![]() And after Ward and his family met Bowden, they became convinced he’d never go back on his word. Ward considered Florida State because Bowden had let former quarterback Brad Johnson play both sports. “It’s not who I am.”Ĭharlie Ward believed that when Bowden came to his house in Thomasville, Ga., in the late ’80s and reiterated a promise that Ward could play point guard for the Florida State basketball team as well as quarterback for the football team. “Football is what I do,” Bowden would say. Those words sounded like the logical extensions of the ones former Florida State offensive coordinator Brad Scott would hear in staff meetings. My wife Ann and our family have been life’s greatest blessing. “I’ve always tried to serve God’s purpose for my life, on and off the field, and I am prepared for what is to come. His final public words were those of a man who had lived the life he set out to live. On July 21, Bowden released a statement announcing that he had been diagnosed with a terminal condition. He is survived by Ann, his wife of 72 years, as well as six children and 14 grandchildren. One of the fullest lives any of us could imagine ended Sunday. He traveled the nation to share the story of his faith with anyone who would listen. He played with his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. But then Florida State ran him off following the 2009 season and he kept right on running. He worried for a long time that if he ever quit coaching he’d wind up like his dad, a banker who died a year after he retired, or like his coaching hero Paul “Bear” Bryant, who died 37 days after coaching his final game at Alabama. Every single year from 1987 through 2000. He won national titles in 19 and led his team to a top-five finish in the Associated Press poll for 14 consecutive years. He dominated with a smile and and a seemingly endless well of quips. Instead, he revolutionized a football program and a sport - all with his home phone number listed for anyone to find. Those were exactly what my thoughts were.”īut the coach never left. “When I went to Florida State, I was not planning on staying at Florida State,” Bowden said in 2013. In 1976, he took a job down in Tallahassee, Fla., with the hope that it would eventually allow him to hop back over the border into his home state. He grew up in the 1930s and ’40s in Birmingham, Ala. And as he crosses the goal line, Richt hears Bobby Bowden’s voice crackling through his headset.īowden always had it, even when he didn’t know it. Warrick must run 40 yards to gain those 20 he needs to reach the end zone. Tacklers have him dead to rights and come up clutching air. He knew the old man shouldn’t have called it. Finally, with the Seminoles on the Bulldogs’ 20-yard line and the score tied at 7 late in the first half, the head coach gets fed up and calls the reverse anyway. Florida State offensive coordinator Mark Richt is supposed to be watching that end, and when that end slips up and loses contain, Richt is supposed to tell the head coach on the radio that it’s time for the reverse. The dadgum Louisiana Tech defensive end keeps playing his assignment correctly.
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