bobby-bowden-statue.jpg

The memorial service for legendary Florida State coach Bobby Bowden will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. ET at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center in Tallahassee, Florida. The celebration of life will be available streaming on seminoles.com

Bowden, who died Sunday morning at age 91 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, coached the Seminoles from 1976-2009, building the program into a national power by amassing a 304-97-4 record over that span. He won 12 ACC titles and two national championships during his tenure. FSU's national titles under Bowden came in 1993 and 1999, and he likely would have won more conference titles if not for the fact that FSU was independent for the first 16 years of his tenure.

As CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd noted in his reflection on Bowden's life and career, Florida State became a national program by playing anybody, anywhere, anytime. The Seminoles got so good at it they made it a tradition of digging up a patch of sod from the victim's home stadium after a win. They brought back the horticulture and planted it outside Doak Campbell as a tradition. The "sod cemetery" exists to this day, a sign of how Bowden built a former teacher's college brick-by-brick into a national powerhouse.