Heretofore, redemption has not, like pulp at the bottom of the glass, been considered citrus residue.
Yet the prize at the end of the Incomplete Resume Orange Bowl was to be just that, for Bobby Bowden or for Tom Osborne, two of college football’s most respected and sympathetic coaches.
The game may have been only a contrived concoction to help distinguish a national champion, but for one of the coaches it would be an authentication of a career, of esteem, of identity.
“Me and Tom, we could have our own club, 20 years without a national championship,” Bowden had said. “We would have to invite Bo.”
Bo Schembechler was never able to cause the honest regret that follows these two men, and the great pity is that the defining moment for one would come at the expense of the other.
“I’d hate to think that you’ve done something for 31 years and it comes down to one game,” Osborne had said. “I guess it’s human nature to focus on what you haven’t done.”
The rules of perception are not fair, nor are they always obvious. Even Osborne is not immune to its influences. Thinking he was complimenting FSU, he compared them to the Buffalo Bills, “around at the end every year.”
Around, but not on top.
The just assessment of both coaches is that they have been grandly successful enough to be considered great failures, a curse that is a compliment.
The stigma of not being able to win the big one is applied only to those who get to the big one and, as Bowden said after failing to beat Notre Dame, “the big one is the one you lose.”
That Bowden had another chance is testimony to his ability to generate good will, a quality not to be overstated. Too many coaches are quick to whine or blame or fault.
And even Bowden’s greatest strength became suspicious, as if there were a conspiracy to get Bowden a national football championship. There was the feeling that somehow this Orange Bowl was rigged for Bowden and for FSU, so close for so many years.
Bowden saw it and was astonished.
“So many coaches have said they’ll be glad when ol’ Bobby finally wins it all and we can go back to playing football,” Bowden said. “I’d never realized the feeling was so strong.”
It was almost as if the sportswriters, with half the vote, lined up in favor of Bowden, while the coaches, with the other half, stuck with Osborne.
In fact, as Osborne described the differences between the two of them, he could have been identifying the two voting groups as well.
“I’m retired, reserved, aloof and distant, and Bobby is acessible and effervescent,” Osborne said.
Trust me on this. If ever given the choice between the company of Osborne or Bowden, take Bowden. And between a football coach or a sportswriter, take the sportswriter.
Until college football has an actual, formal playoff, as it does for basketball and for the lower divisions of football, opinion will be always as murky as its influences. And even if the opportunity to win at the end was a payoff for Bowden’s years of being what more coaches should be, other coaches should take the hint.
There is a lesson in this for Lou Holtz, who is considered without dispute the greatest game-day coach working in college football today, as he once again proved Saturday in the Cotton Bowl.
If he were less a hoax in press conferences, it might have been Holtz given the second chance to play for No. 1 instead of Bowden.
And an Irish three-point thriller over Texas A&M would not be just an afterthought among so much racket for a national football title, something that does not even clearly exist.
