By Bob Hertzel
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The theme of today’s 1 p.m. Gator Bowl matchup between a 6-6 Florida State team and a 9-3 West Virginia is really quite simple:
The Seminoles will be trying to win their last game with Bobby Bowden coaching, and West Virginia will be trying to win its first bowl game since Patrick White was at quarterback.
Little else matters.
Bowden ends 44 years of head coaching, beginning at Samford in 1959 and winding through six seasons at WVU to Florida State, where he has spent the last 34 years, including 14 consecutive seasons in which he finished among the top 4 teams in the nation.
The game will provided a fitting backdrop to Bowden’s forced retirement at age 80, ending a Hall of Fame career that has 388 victories, second only to Joe Paterno. A sellout crowd in an expanded Gator Bowl stadium will include as many as 70,000 Seminole fans, including 300 former Bowden players who are expected to march onto the field.
“I don’t want to get sentimental about it,” Bowden said. “I just want to take it as another ballgame. I just want to go out there and coach, play the game, and then when the game is over go back home to Tallahassee and start looking for a job. I never had a job.”
While West Virginia has been respectful of their opponent this week, they have done all they can to not get caught up in the “Bowdenmania” that is sweeping the northern part of the state. As big as the news of Bowden’s departure is, it was upstaged when Florida coach Urban Meyer announced he was first retiring, and then taking an indefinite leave of absence, due to health reasons.
“I’m not playing against Bobby Bowden. I’m playing against Florida State,” West Virginia’s quarterback Jarrett Brown said. “I don’t want to get caught up in the hype. I want to go out with a win, just like him.”
A Florida State fan when brought up in the Palm Beach area, Brown was not recruited by Florida State and has never met him. He expected the first meeting to come on the field today, probably after the game.
The Mountaineers, who suffered through a bowl losing streak that stretched from the 1984 Bluebonnet Bowl to the 2000 Music City Bowl in Hall of Fame Coach Don Nehlen’s final game, have won their last five.
Pat White became a legendary quarterback by guiding them to the last four, including a stunning upsets of Georgia in the Sugar Bowl and Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. He also put on a heroic performance to defeat Georgia Tech in the 2007 Gator Bowl, one of the greatest shows ever here in Jacksonville as the Mountaineers overcame an 18-point, third-quarter deficit, and then beat North Carolina last year in the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte, N.C.
In those four bowl victories White accounted for 1,186 yards, nearly 300 a game, and nine touchdowns.
The oddsmakers have installed WVU as 2.5-point favorites but with the emotion and the crowd, they consider themselves underdogs.
They will not let sway them.
“We want a ring that says Gator Bowl champion on it. We don’t want a ring just for participating,” Neild said.
Coach Bill Stewart, of course, has never lost a bowl game, beating Oklahoma and North Carolina.
He was an oddity, a babysitter for the Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl, supposedly just a caretaker of Coach Rich Rodriguez’s team until a fulltime replacement for Rodriguez, who had fled to Michigan in the wake of a devastating upset by Pittsburgh, could be found.
But the Mountaineers stunned Oklahoma in a game Stewart dedicated to all assistant coaches and then shocked the world by naming him head coach.
No one thought he’d be coach, but then no one thought he’d beat Oklahoma.
Now, instead of being the sentimental favorite as he was against the Sooners, his role is to ruin Bobby Bowden’s farewell game.
“I have no problem being second fiddle,” Stewart said. “He was the first college coach I ever heard speak. He coached me. We were in awe. He should get the limelight.”
Stewart arrived at WVU as a freshman the year Bowden took over from Jim Carlen. That was 1970 and Stewart was a member of the freshman team, coached by former WVU assistant Donnie Young. Stewart transferred to Fairmont State before ever playing on Bowden’s varsity.
Stewart is buying none of the talk that his team should easily handle a FSU team that comes in at 6-6.
He’s seen the Seminoles play up to their potential.
“Is it going to be the Florida State team that took Georgia Tech to 49-44?” he asked, referring to an Oct. 10 loss.
“Is it going to be the Florida State team that went to Provo? How many of you have ever been to Provo? I’ve been to Provo. It’s the Death Valley of the West. It’s a very difficult place to play. [Florida State] dismantled a top-20 [Brigham Young] team and made them look bad. My friend, [BYU coach] Bronco Mendenhall, was very displeased that day. Now, is it going to be the team that beat North Carolina [30-27] in Chapel Hill? I hope not.”
Actually, the Death Valley of the West is a real place in California, but you get Stewart’s point.
Florida State, as always, is talented and fast.
“I worry about big plays,” Stewart said. “We’ll see if Florida State can handle our speed. We want to come out of the blocks running.”
The Mountaineers use Noel Devine to control the running game. The speedy Floridian will surpass 1,300 rushing yards for the season in the game, entering with 1,297 and 12 touchdowns. Brown provides the passing and is playing his final WVU game with a third Floridian, Jock Sanders, his prime receiver with 70 catches.
Florida State relies on freshman quarterback EJ Manuel, who had to start the final three games in the wake of a season-ending injury to Christian Ponder.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
