Miami Hurricanes history wouldn’t be nearly as captivating without beloved Bobby Bowden
It was November 17, 1991, and Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden, then 62, had seen his top-ranked Seminoles lose 17-16 the previous day to No. 2 Miami for the ninth time in the past 12 games. Worse yet: This one was in Tallahassee.
“When I die,’’ Bowden lamented, “they’ll chisel on my tombstone, BUT HE PLAYED MIAMI.’’
The beloved Bowden, 91, has succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Florida State announced his death Sunday morning, but be assured those words will not be on his tombstone. Also be assured that Bobby Bowden and Miami football will forever be intertwined.
Bowden lost 21 of the 35 games he played against the Hurricanes when he was FSU’s head coach from 1976 through 2009, but some were excruciatingly close classics determined by errant kicks. Others were UM comebacks. Miami victories in 1987, 1990 and 1991 cost the Seminoles potential national championships. The games, rarely uneventful, were heart-pounding adventures of peaks and valleys
But Bowden, whose Noles beat the Canes five in a row from 1995 through 1999, was ever the gentleman, gracious in victory and defeat.
Through the wide rights, even wide lefts, Bowden stayed classy.
“They’ve been very tough on us,’’ Bowden said after the No. 2 Canes beat the No. 5 Seminoles 22-14 at FSU in October 2003. “I don’t know of any other national rivalry where so many of the games came down to a kick. It seems like they have won the close games over the years.’’
The Miami Herald recently spoke with current Hurricanes coach Manny Diaz, who got his coaching start under Bowden as a graduate assistant in 1998 and ‘99, and with several other Canes coaches and players involved in the rivalry. Each shared perspectives of Bowden, whose cancer was revealed publicly in July.
Butch Davis
Current FIU coach Butch Davis played against Bowden the six years Davis was Hurricanes head coach, losing from 1995 through ’99 as the Seminoles garnered 179 points to UM’s 68. Davis finally won in 2000, his last season with the Canes. That 27-24 UM victory, immortalized by UM fans, was the one in which young Miami quarterback Ken Dorsey orchestrated “the drive’’ that culminated with a 13-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jeremy Shockey with 46 seconds left.
Nearly 81,000 crazed fans watched sophomore Dorsey grow up. But Miami’s victory wasn’t sealed until FSU kicker Matt Munyon scripted Wide Right III with a missed field goal from 49 yards out as time expired. The game became an instant classic.
“When we won that game in the Orange Bowl and we met each other afterward on the field I said, ‘Bobby, the rivalry is back,’’’ Davis told the Herald, noting that three years earlier Bowden had told him at midfield after beating an NCAA-sanctioned UM 47-0 that it was “a shame’’ the rivalry had gone downhill.
“Obviously, he did a phenomenal job in building the program,’’ Davis said. “We were both independents back then, and he set a great example by playing just about anybody anywhere. All the credibility they have as a football program is exclusively because of Bobby Bowden’s development.”
Davis said he got to know Bowden better when he went on to coach at North Carolina and both UNC and FSU were then members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. “Religion was an extraordinarily big part of his life as were his wife Ann and family,’’ Davis said. “A great husband, great father and great coach.’’
Jimmy Johnson
Jimmy Johnson, UM’s head coach from 1984 through 1988, went 4-1 against Bowden, losing in Miami 38-3 on Sept. 22, 1984, when UM was ranked fourth and FSU, 15th.
“I didn’t know Bobby well but we were 4-0 and I was feeling pretty good,’’ Johnson said. “But Bobby ran those reverses and trick plays and man, he had my head spinning. He thumped me pretty good. Fortunately I was ready for it the next four years.
“Just as nice of a man as you’d ever want to meet — and a great coach. I always admired how he built that Florida State program by playing some of the elite teams on the road and beating them. He went on the road against anybody and beat some of the big boys without having a home-and-home series.”
Johnson said he was at an Orange Bowl function one year and “Bobby and [former Oklahoma coach] Barry Switzer and myself were standing there having a conversation and Bobby looked at Barry and said, ‘Barry, do you realize how many national championships we could have won if it hadn’t been for this S.O.B.?’”
Dennis Erickson
Dennis Erickson succeeded Johnson in 1989 after Johnson left to become head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Erickson’s Hurricanes lost only twice to Bowden in six attempts. But the head-shaker was the first time they met in Erickson’s inaugural season — and Erickson’s first of two national championship years at Miami. The ‘89 FSU win, 24-10 when the Canes were ranked second and the Seminoles, ninth, prevented UM from being undefeated.
“I came in there and we lost that game and the UM fans were about ready to string me up,’’ Erickson said by phone in early August from his home along the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene in Northwest Idaho. “But Bobby Bowden was gracious, one of the best people I’ve ever been around — in all kinds of way.
“That was a big rivalry and Bobby and I were very similar in that there wasn’t much arrogance involved in either one of us. And I appreciated that after losing the first one. It was the biggest game of the year for us every year. But he was a gentleman and I had great respect for him even before I began coaching at Miami. We became friends when we played golf together a few times at this Nike outing for coaches.
“It was a relationship of respect on both sides.”
Manny Diaz
Diaz is thankful to this day for being fortunate enough to have Bowden as one of his earliest mentors.
“You had to pinch yourself every day that you were sitting in a staff meeting with Coach Bowden,’’ Diaz said. “You’re talking about a guy winning as many games as anybody ever. But I think it was the way that he led, the selflessness, the lack of ego, the family nature of the staff — those things, I thought that’s how it was everywhere in college football. I didn’t realize how unique he really was. What a great role model for me to understand what it means to be a football coach.
“You couldn’t work for Coach Bowden and not be influenced by him,’’ Diaz said. “And the only reason his coaching tree isn’t larger is because so many guys loved coaching for him that they never wanted to leave. The way he treated people, the way he treated the players and the grace in which he just walked up and down the hallway, you couldn’t not be influenced by that.
A good person. No, a great person.”
On Friday, the first day of UM fall camp, Diaz called Bowden his “North Star.’’
“The way he led that program with a lack of ego at that time, when you’re a young coach, that’s your North Star, that’s what you want to be. So to me, the fact that he won as many games as he won and yet also was who he was as a man, shows you can do both. You can win a ton of games and be a great person like Coach Bowden is.’’
Joel Rodriguez
Joel Rodriguez, now 39 and the offensive line coach at FIU, was a UM center who grew up in Hialeah, graduated from Monsignor Pace and never lost to Florida State during his Canes career from 2000 through 2004 — six victories because UM defeated the Seminoles twice in the 2003 season (once in the bowl game).
“My memories of Coach Bowden start before we played against them in 2000 because I was very fortunate to get recruited by Florida State and Coach Bowden, Rodriguez said. “The first time I ever met Coach Bowden I was a high school underclassman and he was coming to see another player. I happened to be in my coach’s office grabbing something and ran into him. It was like meeting a celebrity. Here’s a guy you saw on TV every single Saturday and on his coach’s show every Sunday.
“He was so approachable and so down to earth and such a gentleman — shook your hand, spoke with that laid back Southern drawl and just immediately made you feel at ease. All those times I ran into him post-game, pregame, whatever, he remembered my name, my father’s name and would say, ‘How’s your pop doing?’ or tell me, ‘You’re having a great career. Keep it up.’
“Even in some of his most defeated, gripping moments, he was the embodiment of grace.’’
Melvin Bratton/Tolbert Bain
Former UM running back Melvin Bratton, 56, and cornerback Tolbert Bain, 57, played together during the glory years of 1983 through 1987. UM went 4-1 against FSU those years, and both players joked about always watching Bowden’s TV shows and laughing appreciatively when the coach spoke about every player’s “mama cooking the best collard greens or whatever was her specialty,’’ Bratton said.
But what both remember most about Bowden is when FSU offensive tackle and South Miami native Pablo Lopez, then 21, was shot to death in September 1986 in Tallahassee after an argument outside a campus dance. FSU didn’t have a game that weekend and Bowden came to Miami for the funeral service.
“Bobby Bowden asked us to stand up because we were in Miami and most of his teammates couldn’t make it,’’ Bratton, now an NFL agent, said. “We all stood up and he acknowledged us for being there. It was very touching.’’
Said Bain: “Wide rights. Wide lefts. He always gave us our credit. I never heard a Florida State player say one bad thing about Bobby Bowden. Not once. Not ever. That speaks volumes in itself.”
Former UM coach Mark Richt, 61, now an analyst with ACC Network, credits Bowden as being the catalyst in Richt becoming a devout Christian immediately after Lopez’s death. Richt was an FSU graduate assistant when Bowden gathered his players for a team meeting and pointed to Lopez’s empty chair and asked them to think about where they’d be now if it were them who had died.
Richt, who announced in July that he had Parkinson’s disease, ultimately spent 11 seasons as Bowden’s offensive coordinator before he took the head coaching job at Georgia.
“Why is he at peace?’’ Richt said during the 2021 ACC Football Kickoff. “He’s at peace becauses he knows where he’s going. And it’s a good place. He’s ready.’’
Rodriguez, the former UM lineman, said he was upset when he learned that Bowden had contracted COVID-19 last October.
“He was old and I thought that might be it,’’ Rodriguez said, “but he made a full recovery and seemed to bounce back. I thought, ‘This guy is forever.’
“I was very disheartened that his days were numbered. He’s a great man and great example for what it means to be a coach and help boys become men. The way he carried himself, I don’t know if we’ll have another example like that in our lifetimes.
“I hope I’m wrong.”
This story was originally published August 8, 2021 at 7:37 AM.
