A New Orleans adventure for the Seminoles in 1983

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

What a beautiful day to begin an awful weekend.

Our ninth-ranked Seminoles swept into New Orleans on a gleaming charter jet for what everyone assumed would be an effortless dispatch of the Tulane Green Wave on Saturday.

At least that was the plan, on Friday, September 16, 1983.

Earlier in the day, a plane carrying the Golden Knights of Central Florida landed and the first man out the door was Bill Peterson, former Head Coach of the Seminoles back in the 1960s, but now Athletic Director and Head Coach of the Knights.

A Louisiana State Trooper approached Peterson and asked, “Are you the football team from Florida?”

Peterson looked at the police cruisers and the row of luxury busses with their air conditioners humming, and he smiled. “Why yes,” he said. “Yes we are the football team from Florida.”

When our Seminoles landed at the same airport an hour or so later, they found no busses, no troopers, and no one with a clue as to who they were. The Golden Knights, on the other hand, were merrily on their way to play the Lions of Southwestern Louisiana.

Hours later, the Seminoles chugged toward New Orleans in a caravan of old school busses. An overturned tractor blocking a bridge delayed our arrival on Canal Street another three hours.

The Marriot was prepared to welcome us with Crescent City hospitality, but their central computer crashed just as we walked through the door. No one could check in; no guests could check out. Desk clerks panicked as clouds of surly tourists clambered about the lobby.

With no place to go and their coaches distracted, our boys began to drift down toward Bourbon Street, almost always a bad idea when you have to play the next day.

And it also came to pass that the Green Wave decided it would not be dispatched quite so easily. The Tulane Head Coach had recruited a ringer for this game: his son, a young man who had already played four, five, seven I have no idea how many years at a series of other institutions of higher learning.

Though the Seminoles ranked in the Top 10 at the time, our defense was struggling through the final year of the pre-Mickey Andrews era. And our senior bull of a quarterback Kelly Lowrey was severely weakened by the flu. Tulane later had to forfeit the game, but on that day they won 34-28.

After halftime, thieves broke into the visitors’ locker room stealing wallets, cash, and a $6,000 gold ring topped with garnet stones spelling out FSU. It was a gift to Coach Bowden from big Booster Ronnie Clark of Palatka.

Two years later the Bobby Bowden Tour visited Palatka again and Ronnie Clark presented Coach with another gift. It was a massive Bowie knife with custom bone handle. The blade had been folded over one hundred times in the making.

Coach Bowden held the knife up for the audience and grinned. “Tell you what,” he said. “This fall we’re going to back to New Orleans to play Tulane again.”

He ran his finger along the blade. “And after the game, we’re going to take this knife, and we’re going looking for that ring!”