Sports Radio Interviews

Bobby Bowden Doesn’t Think This is His Final Home Game at Florida State

What hasn’t Bobby Bowden done in College Football?  You name it and he’s accomplished it.  He has a ton of wins, he’s won a bunch of Conference Titles, he has won a couple of National Championships and the NFL for a period of time was loaded with former Seminoles.  When I was growing up and when I first started to latch onto College Football, I remember watching Charlie Ward, Warrick Dunn, Derrick Brooks, Peter Boulware and all those great players that came through the program in the mid-90’s.  Unfortunately for Seminoles fans, those days seem to be in the rear view mirror and this has been a tough time recently for everyone in Tallahassee including Bobby Bowden. 

Going into the season, Florida State had high expectations, they had a number of players returning on offense and coming off a 9-4 season, the Seminoles looked to better that mark this season.  That hasn’t exactly happened.  Right now the ‘Noles sit at 5-5 and it has made many people question Bobby Bowden.  There had been some talk earlier in this season about this possibly being his last season at Florida State and there are some that believe this may be his final home game on the sidelines coaching.  I don’t know what the future holds for Bobby Bowden, but I do know that he is one of the best College Football coaches of all-time and watching Florida State games without him on the sidelines with his normally tinted sunglasses just won’t be the same. 

Bobby Bowden joined WNST in Baltimore with Drew Forrester to talk about whether this is his final home game on the sidelines, the competitiveness of the ACC, what went wrong this season, the development of Christian Ponder at quarterback and who the best ever Seminole is.

On whether this may be his final home game at Florida State: 

“I don’t think it is.  You never know.”

On his tenure at Florida State:

“Yeah, Joe (Paterno) has done a daggum better job than I have lately.  I’ve been breaking even and all that stuff.  That don’t sit very well with these folks down here.  I’m getting down towards the end of my career.  I would like to finish up on a good note.” 

On the strength of the ACC nowadays:

“No, they’re getting their share.  Beating Wake Forest is getting tougher nowadays.  But what’s happened is the league has gotten so much better.  What people have to realize is that there are some years when the league is not as strong as other years.  Somebody might say well, the SEC and the Big Ten are so much better than the ACC, well that could be true one year.  The next year, the ACC might be stronger than all of them.  That’s a yearly thing.”

On the explosive offense and the lack of defense:

“Yeah, the good news is that we have been scoring a lot of points.  The bad news is that they have too boy.”

On the issues with the team this year:

“As far as the offense is concerned, we had about nine starters coming back.  Of course next year we have about ten coming back, so next year we’ll be a pretty good ball club.  This year we had all of our offensive line back and most of our receivers back.  Now on the fense (defense), that’s where we really took the losses.  We had about four starters back.  Then you get a couple of injuries and you’re just not as good as you were.  Maryland has had the same problem.”

On what he is most proud of during his time at Florida State:

“I guess the thing that I’m really the most proud of is that I have been able to coach as long as I have and survive. Most coaches don’t survive. None of my sons survived. They’re fighting for second life at other places, but I think the most fortunate thing about me is that this is my 56th year and I haven’t been fired yet. Notice I said yet.”

On the best football player to come through Florida State:

“Well we have had some mighty good ones.  I’ve always said the best athlete is probably Deion Sanders.  I think the one guy that everyone can relate to is Charlie Ward.  He was probably one of the first of the shotgun quarterbacks that would run and now everybody is doing it.  I think he was probably the most productive and most successful that we’ve had.”

Listen to Bobby Bowden on WNST in Baltimore with Drew Forrester

Tags: ACC, Bobby Bowden, College Football, Florida State University, WNST