One more game

I like to tell people I arrived in Tallahassee the same year as Coach Bobby Bowden. Even though I had grown up in Gainesville as a Gator, I made an easy transition. As a North Floridian, I already knew college football was king. Bowden made the 1970s an exciting time to be in Tallahassee: the upset victories against Top 10 opponents, the crowds shutting down the Tennessee Street "Strip," Renegade, and the war chant. This was all before that incredible 1987-2000 run of 10-win, Top 4 finishes. Perhaps because I remember that period and even have an inkling of what life was like for FSU football before Bowden, I'm much more charitable to Bowden than some of the younger people in our KY Seminole Club, who were out for Bowden going back to the Jeff Bowden as offensive coordinator period. Some of my best and worst memories are tied to FSU football. Watching in Tallahassee on TV FSU's incredible comeback against the Gators, where we went from being down 28-3 to tying 31-31, with Danny Kanell. Watching by myself in Brooklyn and Washington Heights several depressing Wide Right etc. games against Miami and that 1981 Orange Bowl when we led Oklahoma with 1 minute to go. Bittersweet classroom memories also link to Bowden and the football team. I remind folks that I taught three starters on the 1999 national championship team - Social Inequality, a class in which the two African American players - one of them later an NFL star - were fairly radical - without explaining how - perhaps a tiny bit with the looming presence of those players - that was one of the worst classroom experiences of my life. I also began my job talk at what became my first tenure-track job - ill-fated in some ways - at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul - with a quip about Chris Weinke, the Heisman Trophy winner who led that 1999 team and was from St. Thomas' nearby feeder high school, Cretin-Durham High School. I never met Bowden - though I've driven by his house in Killearn - but I have heard him speak. Memorably, one of my big business newspaper sources, J.T. Williams, introduced him, as he warmed up the crowd at what is - for now - called Bobby Bowden Field at Doak Campbell Stadium - for Johnny Cash and June Carter and then Billy Graham at my only Billy Graham revival. I've quipped for years that as long as Bowden was still coaching, my Mom could still work. Unfortunately, I fear the Bowden debate this fall in Tallahassee - that has centered on whether people in their late 70s can still work - may have focused unneeded attention on Mom. Either way, it may be time. I wish the university had really let Bowden decide whether to stay on for another. Perhaps Mom will get another year

-- Perry