November 13, 1993.
The game ended about 15 minutes earlier. I was not happy. Some other guys were visibly upset. Some were cussing. Some were crying. Some appeared as if they wanted to get in a fist fight. Some looked like they were going to throw up.
I sat in the visitors locker room at Notre Dame Stadium in a state of disbelief as our team, the #1 team in the nation, lost to Notre Dame. We weren’t just a “good” team. We were the best. ESPN, Sports Illustrated and all the other college football media were debating if we were going to go down as the best team in college football history. We were quarterbacked by the sure-to-win Heisman Trophy winner. Our defense outscored our opponets offense all by themselves in 3 seperate games. We were unstoppable… that is, until 15 minutes earlier.
We lost on the last play of the game, to the #2 ranked team in the country, on their home field.
The entire Florida State team was distraught… but not Coach Bowden. He sat in that locker room, surrounded by 100 or so devastated young men, and explained that this wasn’t the end of the world. Coach Bowden smiled, laughed and explained we were going to go home, work hard and win again. He promised us that we weren’t out of the National Championship picture… and he was right… as he usually was.
This was a dark day for Florida State, but Coach Bowden rose above the pain, he rose above the anger, he rose above the sadness, he rose above everything and somehow got his team to believe we were still going to win the National Championship.
We won the National Championship that year, just as Coach Bowden told us we would.
Words don’t do my memory justice as I could write more and more, but that afternoon in South Bend, Indiana will always be my enduring Coach Bowden memory.
