Things That Never Were; Things We Might Have Been

By Charlie Barnes

Life's early dawn cradled my childhood in the soft hills of West Virginia. Until I was 12, every friend, every teacher, every neighbor, every relative I knew was someone I had always known. In my small world all the things that were, had always been.

My father owned a DeSoto-Plymouth dealership, but it went the way of other local businesses when the coal economy collapsed in the mid-1950s. And so, when I was 12, we came to Florida, much like Uncle Jed and the Clampetts headed for Beverly Hills, but without the money. Of West Virginia’s 55 counties, my county was among the five most abandoned by outward migration.

Numbers matter. Rivers of population drive the flows of history. In “The Lessons of History,” Will and Ariel Durant write, “(Nature) likes large litters. Nature sees to it that a nation (or a state) with a low birth rate shall be periodically chastened by some more virile and fertile group.” The state of Florida certainly qualifies as an exceptionally virile enterprise.

Advancement lies in competition and growth. Florida is now the nation’s third largest state, surpassing New York just last year. In 1940 the population of Tallahassee was 14,240; Leon County was 31,646. By 1960, the county had more than doubled in size to 74,700. In 2016, Leon County’s population is approaching 300,000.

In 1940, the population of my beloved West Virginia was slightly greater than Florida’s: 1.9 million vs. 1.89 million. Today in 2016, Florida’s population is 20 million. West Virginia’s has declined to 1.85 million.

What does this have to do with our Florida State Seminoles? Quite a lot in fact. Like Miami’s miraculous game-winning, eight-lateral rugby toss touchdown play against Duke on Halloween night, everything – every single thing – had to go just right for FSU to reach the glamorous athletic penthouse in which we luxuriate these days. And much of our journey to the top had to do with the rapid increase in Florida’s population.

The success of what Coach Bowden liked to call “Big Florida” – FSU, UF and Miami – was actually something of an anomaly. The phenomenal achievements of the Florida schools since around 1980 may have distracted us from noticing that things still haven’t changed so very much around the rest of the country.

Let’s look back at the 1940 college football season. Surveying the major conferences at the end of the year, Alabama, Tennessee, Ole Miss and Mississippi State were on top of the SEC and Vanderbilt was toward the bottom. In the Southern Conference, forerunner of the ACC, Clemson was the conference champion, and Virginia Tech, NC State and South Carolina were toward the bottom.

In the Big Six (later the Big Eight), Nebraska and Oklahoma dominated. Kansas and Kansas State brought up the rear. The Big 10 saw Michigan and Northwestern among the leaders, while Indiana, Purdue and Illinois were the bottom three. Stanford and Washington topped the PAC 10; UCLA, USC and Cal were three of the bottom five teams, and the other also-rans later left the conference.

Many if not most of the rich programs, the prosperous achievers, have been that way for a long, long time. And many of the lesser programs still occupy the same space they did 75 years ago.

FSU benefactor Al Dunlap, writing of his life growing up in New Jersey said, “I knew I was poor because I could see other people who were rich.” It’s that simple. The arrival of three signature head coaches at FSU, Miami and Florida coincided exactly with the explosive growth of Florida’s population. Prior to that, our three most prominent state football programs had to be content to gaze enviously at others outside the state who were rich, and to dream. We could see that we weren’t like them, but we yearned to be.

We knew we were relatively poor, but we were about to win the population lottery.

Miami had never done much before they hired Howard Schnellenberger in 1978 and tasked him with the mission of building a winner. Otherwise, they would go the way of the University of Tampa and drop football altogether. Schnellenberger’s Hurricanes won the National Championship in 1983, the first of five under four different head coaches.

Florida had been a member of the Southeastern Conference since 1933, but had never won the league title. Steve Spurrier began winning titles immediately as if it had always been so.

Dramatic changes in the state’s football landscape began to catch the nation’s attention in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Like George Patton and his Third Army in Europe, Steve Spurrier at Florida, Bobby Bowden at FSU and Jimmy Johnson at Miami were each handed the perfect instrument at precisely the right moment in history. These great coaches took full advantage of the swelling population and the gigantic high schools teeming with fast kids who lived outdoors and who saw football as their way out and up.

During the Seminole-Gator-Hurricane football glory days, Dade County alone had at least 30 high schools with more than 3,000 students in each. The football programs were brutal and intensely competitive. Unlike many other states, Florida allowed spring practice for high school football players. College coaches across the country stopped to catch their breath when they beheld the raw power and growing pool of football talent in the Sunshine State.

Until the late 1980s, the Seminoles were generally regarded as a strong but not dominant program. Oh, we played plenty of high-profile opponents, won some and lost a few, but for the most part our annual schedules revolved around playing our peers: schools like Memphis State, East Carolina, Louisville, Tulane, Southern Mississippi, Cincinnati and Virginia Tech.

We were familiar with the fans of those schools and we knew them to be fine people, good people, people just like us with their own worthy ambitions and dreams for their universities and their athletic programs.

But the state and the Big Florida programs were growing quickly. It was almost like we had been little kids playing on a local playground in a small town. Back then, we were all the same size on that playground and we all knew each other, and we were happy. One day our parents picked up and moved to a big town with bigger playgrounds and much bigger kids and we had to learn how to fight and fend for ourselves on a much larger and more expensive scale.

Nothing much has changed back on the small playground. The familiar opponents of our program’s adolescence are still there, their fans still dreaming the same dreams we once shared. Until FSU joined the Atlantic Coast Conference, a vision of the old Metro Seven Conference programs coalescing around a new and vibrant football league began to take hold but soon disappeared like vapor.

My heart will always be in those West Virginia hills because I spent my childhood there. But time and circumstances propelled me toward a life I never would have been able to have among the mountains.

Florida State’s story is the same. Like the Hurricanes and the Gators, we caught the rising tide of population and prosperity.

A famous old football coach said, “I want us to be good, of course, but sometimes it’s better to be lucky.” And sometimes it’s even better to be both.

In closing, a comment about the late fall rhubarb concerning Jimbo Fisher and the supposed negotiations with LSU. Most big-time Southern football coaches have an agent, and the one agent most of them employ is a fellow named Jimmy Sexton.

Sexton is a good enough fellow, a former equipment manager at Tennessee as an undergraduate. He is viewed as an honest broker, but he is also a man of extraordinary power and influence. When we played Auburn for the National Championship in Los Angeles, Sexton made sure his family members dressed in neutral colors since he represents both Jimbo Fisher and Gus Malzhan. And Nick Saban. And Jim Mora. And Tommy Tuberville. And Lane Kiffin and a whole lot of others with whose names you are familiar.

For Division I college coaches, the job is big business without a safety net. Bobby Bowden once asked that we not name the field in his honor while he was still coaching. “It’s fine as long as you win,” he said, “But if I was to start losing to Miami and Florida, people would want to take my name down.”

Sports Illustrated pointed out that just 20 years ago Bobby Bowden became the first head coach to sign a $1 million contract. But, “in (2014), Jimmy Sexton reset the market by getting Nick Saban $7 million a year.”

I’d bet my own money that Jimbo Fisher never spoke to anyone at LSU. Further, I’d bet that Jimbo has no desire to leave Florida State. But I would never bet against Jimmy Sexton. A word or two dropped to a sportswriter here and there can yield remarkable results. Witness the comic opera of LSU and Les Miles this past fall.

In the fall of 1979, Bobby Bowden had the best team in his then four years tenure as Seminole head coach. The undefeated Seminoles were due to play LSU in Baton Rouge on October 27. LSU was going to oust Charlie McClendon, their head coach of 18 years, and they had already come calling on Bowden.

Bobby had the LSU contract in his desk; all he had to do was sign it and he would become the next head coach of the Tigers. Later, he explained, “I knew we had the better team, and I felt that if FSU had the potential for greatness, we should be able to go into that intimidating stadium in Baton Rouge and beat them. If we couldn’t win with our best team, with a superior team, then I’d think it was probably time for me and Ann to move on.”

But Bowden saw a larger picture as well. Florida was beginning to produce some of the best football players in the country, and in rapidly growing numbers. The final score on that October day in Baton Rouge was 24-19, and Bowden’s Seminoles went on to finish an undefeated regular season.

My hunch is that Jimbo Fisher knows what Bobby Bowden discovered all those years ago. Louisiana State is a fine old school with all the advantages. But, perhaps, not quite as many advantages as the school in Tallahassee.

Charlie Barnes is the retired senior vice president and executive director of Seminole Boosters. Contact him at cbarnes161@comcast.net.