For Jimbo Fisher, the pressure is off
Hello, blog audience. And I guess there aren’t that many of you these days, right? I should write more.
We’ve seen it before. Legendary coach at Big State University retires, new coach comes in, he can’t match the successful on-field record posted by the legend. Then he’s gone, victim of a putsch designed solely to please boosters and fans, with a new coach brought in and given the mission to restore good ol’ Big State U. to its “rightful glory.” And you would think that drama will start playing out again at Florida State University this fall after it pushed longtime football coach Bobby Bowden off to the retirement home and replaced him with “head coach in waiting” Jimbo Fisher (at right).
After all, Bowden led the Seminoles to the 1993 and 1999 mythical national championships, 28 straight postseason bowl appearances, 304 wins and 12 Atlantic Coast Conference championships, including the first nine in a row after FSU joined the ACC in 1992. He was universally beloved by the Florida State community, including the fan base. Clearly Fisher —who’s never been a head coach and takes over for Bowden after the legend was pushed out of the job last December — is in big trouble, right? Pretty big shoes to fill going into his first game Saturday afternoon on national television (ESPNU, noon EDT) against his alma mater, Samford University.
Maybe not. In fact, Fisher might be in the best possible position he could possibly be in.
When you consider the legend of Bobby Bowden, you have to consider his entire body of work rather than just the glory years of the 1990s. And while Bowden’s body of work does indeed include all those gaudy numbers I just mentioned, they’re overshadowed by some other, more recent numbers which certainly aren’t gaudy but which certainly are telling. For instance:
- The Seminoles last won the ACC title in 2005.
- Since then, they’ve posted a 30-22 record on the field in four seasons.
- Of those 30 victories, 12 of them were ordered vacated by the NCAA due to an academic-fraud scandal involving several FSU teams.
- Even without that factor, the Seminoles haven’t posted a double-digit win total since the 2003 season.
- They lost three of their final four bowl appearances on Bowden’s watch.
Let’s be frank here: If a coach other than Bobby Bowden or another legend of the game had put together that kind of record, his employers would have no choice but to look at the direction of the program and decide if it was time to make a change. Was Bowden pushed out by Florida State administrators as he claimed last week? Of course he was. On the other hand, as former Orlando Sentinel columnist David Whitley pointed out, he didn’t give the university any choice in the matter. If Bowden had gotten his way he would have coached until he died and there were aspects of the game that clearly had moved beyond him.
(NOTE: It behooves me to point out a potential conflict of interest I have here. Now-retired FSU President T.K. Wetherell is my uncle. Uncle T.K. also played football at FSU, and Bowden was one of the assistant coaches at the time he played there.)
Those down years that sometimes accompany the change from a legendary old war horse to a new, unfamiliar head coach? The Seminoles have already had them . . . under the old war horse. There’s been an atmosphere of uncertainty surrounding the Seminole football progam for several years as the wins stopped coming for Bowden. The on-field product has been off-kilter in more ways than the win-loss record has shown. Most notably, the defense was not the same immovable object it had been in the 1990s and until just recently the offensive line (a Seminole strength during the glory years) had notable shortcomings.
The lack of results and the ongoing questions about just how long Bowden was going to cling to his job had the expected results. Fans, alumni and students’ enthusiasm for the Florida State football program had dropped significantly and the quality of the Seminole coaches’ recruiting classes were slipping as a result.
That’s why this is a perfect opportunity for Fisher, a longtime professional associate of the Bowden family even before he was hired as Bowden’s offensive coordinator and eventual successor at FSU. This offseason has seen a level of community enthusiasm not seen for the FSU football program in a long time. Frankly, this is the first time in several years that fans have been sure exactly what the Seminoles’ direction actually is — a statement that would have seemed unthinkable in the mid-1990s glory years. Last February, Florida State signed its best recruiting class in several years and are on track for an even better recruiting class announcement in February 2011, including Tampa Plant running back James Wilder Jr., one of the top athletes in the class of 2011 according to ESPN.
I can’t think of a “head coach in waiting” who’s had a better opportunity than Fisher has right now. The down years are gone, right? Of course, there’s a trap in there that he has to avoid . . . if the down years are already past and the momentum is already on his side, then he doesn’t dare screw up.
Hmmm . . . now I don’t know if I envy him or pity him.
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NOTE: A previous version of this column incorrectly listed the number of national championships Florida State won.
