Relax And Enjoy The Moments

By Charlie Barnes

Enjoy every moment and take advantage of every perk offered in this new era of Seminole football history. Fan happiness doesn’t just come from winning. It also comes from the belief that winning will continue. And belief is based on a first class athletic program that is well funded and well led with integrity. College sports programs go through cycles, alternating passages of triumph and despair. If you’re lucky, the former is more pronounced and longer lasting than the latter. Some programs, you know, are just luckier than others.

Two unranked college football programs crossed paths on Oct. 18th 1986. The fans of both teams were inclined toward pessimism at the moment. Florida State won the game 59-3, but it was already the sixth game of the season. At that point the Seminoles had beaten only Toledo, Tulane and now on this day Wichita State.

Given our impatient nature and the high expectations born of the early Bowden years, Seminole fans ended the 1986 regular season in a depression. This was so even though the Seminoles had posted winning seasons for six consecutive years, and ranked among the nation’s Top 20 at the end of three of those years. And the Seminoles were 4-0-1 in bowl games then, failing to be invited to a bowl only once, in 1981.

So why were the Seminole faithful in such a funk? It was because in those six seasons the Tribe’s combined record against Auburn, Miami and Florida was a soul-bruising 2-13. The 1986 regular season ended with a crushing loss at home to Florida, a 6-4-1 record and an invitation to a bowl that went out of business immediately after the game.

To make it worse, it was assumed by all parties in Tallahassee and in Tuscaloosa that Bobby Bowden would resign as head coach of the Seminoles and accept a new position as head coach of the Crimson Tide. Bowden interviewed for the Alabama job while his Seminole team was parked in Birmingham for the bowl game.

Two paths crossed on that mid-October Tallahassee day in 1986 and then diverged. Although Seminole fans didn’t know it, Florida State’s program would soon be taking off toward the sunlit skies hiding just out of sight behind the wintery overcast.

The Wichita State players and coaches didn’t realize that their Shockers would soon plunge into emptiness.

The Wichita State (then Fairmont College) “Wheatshockers” students and alumni cheered the first completed forward pass in intercollegiate football history on Christmas Day, 1905. But there was no Christmas cheer to be savored in 1986, only shock as the Wichita State University president and athletics director announced in December that the football program was being shut down.

WSU coaches just back off the road from recruiting trips now hit the phones looking for new jobs. Players with eligibility remaining scrambled to find other schools to take them in.

On another day in another time, that might have been Florida State. But FSU never dropped football, and Bowden returned to Tallahassee as head coach for the 1987 season.

Only a handful of Seminole fans followed recruiting in the 1980s; recruiting didn’t have the overwhelming, 24-7 coverage that it enjoys today. In 1986 very few Seminoles really understood what Bowden and his staff had put together in the previous years’ recruiting classes. Florida State’s football cycle was about to experience a swift and dramatic upturn.

The Dynasty officially began with the 1987 season and continued for 14 years. Then the Bobby Bowden Dynasty ended, and the waters calmed for a while.

Now we have crossed the threshold of what we know in our hearts will be the Jimbo Fisher Dynasty.

It is 2014, however, and there are some pronounced differences in our upcoming Second Dynasty compared to the first one.

THIS CAST OF CHARACTERS IS DIFFERENT

Just like the revival of a classic Broadway show, the iconic names and faces of the First Dynasty populate our memories and define those wonderful days. When Burt Reynolds came to Tallahassee in September 1987 to dedicate Burt Reynolds Hall he was the top male box-office draw in the world. Burt’s loyalty never wavered, and he used his fame to promote FSU at every turn, filming weekly “Great Moments” with Gene Deckerhoff and also including Bobby Bowden in an episode of his popular TV show “Evening Shade.”

Mickey Andrews was one of the beloved assistant coaches who took us through that happy passage. "Doc" Fauls was there to treat the players’ hurts, and Vic Prinzi was in the broadcast booth. Fans needed only first names to identify player-heroes of the First Dynasty: Charlie, Deion, Derrick, Chris, Pete, Sebastian and more. Bernie was the president, followed by Sandy. No need for last names. Everyone knew.

Gene Deckerhoff is one of the few holdovers from the original cast and, oh my, how grateful we are for him!

Now we begin again. When fans speak of Jameis, Roberto, Karlos, Nick and Jimbo, no additional identification is needed.

WE LOOK DIFFERENT NOW

Max Zahn, Jamie Warren and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves watching a replay of the 1994 "Choke at Doak" that sent us to the Sugar Bowl for a rematch win vs. the Gators.

The TV cameras panned back to show the crowd. Something didn’t appear quite right in those 20-year-old film images but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then either Max or Jamie said, “Everyone is wearing white.”

That was it. The visiting Gator fans were all draped in their colors and our Seminoles were dressed in a polyglot of shades; mostly white, some gold and a few garnets, and some with shirts in bright Caribbean colors decorated with the Seminole logo.

Twenty years ago we were still the new fans on the block. We didn’t know how to dress like fans at other, older schools. We hadn’t yet learned how to mass our power into an immense hammer of color.

Today, any stock footage of Seminoles doing the War Chant invariably shows tens of thousands of fans in garnet. Dressing for the games has been learned over the last 20 years. It’s just one of the ways our fan base has matured to take our place alongside the other traditional schools.

THERE ARE MORE OF US NOW

There are not just more of us now, there are a lot more of us. When the First Dynasty began in 1987, the Seminoles had been playing football and graduating coed alumni for only 40 years. Game day attendance was stunted not just by the relative isolation of Tallahassee. We simply didn’t have the huge numbers of alumni that other big southern programs enjoyed.

But during the 14-year Dynasty run between 1987 and 2000, Florida State University graduated more than 87,000 additional Seminoles. And, between the end of the First Dynasty in 2000 and the onset of the second, marked by last year’s national championship, FSU produced another 120,000 graduates. That’s more than 200,000 new Seminoles in just the last 25 years.

It’s not just winning that makes a difference; numbers make a huge difference too. Fully half the crowd in Dallas was Seminoles despite Tallahassee being about four times further away than Stillwater. And the Citadel game was sold out. A full stadium boatload of fans showed up for a non-marquis opponent on a rainy night. Time has brought us advantages.

WE'RE MORE FINANCIALLY STABLE

Money has always been important in growing and maintaining a strong athletic program. But funding has never been as critical as it is today.

Seminole Boosters CEO Andy Miller always said that his job was to take advantage of the wins. Miller is the brains behind many of the most dramatic off-the-field advancements since the mid-1970s.

FSU Athletics is self-supporting. Athletics pays the cost of all student-athlete scholarships and is responsible for maintaining the athletic facilities, for coaches’ salary supplements and for everything else that is thrown their way.

That’s why the Boosters and athletics began planning a long time ago to create new sources of revenue. Had that not happened when it did, FSU might have been left behind like some of the schools that used to populate our annual schedule before we joined the ACC.

In 1987 the Scholarship Endowment was established and the first $50,000 endowment gift was booked. A quarter-century later the Endowment now stands somewhere north of $50 million. It would require the earnings of a $200 million endowment to completely fund the annual scholarship bill for all Seminole student-athletes. Some of our competitors have that much. We don’t yet, but we’re coming on.

The Boosters have conducted three multi-year capital campaigns in the last 16 years. The public phase of the eight-year, $250 million Champions Campaign was announced this fall. Before 1998, no one had ever made a gift of $1 million to Seminole Athletics. Since then, nearly 100 pledges - each or $1 million or more - have been received.

The cost of funding a first-class program continues to rise along a steep, scary curve. Your Seminoles are winning on the field, and your Seminole Boosters continue to be one of the top collegiate fundraising outfits in America.

GAME DAY IS A DIFFERENT WORLD NOW

I don’t know how close it is to being a reality in Doak, but there is a program that will allow fans in their seats to order concession stand refreshments via a cell phone app and a cheerful runner will bring your goodies directly to you.

Our great fans have always been willing to do more and to pay more to drive the distance to Tallahassee. That is why Florida State has been a leader in creating marvelous fan perks on game weekends. We want to make the trip and the expense worth your while.

Fans and their families flood the Friday Night party downtown. Membership fees in the University Center Club are deliberately structured lower for Seminoles living away from Tallahassee. After the final game this season construction will begin on a massive renovation in the end zone to include Club Seats and fabulous game day amenities. There are 100 skyboxes and they’re all filled. There are 250 seats in the main Booster skybox, and there’s a waiting list.

Oh, and Burt Reynolds Hall? It was state-of-the-art when Burt cut the ribbon in 1987, but eventually it could only house half the players. This spring our entire team moved into the formidable Champions Hall with amenities comparable to any student housing anywhere in the country.

And now there’s CollegeTown. What was a miserable blight of shabby warehouses squatting on the acreage between the stadium and the Civic Center is now the most dynamic, brightly lighted intense and invigorating center of fun in Leon County.

For our fans and their families it’s not just a three hour game; it’s a full football weekend feast.

Cycles come and go; programs rise and fall. There has been speculation in Kansas about reviving Wichita State football, perhaps in 2016. If so, 50-year old men will remember when they last wore the “black and sunflower yellow” Shockers uniforms back in 1986 when they were 20-year-old athletes. They will close their eyes and remember what it felt like to hold the football in their hands, and how the soft breeze across the practice fields carried the scent of cut grass.

Last year we Seminoles found a glittering array of presents under our Christmas tree. Now in 2014 we’ve discovered that there are even more gifts waiting for us to unwrap and enjoy as The Jimbo Fisher Dynasty reveals itself to us game by game.

And in Wichita, Kansas there may even be hope of restoring a lost dream.

Happiness is having something good to look forward to. Enjoy these days.