Bowden meant no harm with motto

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Bobby Bowden sat behind the wide wooden desk in his office Wednesday afternoon, looked down at the cloth bandage wrapped below his right elbow and described the small skin cancer growth that a doctor removed that morning. "It's all that time in the sun," said the Florida State legend, now in his sixth decade as a coach. "Get one taken off every year. Got four stitches."

The dermatologist wasn't the only person trying to take a piece out of Bowden's hide this week. When Bowden announced Sunday that the Seminoles' 2002 motto would be "Let's Roll," the words spoken by the late Todd Beamer as the passengers of Flight 93 set upon their hijackers last Sept. 11, the coach touched off a whirlwind of condemnation. Columnists throughout the state of Florida and national commentators decried Bowden for cheapening the memory of Flight 93's victims, for subjugating their battle cry into a football slogan, for commercializing one of the few proud memories America has of that awful day.

As quickly as the issue was raised, the leadership of the Todd Beamer Foundation squelched it. Doug MacMillan, the president of the foundation, which raises money to aid the orphans left by the terrorist attacks, praised Bowden and said the foundation would travel to Tallahassee next week with hats and T-shirts for the players.

"Gosh, that made me feel better," Bowden said. "I was really feeling bad."

Bowden's antennae toward such issues are usually well-tuned. He is a deeply religious man. At the outset of every season, he takes his entire team to two church services, one at a local, predominantly white church; one at a predominantly African-American church. Bowden uses the trip to open his players' eyes, and to bring them together. He is so careful not to offend that, weeks before the services, he writes the players' parents to say he will honor their wishes to leave their sons behind if they find the trips objectionable.

Yet to say that Bowden was stunned by the reaction to the team motto is an understatement. The idea that the motto might be inappropriate or show disrespect never occurred to him. Florida State never intended to commercialize the slogan, he said. The players simply will wear T-shirts stenciled with the year's motto. "When our boys report," Bowden said, "we say, 'Here's your T-shirt.' It's something that goes underneath your shoulder pads. It never shows. It's not for publicity. It's just for 'us girls.'"

Bowden and his sports information director, Rob Wilson, have weathered their share of media firestorms. They seem to understand that this issue was different. "Columnists who are pretty level-headed, David Whitley [Orlando Sentinel] and Dave Hyde [South Florida Sun-Sentinel], criticized us," Wilson said.

When I told Bowden that my first reaction to the motto was to cringe, he nodded. "Maybe if I lived up there [in New York], I'd feel different," Bowden said. "For me, the story behind 'Let's Roll' is something that ought to be publicized. It ought to be remembered. It's like Pearl Harbor. You know how I am about the military, about patriotism." Bowden is a World War II history buff, particularly of the European theater. On one corner of his desk, Stephen Ambrose's D-Day stands between the same pair of bookends as Bear: The Hard Life and Good Times of Coach Paul Bryant.

Bowden's tribute will survive the hubbub. During the 6 p.m. workout Wednesday, the second session of the Seminoles' first two-a-days, Bowden stopped to watch freshman Lorenzo Booker run back a couple of kickoffs. The coach hopped into his golf cart and drove over to talk to Kyle Wright, the Danville, Calif., high school senior whom my colleague, George Dohrmann, heralded in the Aug. 5 issue of Sports Illustrated as the star of the Elite 11 Quarterback Camp last month. Players here and there wore their Let's Roll T-shirts.

Should the pieces fall into place, the motto might spur Florida State to its third national championship. The controversy, as brief as it was, reminds us that everyone handles grief and mourning differently. One man's jazz funeral is another man's sacrilege.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Ivan Maisel covers college football for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.

 

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