buxfan4life;1752029; said:
Know someone who played for Bobbeh (walk-on, non-factor player back in the 80s) who is still pretty close to the program. From what he has told me about the situation, it says more about the FSU admin than the man. He was run off plain and simple, and they didn't even give him the chance to retire gracefully. From what I understand about the whole thing, it is a bit similar to the Earle Bruce firing.
Not true. He refused to retire. He put his own interests ahead of the program. He forced FSU to hire his son as offensive coordinator (despite the nepotism policy prohibiting it), and Jeffy ran it into the ground, getting worse every year:
Even though any other OC would have been gone, Bowden refused to fire him, and even said that he did not have to listen to the fans, as he had earned the right to do what he wanted. Eventually, Bowden - instead of firing Jeffy - forced the cash strapped program to pay his son $500K as a severance bonus for having the worst OC in the ACC.
What Bowden did was think that he was above the program, above the rules, and above criticism. He found out that he was wrong, and his ignoring the academic wrongdoing in his program could have been even worse, except that the NCAA knew that crushing the Bowden win legacy was a greater hit than the actual schollie restrictions. The NCAA said that they went light on scholly reductions because they took the wins away. Bowden made them appeal the NCAA penalty, even though it might have resulted in greater scholly reductions if FSU had gotten an appeal to lift the win vacations, as the appeal - if successful - would ahve allowed the NCAA to impose greater sanctions against FSU. Boddy did not care about FSU, he cared about his wins. FSU dumped about 300K into the losing appeal.
He is lucky they did not set him on fire and throw him in the trash. The only thing Bobby cared about is Bobby, and Bobby only cared about his wins. Once it was clear that FSU was harmed by his continued coaching, he ignored all subtle attmepts to get him to leave, as he wanted to beat JoPa. When it became clear that FSU's interest was an afterthought to Bobbah - they launched him when the Bobby opposition and lost ticket sales and Booster donations by him staying reached a tipping point.
He could have had a Grand Send Off - but refused it year after year. So the debacle that was his send off, with his wife bad mouthing FSU, was really only his own arrogance and pride going karma on his ass.
You need Billmac to give you a better and less partisan version, but if it was anything, the farthest thing from it was a poor-mistreated Bobby deal.
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