Colleges

Bowden's love of a lifetime

The FSU coach grew up idolizing Alabama. At 77, the feeling endures.

By Brian Landman, Times Staff Writer
Published September 26, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Florida State University] Florida State coach Bobby Bowden reviews a scrapbook about Alabama football he compiled as a child. He has kept the scrapbook on a bookshelf behind his desk.

TALLAHASSEE - Back in 1945, Bobby Bowden had a daily ritual.

He'd pore through his hometown newspapers in Birmingham, really anything he could find, for any mention and any picture about the University of Alabama football team.

"It was the team I followed; the team I cried over when they lost," the 77-year-old Florida State coach said with a boyish glint in his eyes. "I kept up with Auburn, too, but not like Alabama."

So, he'd meticulously cut those precious items out and paste them on the lined, 8- by 11-inch paper of a three-ring notebook. He stopped once he entered high school, when his scrapbook had swelled to about 2 inches in thickness.

Those pages represented a 15-year-old boy's first love.

Maybe that's why through all the years, through all the football memories of his own that are worthy of being saved for posterity, he's hung onto this scrapbook, just this one scrapbook, and keeps it safely tucked away in the bookcase behind his office desk.

"Oh, gosh, here's ol' Vaughn Mancha," Bowden said flipping carefully through the yellowing pages. "Every now and then he'll come over here and I'll show it to him."

"That's all we used to talk about - Alabama, Alabama, Alabama," said Mancha, 85, a former Alabama All-American who went on to become the athletic director at FSU. "That's why this is a hell of a game for him."

For the first time as a head coach, Bowden will go against the team he's loved for a lifetime as the Seminoles 2-1 face the No. 22-ranked Crimson Tide (3-1) on Saturday before an expected record crowd of more than 85,000 in Jacksonville.

"To me," he said, "it will be meaningful."

After graduating from Woodlawn High in January 1949, no one who had even casual contact with Bowden had to ask him where he planned to continue his academic and athletic career.

"There wasn't but one place I was going to go," he said.

But he stayed just one semester at Alabama before returning home. He wanted to marry his high school sweetheart, Ann Estock and, at Alabama, he couldn't receive a scholarship if he'd said, I do.

"The coaches tried to get me to come back but I made up my mind," he said. "As I look back, my life might have gone one direction if I stayed and it might have gone in the direction it did because I went to Howard College."

A winning path

The latter direction hasn't been too shabby.

He flourished in football at tiny Howard (now Samford) as a scrambling, improvising quarterback, and off the field, he and Ann have been quite the team.

Bowden became the coach at Howard in 1959, one year after Paul "Bear" Bryant arrived in Tuscaloosa.

Proximity meant opportunity and Bowden wrote to Bryant, already larger than life, and asked if he could pick his brain sometime, anytime. Bryant graciously told him to come by, allowing him to attend spring practices and meetings.

"He was always good to me," Bowden said.

With the exception of his father, no man had more of lasting impact on him than Bryant, Bowden says. Walk into his office and you find proof of that: There's a couple of busts of Bryant behind glass in the massive bookcase behind his desk. There's a several-foot high statue of Bryant in an adjacent bookcase. There's a Bryant autobiography on his desk. There's a collectible Coke bottle with Bryant's face (and signature houndstooth hat) on it in red and white. The team meeting room is "Bear's" den; a sign quotes the old ball coach:

"I don't care how much talent a team has, if the boys don't think tough, practice tough and live tough, how can they play tough on Saturday?"

It's his admiration and affection for Bryant that leaves him uncomfortable whenever someone mentions that he surpassed Bryant's win total (323) to start the 2002 season.

"I still can't hardly believe it because I idolized him so much I never thought I'd come close to any of his records," said Bowden said, the all-time major college wins leader with 368. "And that one especially."

A dream job

While Bowden didn't picture passing Bryant, he sure dreamed of following him and winding up as the coach at Alabama.

In late 1986, it seemed to be coming true. Ray Perkins left Alabama to join the Tampa Bay Bucs and several prominent alumni assured Bowden that the job was his. Bowden happened to be in Birmingham for the All-American Bowl and had a clandestine meeting with school president Joab Thomas to "wrap it up."

"I was being interviewed for the Samford University job at the same time," said son Terry, who dropped his dad off at the meeting. "We both thought we would be coaching in Alabama."

But instead of getting a contract, Bobby Bowden spent the next hour being questioned by a search committee.

"When I first asked to have him on the list, I really thought he was the guy," Thomas told the Times a few years ago. "I surely did. ... We had a world of respect for Bobby Bowden. I was sort of surprised he didn't get a stronger response from the committee. Another time, we may have jumped at Bobby Bowden."

Instead, Alabama hired Bill Curry.

"I think Bobby would have been very successful at Alabama," said Gene Stallings, a former Bryant assistant and one of the staff members who spent a lot of time with Bowden back in the day. "But at the same time, he's not Coach Bryant."

Bryant was a state treasure. Although he died about a month after his retirement following the 1982 season, something that Bowden admits affects his own decisionmaking about his career (there's only one other big event after retiring, he often jokes), Bryant remains very much alive in the hearts and minds of fans.

"People in Alabama love Coach Bryant," said Stallings, who became Alabama's coach in 1990 and won a national title in 1992, "and have just tolerated the rest of us."

Alabama called Bowden again in 1990 and he took less than an hour to say, thanks, but "Nah, it's too late."

"That's probably the best thing that ever happened to me," Bowden said of not leaving FSU for Alabama. "Nobody will ever replace Bear Bryant. I don't care how many coaches they get up there. That's Bear's. This is mine down here."

You can bet there's plenty of 15-year-olds who have the scrapbook to prove it.

Brian Landman can be reached at landman@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3347.

[Last modified September 25, 2007, 23:40:27]