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A Special Chapter: The Legend

There are certain people who become bigger than the job they held.

Bobby Bowden was one of those people.

When Coach Bowden passed away on August 8, 2021, Florida State lost its legendary football coach.

But for me, we lost something more than a coach.

We lost the man who, in many ways, defined what Florida State football meant to me.

Bobby Bowden was a great coach.

He was innovative. He was competitive. He was willing to take chances. He built Florida State from a struggling program into one of the most dominant programs in college football history.

But that’s not what I remember most.

I remember his character.

His integrity.

His faith.

His love for people.

He loved the Lord. He loved his family. He loved his players.

And somehow, even with everything he accomplished, he seemed to remain remarkably accessible.

That last part isn’t just something I heard about.

I experienced it.

The Phone Call

There was a time when Bobby Bowden’s home phone number was listed in the Tallahassee phone book.

Think about that for a moment.

One of the most recognizable coaches in America had a listed home telephone number.

This was before cell phones.

Before social media.

Before athletes and coaches were separated from ordinary people by layers of publicists, assistants, security and technology.

If you needed to reach Coach Bowden, you could look him up.

And on a summer day in 1992, that’s exactly what I did.

I was a young Florida State fan.

I had only been following the Seminoles seriously for a few years, but by then I was hooked.

I found Coach Bowden’s number in the phone book.

And I called it.

I can still picture it in my mind.

I dialed the number.

The phone rang twice.

Then I heard that unmistakable voice.

“Hello.”

Bobby Bowden.

On his home phone.

And suddenly the courage I had when I dialed the number disappeared.

I was nervous.

Really nervous.

This was Bobby Bowden.

The man whose teams I watched every Saturday.

The coach who had turned Florida State into a national power.

The man whose name I associated with everything I loved about the Seminoles.

And now he was simply on the other end of the telephone.

A young fan shakily told him that he was proud to be a Seminole fan.

That’s really all I remember saying.

I don’t remember some profound conversation.

There wasn’t some great piece of football wisdom that he imparted to me.

What I remember is that he answered.

He didn’t have to.

He was Bobby Bowden.

But to him, apparently, this was just another young Seminole fan calling his house.

And that little moment has stayed with me for more than three decades.

The Coach

By the time I made that phone call, Bobby Bowden had already accomplished more than most coaches ever will.

But his greatness wasn’t simply measured by wins.

He understood football.

He was an innovator.

He wasn’t afraid to try things other coaches weren’t doing.

He understood how to build a program.

He understood how to recruit.

He understood how to motivate young men.

And he understood something else that is increasingly rare in college football:

People matter.

Florida State’s rise under Bowden wasn’t just about putting better players on the field.

It was about building something.

A culture.

A standard.

An identity.

When I became a Seminole fan in 1989, I didn’t know any of that.

I was just a kid sitting in the west-side bleachers at Doak Campbell Stadium, leaning against a chain-link fence and watching Peter Tom Willis lead the Seminoles against South Carolina.

But over the years, I began to understand what Bobby Bowden had built.

I watched Charlie Ward.

I watched the 1993 national championship.

I watched the heartbreak of the 1990s.

I watched the 1999 team go wire-to-wire at No. 1.

I watched my own life change while Bowden remained on the sideline.

I got married.

I became a father.

My boys grew up watching Florida State.

Through all of it, Bobby Bowden was there.

He became part of the landscape of my life.

Faith, Family and Football

There is a reason the phrase “Faith, Family and Football” became so closely associated with Bobby Bowden.

Those were his priorities.

And he didn’t just say them.

He lived them.

Florida State’s own remembrance of Bowden after his death described those three priorities as the foundation of his life and ministry to players, families, churches and communities.

That’s part of what made him different.

He could be fiercely competitive without making football his god.

He could chase championships without making championships his identity.

He could coach young men without treating them as commodities.

He understood that football mattered.

But it wasn’t the most important thing.

That’s a lesson that has become more meaningful to me as I’ve gotten older.

Because I’ve come to realize that the greatest coaches aren’t necessarily the ones who win the most games.

They’re the ones whose influence remains after the games are over.

Bobby Bowden’s influence remains.

You can see it in the players who still talk about him.

You can see it in the coaches who learned from him.

You can see it in the families he touched.

And you can see it in the way Florida State still speaks about him.

The Standard

To me, Bobby Bowden remains the gold standard.

Not simply for Florida State coaches.

For college football coaches in general.

That’s not because he was perfect.

He wasn’t.

He made mistakes.

He lost games.

He had seasons that didn’t meet the standard he had established.

He was human.

But he understood that being a coach was about more than football.

He understood that he was dealing with young men who needed more than someone to teach them how to block, tackle, throw or catch.

They needed a father figure.

They needed someone who cared about who they were becoming.

And for many of them, Bobby Bowden became exactly that.

His record speaks for itself.

But his legacy can’t be reduced to a record.

Florida State went 315–98–4 during his 34 seasons as head coach, won two national championships and 12 conference championships, and finished in the AP Top Five for 14 consecutive seasons from 1987 through 2000.

Those numbers are extraordinary.

But they aren’t why I remember him.

I remember a telephone ringing twice.

I remember a young fan getting nervous.

And I remember Bobby Bowden answering the phone.

Goodbye, Coach

When Bobby Bowden died in 2021, I was no longer the kid who had called his house.

I was a husband.

A father.

A coach myself.

An older man who had watched a lot of football and a lot of life happen in the years since that phone call.

And I found myself thinking about that young kid.

The one who sat in the west-side bleachers.

The one who watched Charlie Ward.

The one who called Bobby Bowden’s house because the number was right there in the phone book.

I don’t know if Coach Bowden remembered that phone call.

I’m sure he didn’t.

He probably received countless calls from fans over the years.

But I remembered it.

And I always will.

Because to me, that’s Bobby Bowden.

The greatest coach Florida State has ever had.

A brilliant football mind.

An innovator.

A winner.

A father figure.

A man of faith.

A man who loved people.

And a man who, even at the height of his fame, was still willing to answer the phone when a young Seminole fan called.

Coach Bowden, you gave Florida State far more than football.

You gave us a standard.

And for this Seminole fan, you gave me something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life:

The memory of hearing you simply say,

“Hello.”

I was proud to be a Seminole then.

I am proud to be one now.

And I always will be.

Thank you, Coach.