Bobby Bowden Back on Top

By Paul LeGrange
TALAHASSEE- As the 2007 college football season closed, it seemed that Bobby Bowden’s reputation as an upstanding coach and citizen was irreparably tarnished. He closed year by leading his Florida State Seminoles to a disappointing loss to a forgettable Kentucky Wildcat team in the regrettable Music City Bowl. The two-time national champion had gone from a paragon of college football glory to a scapegoat for everything that was wrong with amateur athletics- 34 players from that year’s Florida State team were suspended for academic violations and twelve wins over the course of two years were vacated by the school. While Bowden would hang around for another two years and pilot the Seminoles to a pedestrian 9-7 record in the Atlantic Coast Conference, most fans will remember that moment of ignominy as the humiliating final chapter in a college football tragedy.

By 2007, Bowden had lost control of his football team. On the sideline, offensive and defensive coordinators called his plays. On the recruiting trail, assistants promised parents that they would help their boys grow into respectable young men. On campus, players did what they wanted without fear of consequences or any sense of institutional control. What made things worse was that Bowden’s direct contemporary, Joe Paterno, ran a program that put Bowden’s to shame in every facet. Paterno was more successful on the field (5 undefeated seasons to Bowden’s 1), in historical terms (only Paterno has more career wins than Bowden), and by reputation (Paterno’s program avoided the stench of lawlessness that afflicted Bowden’s).

[LEFT- The caricatures of Bowden and Paterno might accentuate different flaws than they did 10 years ago.]

On that fateful day at the end of 2007, it was difficult to imagine any sequence of events that could make people remember Bobby Bowden as a better football coach and a better man than Joe Paterno.

But, as they say, that’s why they play the games. The recent revelation that Joe Paterno withheld information that his top assistant was sexually assaulting boys in the team’s locker room has redirected any animosity that stuck with Bowden. The role reversal is one of the greatest upsets in the history of modern sports, easily as implausible as Team USA beating the Soviets at Lake Placid or Muhammad Ali outliving Joe Frazier. Indeed, it is almost as if someone brainstormed ways to make Paterno look like a bigger creep than Bowden, came up with “child molestation” and “genocide,” then decided that genocide would be too complicated.

Since Paterno technically did not break any NCAA rules, he remains ahead of Bowden on the list of career coaching victories. But anyone who cracks open the record book will immediately look farther down the page, doing the same calculation that everyone subconsciously does when they are reminded that Barry Bonds hit more home runs than Hank Aaron. In fact, Paterno and Bowden are less like Barry Bonds and more like Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire. In both cases, success blinded (maybe willfully blinded) fans to the reality that the game was rigged in favor of those who engaged in an extra-legal, competitive arms race. Also, while Bowden and McGwire faced the most criticism initially, a longer view revealed their foils to be even more heinous manipulators.

It has been said that Paterno covered up his friend and assistant’s sexual assault in order to protect the Penn State “brand.” In that regard, his decision may have optimized social utility, but that reality illustrates the horrible perversion that “amateur athletics” has become. Paterno functionally controlled Penn State football, which functionally controlled Penn State University, which functionally controlled all of State College, PA and the surrounding area. As Penn State football goes, so goes the entire region. Paterno became single-handedly responsible for the vitality of tens of thousands of people in a way not seen since Al Capone’s Outfit controlled Chicago. Years ago, Paterno’s influence and power earned him the nickname “The Pope of Western PA.” The moniker faded away as the Catholic Church’s reputation waned, but it has proven to be far more appropriate than anyone would have ever hoped. When Paterno was first notified of Jerry Sandusky’s child molestation, the team was in transition and trying to bring itself and the region back to prominence. We can infer that Paterno made the determination that going public with Sandusky’s crimes would cripple the program, possibly cost him his job, and stand in the way of returning Penn State to greatness. In a contorted, perverse way, the region might have gained more units of happiness from the Nittany Lions’ 2006 Orange Bowl than the abused boys lost, but our society does not practice human sacrifice because it uses the same horrible logic. When one person, fueled by his own ego and self-preservation instincts, makes these decisions, we end up with undemocratic atrocities like this one. Paterno was no philosopher-king, either. He was just a man who won games in a sport that people like so much that it generates $63 million every year in a no

n-urban community.

[RIGHT- You're next, Nick Saban.]

When people die, it is customary to forget their transgressions and highlight the best of what they did. George Steinbrenner’s death brought about the euphemism “fiery competitor” to stand in for more accurate descriptions, like “amoral crook,” “pathological egomaniac,” or “heartless bastard.” To twist a common saying, time plus death heels all reputational wounds. At 83, Paterno may not have much time to repair his reputation. He can’t grovel with some starry-eyed athletic director to take over a fledging, low-level football team because he hasn’t really been a football coach for at least ten years. It’s hard to imagine the San Jose States and Western Kentuckys of the world hiring a feeble octogenarian to sit in the press box and let his assistants run the football team. So too is it hard to imagine that if Paterno dies in the next five years anyone will remember much about him other than the fact that he knew his fried was raping little boys and he did not stop him. Still, perception and reputation are not static. As hard as it is to imagine any positive memories of Joe Paterno, stranger things have happened. Just ask college coaching icon Bobby Bowden.