INTERVIEW: BOBBY BOWDEN
PLAYING TO WIN

By Kathy Bissell

Florida State coach Bobby Bowden hates to lose. Probably because he rarely does.

Bobby Bowden had no way of knowing when he gave up a doctoral program at Columbia University to become head coach at South Georgia Junior College in 1956 that he would eventually become one of the five most successful college coaches in NCAA Division I-A football history. Although his head coaching position at West Virginia, which followed from 1970 to 1975, reads 42-46 overall, he took West Virginia to a bowl game in 1975. The victory there triggered the offer from Florida State, where he has led the Seminoles to their greatest success for the past two decades.

Though Bowden says his crowning achievement was winning the national championship in 1993, his overall career mark of 281-83-4 ranks as the fifth best of all time, behind only Bear Bryant, Pop Warner, Amos Alonso Stagg, and Joe Paterno. The roster of players who have gone on to stardom from Florida State under Bowden reads like a who’s who of the NFL, including Deion Sanders, Edgar Bennett, LeRoy Butler, Dexter Carter, Warrick Dunn, William Floyd, and 1998 first-round NFL draft pick, Andre Wadsworth. To mark the start of the college football season, we spoke with Bowden, a member of the founding Board of Governors of the University Center Club in Tallahassee, Florida. As for that doctorate, Bowden did eventually receive it, as an honorary degree.

PGA Tour player Phil Mickelson says his aversion to losing is stronger than his desire to win. Is that the way it is with you too?

Most certainly. Most coaches I’ve talked to have debated that issue for 30-35 years. It’s kind of interesting as to what motivates people, because everybody is motivated by something. Mine has always been the motivation of fear. I coach as hard as I can in order to keep from losing. When we lose a game, it hurts many times more than a win feels good. When you win a ball game, 24 hours and it’s over. When you lose, it dwells with you for years. You wonder, could I have done this or that differently?

You had just two losing years, 1974 at West Virginia and 1976 at Florida State. How did that feel at the time?

Fear creeps in. Are they going to fire me? Are my wife and children hearing all this trash? It made me work hard, I guess. The next year at West Virginia, we had a good year and went to a bowl, won the bowl and because of it, I was offered the Florida State job. So I learned something that year that has transformed my thinking. I’ve always been a deep loyalist. When I join something, I’m going to stay with it. When I was head coach at West Virginia for three or four years, I thought I’d probably be there the rest of my career. They gave me a job, I’m going to do my best and stay here. Then we had that losing season, 4-7, and I saw the people turn. “Goodbye Bobby.” It told me, Bobby, if you get a better job offer, take it if you want it. You have every right in the world to take it, because these people have already shown you they will forsake you.

How do you come up with new plays? Are they the result of progression or divine inspiration?

Football goes in cycles. For 10 years maybe offenses will dominate. They’ll be so tough, the defense won’t know how to handle it. All of a sudden, the defense will handle that, and for 10 years we’ll have a defensive cycle. You have to stay up with it. You look at film to try to find something that will counter it, that will work, beat it. It causes new ideas. Sometimes they are old ideas just brought back up. That happens in most cases. That’s why you go to coaching clinics. Every spring, my coaches go to other schools. You try to learn what they are doing. You go to schools that are winning. All kinds of people come to ours.

Where do you go?

We go to Nebraska a lot. But say UCLA does something we like. We might send two coaches out there.

You studied the military when you were ill as a child. Did you continue to study later on?

Yeah. It fits football. My hobby is reading about military history. General Patton, Eisenhower, MacArthur. World War II started when I was 9 and ended when I was 16. When I was 13, I was in bed for a year with rheumatic fever. We didn’t have television, so I listened to the radio all the time. My heroes were the MacArthurs, the Pattons, the Bradleys. I can relate it to myself in coaching. I’ve had a lot of people tell me, “You would have been like them. They were driven by audacity.” They tried some things people wouldn’t think they’d try. I’ve been accused of that, but I haven’t done it much lately.

Has coaching ever been just a job?

Never. I can’t wait to go to work every morning. I can’t remember a morning when I didn’t want to go to work.

Even after a loss?

Naw, because I’m anxious to do something about what I did bad. If I take a bad licking, I can’t wait to get it straightened out. What did I do wrong? How can I change this? How can we turn this ship around? That’s the whole motivating thing in coaching.

How do you manage the combination of great talent and temperament? In your book, you mentioned William Floyd.

If you get the best players, you’re going to get the kids who have egos. You have to take the “I” concept out and get the “we” concept. So we continue to preach that. When William Floyd came to Florida State, we were running a certain kind of offense, and it featured a good blocking, tough fullback, which is what he was. Then Charlie Ward became the quarterback, and we got into a shotgun, no-fullback offense. A lot of times William didn’t even play. He’d come in on short yardage or to block, but 70 percent of the game, he wasn’t in there. He’s a great player. A number one draft choice. And it liked to have killed him; I know it did. But he did not cause problems or friction. He stood behind the team and his coach. I was so thankful when he went in the first round [in the NFL draft] because really I’ve never had a more unselfish player, and he was a prospective selfish player. He could have been a star someplace else, getting that ball in his hand all the time. He went to the NFL to the 49ers, ended up with a national championship ring, and won a Super Bowl ring.

Who was your breakthrough player?

Ron Simmons from Warner Robins, Georgia. Everybody knew him. He was a breakthrough for us getting super players because back then we didn’t get many. The first super players we signed were Paul Piurowski, Bobby Butler, Reggie Herring, some of those guys. Ron Simmons cemented the team together from a defensive point. Once you get a great guy like that, the other guys want to go with him. It brings you publicity. Other kids began to see that they could go to Florida State and be with some big players. At that time, they all went to Florida, Alabama, Georgia. Now it’s the other way around. We get those guys. Back then we didn’t.

Can you pick the five or 10 most talented athletes or most successful human beings?

I don’t like to name them because I leave people out when I do.

Have you had a lot of offers from professional teams?

At least twice I could have said yes. But I’d rather coach college players, boys 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 years of age, than the professionals making so much money. They’re motivated by money, and that’s not true in college. It is more amateurish in spirit, which I prefer.

Al McGuire, former college basketball coach from Marquette University, once said he did not want to coach in the NBA because he didn’t want to coach anybody who made more money than he made.

I don’t think I could coach a guy making $2 million. I tell him something, he’ll say, “Hey, go jump in the lake. I got more money than you got.” Those dadgum owners listen to a player more than they’ll listen to a coach. Look how many coaches get fired because players voted to fire them. Boy, I don’t want to get in there.

Many of your players come back in the off-season and finish their degrees.

We try to get them all to come back and finish their degrees. The best football players many times don’t graduate because they get drafted in three years. It takes four years at least, some of them take five, to finish their degrees. So we encourage them all to come back. Most of them do. They play pro football, finish in January, and come back to school. We might have had four or five pros in school this past session.

How do you handle players with disciplinary problems? For instance, Tom Osborne, head coach at Nebraska, faced much heat in 1995 when he reinstated star tailback Lawrence Phillips after Phillips was arrested for assaulting a girlfriend, and suspended from the team.

Sometimes you have to wait for the school to make a decision because it involves them. Sometimes you have to wait for the local police force to make a decision because it involves them. So sometimes it doesn’t even get to you. But let’s say it’s an issue they wanted you to handle. Then there are two things you’ve got to consider: your university, which I guess has to come first; but we coaches also consider the individual, which sometimes other people could care less about.

A lot of people, all they want is a winning football player. We know the boys. We know their mama. We know their daddy. We don’t want to lose them. We don’t want to see them go bad. We know if he doesn’t have that scholarship, and if he doesn’t have us to ride herd on him, he might go right out and get with a gang, and it’s going to be no good. You know? So I try to support Tom Osborne with what he did with Phillips. It seemed unwise to most people, but I know Tom Osborne was trying to save the boy. People don’t believe that. They’ll say all he wanted to do was win, but that’s not Tom. I know him personally.

I’ve done the same thing with kids here. I usually frighten the kid once. I have 85 scholarship players; therefore, you have to keep the team solid. If I’ve got a boy who violates a rule, whether against the university, or downtown, or some girl, or a bank or something, I’ll usually try to defend him the first time. If it’s turned over to me, I’ll try to save him somehow. I’ll punish him, try to give him a real bad punishment so he won’t do it again. If he does it twice, I tell him he’s gone.

That’s what happened with  Randy Moss. He had signed with Notre Dame. We didn’t even have a shot at him. Then he gets in a fight in his last year in high school and hurts a kid, so Notre Dame backs off. Lou Holtz calls us and tells us about it. And Randy’s about as good a football player as there is in the country, so I’m willing to take a chance on him. I talked to our president and athletic director, and they weren’t in favor of it. Finally, the president reluctantly agreed, but he can’t play his first year. And that about broke his heart, because these guys are always the head of their class in athletics.

So he comes here and goes to school. I call him into my office and say, “Now, son, you come in here with two strikes. One thing, and you’re gone. You’re gone.” He came here, stayed here a year, and the whole time he was here, no problem. Then he goes back home, smokes some marijuana, gets caught. It’s over. His lawyer called and said, “What if he pays his way back, would you take him?” And I said, “No. I told him that he can’t play anymore. I told him when I brought him in here, he can’t do anything else to violate any kind of rules.” I hated for that to happen. I see he got drafted 21st. Probably as good a football player as there was in the country. So that’s what I try to do. I would try to save them more except I’ve got 85 guys I’m responsible for.

How do you feel about all the personal honors and awards?

I’ve had Coach of the Year honors. I could care less about them. It doesn’t mean a thing to me. My fun is winning a game. Being national champion is like the heavyweight crown. Coach of the Year and that stuff does not turn me on.

If I had to choose between winning the conference and winning an honor — it wouldn’t even be close. Let’s say I could go 10 and 2 and win Coach of the Year or go 11 and 1 and not win it, I would want to go 11 and 1.

Writer Kathy Bissell is based in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. She is currently working on BoomBoom, The Fred Couples Biography, due to be published in late spring 1999 by Contemporary Books.