Looking for brighter days? Trophies’ return keeps hope on horizon

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

In uncertain times, we have always looked for an omen that would signal the sunrise of a brighter day. I want to believe that the mysterious return of Florida State’s National Championship trophies is just the sign we seek.

Across the three decades of Bobby Bowden’s leadership, we have seen long tracks of prosperity interrupted only twice by rough patches of fan upheaval and uneven performance on the field.

Of course, we are in such a time now. There are explanations of all sorts for three losses to unranked teams plus an embarrassing loss to Florida; some explanations are legitimate, some probably not. Yes, other programs also are hurt by injuries, but most other winning programs do not endure a run of catastrophic injuries plus the initiation of two freshman quarterbacks.

Bowden says that any team can go only as far as their quarterback can take them. We have outstanding quarterbacks who under the normal scheme would not start for two and three more years. Both of them — Drew and X — have stout hearts and astonishing talent, but no experience and no healthy line to give them the opportunity to learn.

Maybe it shouldn’t be that way. Maybe different decisions could have been, should have been made several years ago. I don’t know enough about real football and real coaching to say. But what we had before us in the late season was a team very different from the confident and strong, young team that stood at the goal line and whipped Miami in the opener.

Remember always: This is our team and these are our kids. They look to us for reassurance, our approval and our recognition that they made the right decision to become Seminoles. Like us, if they are lucky, they will remain Seminoles all their life.

I love our fans. I adore our impatient, unreasonable, demanding, spoiled fans and I am solidly one of them. But I also have been around here for a long time, and I remember the rough stretch before the Dynasty, and I remember the even earlier, glorious four years in the late 1970s when we beat Florida four years in a row. And I remember 1976, Bowden’s first year, when 5-6 was an improvement over the misery that had come before.

Those two bright crystal footballs are the symbolic twin beacons of our greatest era. Last September in Miami, I thought we were almost all the way back, warming to the spotlights of those beacons again. By November, the season had darkened and the horizon at the end of the road looked even darker still.

But instead of the season ending in despair and dissention, our fans and our players and coaches showed their mettle. The end of 2005 brought encouragement and a refreshed appetite for the sweetness of glories past.

The last time, it took six years to turn fortunes around. This time, it may only have taken five. The span between 1981 and 1986 was a time of disappointing losses to Florida and Miami and Auburn, and of controversy over the defense and the offense. But in that time, we also won three of five bowl games and tied the fourth, and we took great satisfaction in beating Ohio State and Notre Dame and LSU and Arizona State and Nebraska — all on their own fields.

That string of six seasons in the early 1980s was, in fact, a time very much like today. Twenty years ago, we yearned for the even earlier era of Bobby Bowden’s magic. Today we yearn again, this time for the Dynasty. Asign is wanted; a signal of some kind to reassure us that Bobby Bowden has built a program too good to be down for long.

Now, we have our bright crystal footballs back, and I choose to believe that they are the omen we seek. They are there to light the way.

We have seen the bright crystal footballs return, and it has made us hunger for more of them. The rough patch will turn smooth and we will be back again. I believe that we are much, much closer to sunrise than the clouds and shadows show.

We’re going back into the light, and soon.