As a football coach, he towered over most.
He won championships, and his players won Heismans, and he ran through opposing coaches with great frequency. If there is a Mount Rushmore of great college coaches, then Bobby Bowden should be on it.
Six years after the fact, however, one question remains.
Was it the South Florida Bulls that fired Bowden?
Oh, they didn’t start the trouble that Bowden encountered in his final days of legend. Already, there was unrest at FSU. A lot of fans simply didn’t believe that Bowden had the right to fashion his own exit despite a diminishing program. And if Bowden had beaten USF, who is to say it would have bought him any more time?
But in a season of disappointments, a 17-7 loss to USF was probably the most embarrassing of all. FSU lost to Florida that year, and to Clemson, and to a ranked Georgia Tech team. But those are respectable losses. Losing to a cross-state opponent, a little-brother of a program playing a backup quarterback, from Tallahassee of all places? That’ll raise the volume of your critics.
That’s what USF was that afternoon. The Bulls were the final argument. The Bulls were grand eye-roll. The Bulls were one more reason to argue against more time for Bowden. They were the final straw.
For heaven’s sake, FSU was ranked No. 18 in the nation. They were at home. They were staggering favorites.
And they lost … by 10.
The defeat did not come on a freak play, or in bad weather, or by a raw call. This was a Bulls’ team the Seminoles never saw coming, shocking one of the big boys of college football. Yes, FSU had seen some slippage. But if you look back at the final days for a low point in Bowden’s career, this was probably it.
Oh, USF used to do this fairly frequently. Auburn. Miami. West Virginia. Louisville. The Bulls never fashioned a great season, but for a singular afternoon, they could play the part of giant-killers. At the time, they had the look of a program that was on its way.
You can make a case that this was the biggest upset of them all for USF, especially when you consider that B.J. Daniels started for injured Matt Grothe. But he threw for 215, and he ran for 126, and the Bulls won convincingly.
These days, Bowden is a statue, and a legend, and all FSU fans can appreciate that. There weren’t other coaches like Bowden, homespun and humble despite his record, accessible and amusing on all afternoons.
But coaching is a tough profession to age in. Critics didn’t find Bowden as funny, or as creative, or as special.
This game, in particular, was hard on Bowden. Daniels, the quarterback for USF, was from FSU’s backyard. FSU didn’t have a pass rush like the Bulls, who had George Selvie and Jason Pierre-Paul.
“They did everything faster than I thought,” FSU head coach Bobby Bowden said. “They whupped us. They’re a lot better than I thought.”
That was one of Bowden’s problems. He was just so humble, so honest. Beat his team’s fanny, and he would say so. But it wasn’t a time when fans wanted to hear plain talk … or watch a plain football team.
The following week, Bowden met with his university president. The Bulls fans were crowing, with a billboard that proclaimed the state’s Big Three had become a Big Four.
The shame of it is, South Florida hasn’t really beaten up anyone since. The Bulls are 27-44 since their win over FSU. FSU has rebounded, going 64-16.
Jim Leavitt, the coach with so much ambition, was fired after that season, too, in the middle of controversy. He won only four more games at USF. The program still has not recovered.
Just a single afternoon, long since passed. Just another small school upsetting a big one.
Looking back, all that changed was everything.
