Former President TK Wetherell described FSU as a “destination university.” He said you have to travel here from your hometown, you have to find a place to live and you have to make new friends. FSU becomes your new home, and it becomes a home and family that lingers in your affections the rest of your life.

Time has made Florida State better perhaps than we realize. Over the years, other universities also have gotten larger, become richer, but in many cases they have kept the same personality, the same conference rivals, the same psychology.

It’s been different with Florida State. We haven’t just grown and prospered. We’ve changed.

Some of the changes in us have been subtle and some profound. Along with expanding, our fan base has matured in its outlook. If you get a chance, watch a replay of the 1994 game against Florida, the one fans delight in calling the “Choke at Doak.” Look in the stands. Most Seminole fans are wearing white shirts.

In 1994 we were deep into the Dynasty, but our fans had not yet absorbed the culture that characterizes most big time fans at big time football schools. Austin and Knoxville are seas of orange; State College and Ann Arbor are oceans of blue.

Today, almost all Seminoles wear garnet to the games, and like many other big football schools’ fans, ours are also beginning to adopt the practice of “dressing” the colors to show support on the days that Seminole teams play away from campus.

In the last 35 years, FSU has awarded twice as many degrees as it did in the previous 126 years of its existence. Since the end of 1977, nearly 223,000 young Seminoles have walked across the stage with their undergraduate diplomas in hand. They have grown up, and many have sent their own children back here to become Seminoles.

In order to appreciate what’s happened to FSU, it helps to have a good map.

The same year the Florida State Seminoles went wire to wire to win the 1999 National Championship – a feat unmatched so far by any other team in college football history - Colonel John R. Elting presented an academic paper that offered advice to researchers of military history.

Elting stressed the importance of using original materials whenever possible. However, “In using the older original material, take a few precautions,” he said. “Get a map of the same period as close as possible to the date you’re studying.”

Elting advised against using modern maps. “Modern maps may trip you up. Forests have been cut down, swamps drained, new highways built, rivers canalized. Many a former battlefield now lies under a modern subdivision ... the geographic features which governed a past campaign may have changed entirely.”

Yes, the features of the landscape were different then. Try to imagine what the ‘map’ of Florida State looked like 35 years ago this summer.

Consider Burt Reynolds. That’s an excellent place to start since he is one of the most loyal Seminoles of all time, as a football player and as an alumnus.

Especially during the Dynasty era of the 1990s, Burt Reynolds did his best to promote the Florida State brand. Rival fans were consumed with jealousy over Reynolds’ popularity and at the appearance of Bobby Bowden on the television show Evening Shade. Opponents chafed at Reynolds’ regular guest shot with Gene Deckerhoff on the Bobby Bowden show to talk about Seminole history. Letters to football recruits went out from Reynolds until the NCAA changed the rules governing contact between prospects and alumni. Our adversaries seethed at the unfairness of it all.

But in the summer of 1977, Reynolds had not yet become the top male box office draw in the world. Burt Reynolds was still the brooding, violent character fans saw in Deliverance and The Longest Yard.

It wasn’t until this summer 35 years ago that Reynolds’ theatrical character was transformed into the ultimate cool guy, with his boyish laugh and his hot car. Smokey and the Bandit hit theaters in July and Reynolds rocketed to the top of the charts where he would remain for decades.

In 1977, Florida State’s law school was less than a dozen years old. FSU had no medical school. Our journalism school had been taken away from us and given to Florida, when we were not yet strong enough to prevent it. The engineering science program was also taken away, only to be returned much later in a very different format.

Among Seminole football fans the only optimism in the summer of 1977 was of the cautious variety. The Seminoles had endured four successive losing seasons, 1973 through 1976, and under three different head coaches. The breakout 10-2 season with a thumping victory over Florida and a Citrus Bowl Championship were months away.

Bobby Bowden took over the program’s reins in 1976, and at 47 Bowden was about the same age as our oldest male alumni.

The capacity of Doak Campbell Stadium was 40,500. Interstate 10 didn’t go all the way to Pensacola, so fans had to come most of the way in on U.S. Highway 90.

The football weight room, such as it was, had been a small cage in the basement of Tully Gym outfitted with free weights. Upstairs, the varsity basketball Seminoles played in front of a maximum capacity of 2,500 fans.

The Seminole Golf Course clubhouse had one small locker-room that was vile on its best day. Female student-athletes changed clothes in their cars.

The tennis courts were worn and uncovered and located over near the steam plant. The Union Pool where the varsity competed was unheated, uncovered and was open to the public with little accommodation to the student-athletes. They came to practice at 5 am.

Going into the 1977 season there was no Chief Osceola or Renegade. They were still a year away. The War Chant would not appear until 1985.

In 1977 there were no skyboxes. Now there are 100 and they’re all sold.

In 1977, there were only 35 Golden Chiefs. Today there are more than 1,500 Legacy, Platinum, Gold and Silver Chiefs.

There was no scholarship endowment. The Seminole Boosters Endowment was created in 1987 and has assets of around $50 million today.

In 1977 the University could boast few alumni of real means. Today, I know at least three billionaires with undergraduate degrees from FSU. Sarah Blakely, the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire, recently graced the cover of Forbes. The other two are active alumni. One served on the board of the FSU Foundation, the other is a past Seminole Booster board member.

In 1977 we did not envision any gifts of $1 million to athletics. Since 1998 Seminole Boosters has booked around 70 gifts of $1 million or more.

Thirty-five years ago, a Seminoles National Football Championship was a distant dream. Now, two National Championships are a memory, part of our heritage.

In 1975 Andy Miller became CEO of Seminole Boosters at the age of 24. He was the only employee. Three years later I became the second.

Now, we are enjoying the summer of 2012 and we’re optimistic about the launch of another Dynasty this September.

Ours is a beautiful and serene campus. I always thought we had a pretty campus, but an extraordinary transformation has overtaken the grounds. All the new architecture is in the old Jacobean style now. There are entire parks of new academic and athletic facilities, and the quality of students as well as student services is phenomenal. The kids love going to school here.

A popular professor, Mark Ziegler, says that FSU “is maturing as an institution.” That is exactly correct. As a university we are not simply an older version of ourselves 35 years ago. In just one decade, we’ve had two presidents of the university who were undergraduates here at FSU. we’ve had four Rhodes Scholars since 1976. In fact, since 2005 FSU has produced three Rhodes Scholars and no other state university in the nation can make that claim. Of the three, two were star varsity athletes for the Seminoles.

Things will come to rock our boat, but we’ll be able to handle it now, with strength and gravitas. We’re different now; we’re better. We’re a much more substantial and self-confident institution than we were that long ago summer of 1977.

Time was the invisible architect of our foundation. All that will rise above that now is solid.