If it wasn’t such a Shakespearean tragedy, the saga of Bobby Bowden would be almost humorous.
Caught up in a Florida State academic cheating scandal involving online testing for a music history course, Bowden is attempting to salvage his reputation while at the same time defending his legacy.
Unless it wins an appeal, FSU will vacate 14 football wins, serve four years probation, lose scholarships and face penalties in nine other sports involving 61 athletes.
Although 10 different sports will be sanctioned for their indiscretions, the one that gets red-flagged is the penance Bobby Bowden must pay. Was this by coincidence or was Bowden targeted by the NCAA?
At the heart of the discussion is whether or not Bowden knew about the cheating. In one sense, it’s just as damaging that something like this could go on without his knowledge. Because if Bowden didn’t know, it only plays into the criticism that he’s too far removed, has lost his grip on the program and is therefore unable to assist in maintaining institutional control.
Understandably, most Gator fans are reveling in the misfortunes of FSU and the man who coaches Florida’s biggest instate rival. They love to see pain inflicted on anything Garnet and Gold.
Florida fans, however, should also be reminded that they don’t have to look too far in their own closets to discover the shame of the 1980s cast down on the UF by the Charley Pell/Galen Hall scandals.
Bowden will have turned 80 just 17 days before the 54th meeting between the FSU-Florida on Nov. 28 as he tries for the fifth time to beat Urban Meyer. The cheating incident began in the fall of 2006, lasting through the spring and summers of 2007, so that’s when he’ll have to forfeit the 14 games. At least he won’t have to give back any wins over Florida because he hasn’t had any since Meyer has been in Gainesville.
At the moment, without the forfeitures, Bowden trails his good friend Joe Paterno by one victory with 382 victories. If the NCAA punishment is upheld in the face of an appeal, the FSU coach will be knocked back behind Paterno by 15 victories – an insurmountable lead for an 80-year-old to overcome.
Taking victories away from an aging man who is running out of time in a quest to become the game’s all-time winningest coach is the college football equivalent of Chinese water torture. And it sends a loud message by making the punishment about him.
“It’s not about me,” said Bowden, speaking for the first time this week about the punishment meted out by the NCAA.
“It was too stiff. I think that Dr. (T.K.) Wetherell is right in making that appeal. The thing about it is that it isn’t about me, and that is all I really hear from commentators about it. It’s about all of our coaches and our teams.
“I think everyone is putting it on my wins. That is just part of it. The whole crux of the thing to me is does the punishment fit the crime? I think that is the thing you have to find the answer to right there.”
Depending on where you sit, the punishment could have been considered too harsh or too light. Bowden is wrong about one thing, though: It very much is about him losing the victories because the NCAA is making it that. Bowden is the face of FSU athletics and when a kingdom falls it is not the princes who get beheaded.
Over the years, Bowden has always distanced himself from any misconduct and pleaded innocent to any wrongdoing. But he is the head coach. If his players are involved in a massive cheating scandal for a year, he or somebody on his staff should have known about it or been made aware of it.
A friend of mine who has known and written about Bowden since he first came to Tallahassee, always jokes that Bobby is like “a piano player in a house of ill repute who keeps seeing the beautiful ladies walk upstairs with strange men – but just keeps on playing and pays no attention.”
If we can’t say for sure that Bowden didn’t know, then we can say he should have.
And how many times have we heard this contention before from guilty people headed to jail: ‘’There are different degrees of doing something wrong.’’
Isn’t that what my Logic professor in college called, “argument of the beard?”
It was absurd for Bowden to then use a minor speeding violation as a comparison – “You can go five miles over the speed limit. That’s one thing. Or you can go 50 miles over the speed limit, and that’s dangerous.”
Well, Bobby, a felony is still a felony.
His argument that the punishment didn’t fit the crime is a specious one, especially when he compares it to “killing a flea with a hammer.” Bobby needs to change his bifocals.
What may look like a flea to him could appear to be hard-charging wild elephant to others.
I doubt seriously this will impugn the reputation of Bowden, but it will make it nearly impossible to surpass Paterno. Even then he’ll still go down as one of the greatest college coaches in the game – respected by almost every coach.
Including Urban Meyer.
Though he often pokes fun at “that school out West,” Meyer has a deep abiding respect for Bowden. This I know for sure, because found out from an experience I had with Meyer in the final edit of “Urban’s Way.”
The Florida coach changed almost nothing in the final manuscript, but one thing he didn’t want to do is anything that would sound disrespectful to Bowden. The chapter on the Florida-FSU game was originally entitled by me as “Something for Bobby.”
“I don’t want to do anything disrespectful to coach Bowden,” Meyer told me. “I have a very high regard for him. So that needs to be changed.” Instead, we changed the chapter title to, “That was a WOW!,” referring to Tim Tebow’s two magnificent plays in the first half.
The flip side of this NCAA probation is that when Florida’s program got in trouble, it afforded Bowden and FSU with the chance to maker a quantum leap.
What’s pertinent today is that because of that fall from grace, the School out West benefited greatly, filling its coffers with the plum five-star athletes from around Florida. The loss of scholarships and denial of bowl participation had a big impact on recruiting. And it didn’t help that again in 1989 Florida was hit with another probation, after which Galen Hall was fired and Steve Spurrier was hired.
One day while interviewing Charley Pell for a book, he confessed to me: “If we hadn’t screwed up, FSU would never have caught us.”
Boy was he right.
Over a period of four years, from 1986 through 1989, the Gators struggled to records of 6-5, 6-6, 7-5 and 7-5. That record of 26-21 pales in comparison to the 39-8-1 posted by FSU with seasons of 7-4-1, 11-1, 11-1 and 10-2.
One could argue that good fortune led to banner recruiting classes and catapulted the Seminoles into the limelight, sending them on their way toward national prominence.
Now it has come full circle. Even though there will be a minimum of lost scholarships, the trouble in Tallahassee coupled with the slide of the program – and Meyer’s hot streak – could launch the Florida football program into the untouchable zone.
I believe there is an old axiom about something going around and coming around that might be applicable here. It’s a lot older axiom than that one about killing fleas with a hammer.