College football and Florida State lose a treasure with passing of champion coach Bobby Bowden
A multitude of college football fans must have thought it on Sunday morning, or said it with reverence when they heard the news:
Dadgumit.
Bobby Bowden has died.
It was that homespun catch-phrase that conveyed the Southern roots that ran so deep and real. It was what he’d say because his religious faith wouldn’t let him swear.
Robert Cleckler Bowden, champion American coach, College Football Hall of Famer and the man who made the Florida State Seminoles matter, passed away at age 91, at home, surrounded by family. He is survived by his wife of more than 70 years, Ann, and by six children, eight grandkids and a legion of FSU fans to whom he willed a thousand memories.
Three sons followed Bowden into coaching. Terry, the new coach at the University of Louisiana-Monroe, took leave from the school to be with his father at the end.
The family’s patriarch had survived hospitalization for COVID-19 in October 2020, but had been diagnosed in July with terminal pancreatic cancer. He finally succumbed to the only opponent nobody beats: Time. He liked to joke that after retirement there was only one big event left in a man’s life.
He wasn’t kidding.
The old coach plied his trade until he was 80, through the 2009 season, before finally retiring -- nudged gently there before he wished, like Don Shula was in Miami. Bowden’s 379 total wins are the second-most ever in major college football, behind only Joe Paterno. Few coaches have been more universally liked and respected than the squire of Tallahassee beneath the wide-brimmed straw hat.
In his 34 seasons of Seminoles stability, the UM Hurricanes had eight different head coaches in that span, Carl Selmer to Randy Shannon. FSU today? The Seminoles are on their fifth different head coach since 2017.
In FSU’s 22 seasons before Bowden took over, there were zero finishes in the final polls, and one bowl win. The ‘Noles were 4-29 in the three seasons just before Bowden took over.
The man who saved the program had two losing seasons in 34 years. Two.
The grand old coaches of a certain age are peeling away, leaving us by degrees.
The NFL and Miami Dolphins great, Shula, passed away at age 90 in May 2020. Miami Hurricanes great and Bowden’s college contemporary Howard Schnellenberger passed away in March of this year after surviving a subdural hematoma in a fall at home in July 2020.
Bowden won national championships for FSU in 1993 and 1999 but was perhaps just as well known for the heartache of near misses, twice finishing ranked second in the final polls and five times ranked third. “Wide right” became an almost official lament, with late field goals made or missed (five against the University of Miami) spelling disappointment for Bowden.
Still, it was the unparalleled run of consistent excellence across 14 straight seasons, 1987-2000, that might have been his career’s hallmark. His teams had 10-plus wins each of those years in a row, and finished in the polls’ final top five every time.
Bowden’s faith was a signature of his integrity and he called upon it many times.
In 2004 a car accident took the life of a former son-in-law and a grandson. Another grandson was killed in a car accident in 2013. His eldest son, Steve, was sentenced in 2003 in an investment fraud case -- his father reportedly among his victims. His father forgave him. In 2014 they collaborated on a book “The Wisdom of Faith.”
“He really is the person in public that he is at home,” Steve once said of his dad. “And he is the person at home that he is in public.”
Ann and Bobby, childhood sweethearts from Birmingham, Alabama, were married in 1949. He was 19, she 16. Bobby borrowed $20 from a friend and they drove 120 miles to Rising Fawn, Georgia to get married at the home of the local justice of the peace. They kept it a secret from family for awhile.
In 1976 they moved into a brick home in Tallahassee the year Bobby took over the team. It was a neighborhood with moss hanging from big oaks. The home phone number was listed. They never moved. More than 70 years they were wed.
“Marriage is give and take,” Bobby said in a 2019 interview. “I don’t think one of you needs to dominate. You give in to her some, and she gives into you some. It’s not a one-way street.”
Said Ann, of the secret: “Luckily we like each other!”
Bobby would be asleep at 8, up at 4, reading from the family Bible over a cup of coffee every morning. There was weekly therapy for hip issues.
The extended family would hold annual reunions at the Bowden’s beach house in Panama City, Florida. They had already been planning, until very recently, a big party for the couple’s 75th wedding anniversary in 2024.
Bobby would spend his retirement reading about World War II, watching westerns, animal shows, Hallmark movies and football, of course. Football. Always.
Ann’s famous banana pudding was about all he loved more.
Bobby Bowden, 1929-2021.
R.I.P. to a champion coach and authentic man.
This story was originally published August 8, 2021 at 7:10 AM with the headline "College football and Florida State lose a treasure with passing of champion coach Bobby Bowden."
