attended the game.

"I'd be here in rain, sleet, snow, you name it, for coach Bowden," Kanell said.

Like the mailman, Bowden always delivered -- at least until recently. From a purely football standpoint, the school's decision to drop Bowden was defensible. The circumstances were a bit brusque and Bowden is still sore about it, but clearly, the program was not improving. In fact, defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews' unit hasn't tackled anybody all season and the early recruiting class was mediocre at best. Another year under Bowden wouldn't have accomplished much, other than letting him finish on his own terms.

Bobby Bowden and wife of 56 years, Ann, take in the Gator Bowl's pregame sights and sounds. (US Presswire)

In fact, since the school announced last month that Jimbo Fisher would take over as coach in 2010, the school has picked up several key commitments, and even stolen away the state's top prospect, receiver Matt Elam who decommitted from Florida and said Thursday that he would attend FSU instead.

Still, the crazy paradox in the Sunshine State at the moment is priceless. Urban Meyer, having stress-related issues at age 45 at rival Florida, is talking about quitting. Bowden, at 80, wants to keep on trucking.

"I've been around coaches where their job means everything to them," Bowden said this week. "I've always thought those coaches better be careful or ulcers or nervous breakdowns are going to get them.

"You see so many coaches resign because they get burned out. Well, you can't burn old Bobby out. I have tried to keep coaching in perspective. I've never made football my god."

Bowden plans, among other things, to hit the rubber-chicken circuit and give motivational speeches as a means of keeping busy. He always could talk a hole in your head. In fact, he's one of the most endearing personalities of the past quarter-century, a coach who innately could disarm the media and grumbling fans with a timely one-liner or self-deprecating anecdote.

Bowden was only half-kidding when he said he needs to keep working.

"I am land poor," he laughed. "I bought a lot of land and it ain't worth crap."

Mostly, what he touched turned golden on the football field. But his charisma is why he won over a thousand-fold as many fans as he won games. Bowden is so ridiculously old school, so grandfatherly, it's downright charming. The longtime radio voice of the FSU program, Gene Deckerhoff, was asked if he could recall the funniest thing Bowden ever offered on his coach's show, which often was filled with corny, folksy fare. Deckerhoff said it happened a few weeks ago during Bowden's weekly show, after he'd listed all the outlets that fans could use to follow the program, including the various TV and radio networks, Internet sites or via Twitter.

Deckerhoff spontaneously turned to Bowden, who doesn't even use e-mail and has been coaching since before the advent of the 8-track, and asked, "Coach Bowden, have you ever Twittered?"

Bowden laughed and said, "I might, in my sleep."

Some might crack that his biggest shortcoming was falling asleep at the wheel at times, since FSU had some fairly high-profile setbacks with both the Tallahassee cops and NCAA authorities over the years. One prominent former rival coach once compared Bowden to a "piano player in a whore house." As in, Bobby kept his head down and plunked away, oblivious to all around him.

Regardless of the game's outcome, Friday was almost exclusively about celebrating a man whose career included two national titles, 22 bowl wins and a pair of Heisman players. As such, given the emotion also involved, it was hard to summarize 44 coaching seasons in succinct fashion.

"The old man's swan song and what he's meant to the game?" said Ryan Sprague, a starter on the 1999 championship team and one of the brightest kids ever to wear the FSU uniform. "The fact that football matters in Florida, that people pay huge sums of money to broadcast the games, that there are huge rivalries, is all because of Bowden's influence."

It's been noted several times that Bowden and Penn State coach Joe Paterno, whose team was playing 150 miles down the road in Orlando on Friday, are the last of a breed. With the money involved in BCS circles and top coaches pulling in $4 million annually, there's no chance a coach would be allowed to remain at the same post for three decades.

"No question, which is why we probably won't know until 20 years from now what the breadth of his influence really was," Sprague said.

Here's a decent indication of what the Alabama native meant to so many over his tenure. Earlier this week, 35 members of the 1975 team at West Virginia, who had played on Bowden's final Mountaineers team before he took over at FSU the following year, showed up in Jacksonville to watch practice and reminisce. Bowden did likewise as he walked into the stadium and heard the fight songs of WVU and FSU.

"I couldn't help but get nostalgic," he said.

In keeping with school tradition, FSU mascot Chief Osceola rode onto the field before kickoff aboard his steed, Renegade. But this time, the chief gave his flaming spear to Bowden at midfield and the coach theatrically raised it overhead before spiking it into the turf. Even the West Virginia fans, clearly mindful of Bowden's legacy, roared their approval.

The Mountaineers tried to stick a fork in Bowden. But losing was not considered an option.

"There wasn't any other alternative," FSU quarterback E.J. Manuel said. "When I went to bed last night, I prayed that I could just do my job to help him get this last victory."

Manuel was named the MVP of the Gator Bowl, but the man of the hour was indisputable. It was quite an entrance and quite an exit, huh? Plenty of folks with thick skins got verklempt at some point.

"It was an amazing sight," Weinke said of the pregame march into the stadium, getting a bit choked up. "But sad in a way, too, you know?"

Cry not for me, Bowden said.

"Am I at peace?" he said. "Yeah, I got 80 years in. I wanted 81. Ann and I, we know, OK, there's no more. To be honest with you, I've got to learn how to retire. For 57 years, I've always had a paycheck."

Bowden said he plans to learn how to actually use a computer, not to mention how to operate his cell phone beyond just turning it off and on.

"To be honest," he said, "it's going to be exciting."