Can’t complain about the advantages—unfair or not

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

Many people say Florida State football has unfair advantages. Coaches and fans across the country see the Seminoles as a silver-spoon program, undeserving of the inherited wealth and privilege and prosperity that surrounds us.

Begin with the rich athletic soil that produces the largest number of great high-school football players in America.

NCAA rules restrict the time that college coaches may spend visiting potential recruits. That gives every Division I school in Florida an advantage. We live here, and we know the best players and where they’re hiding.

Imagine the task non-Florida coaches have in sorting through the maze of South Florida schools in the time they have.

The 30 largest public high schools in Dade County average more than 3,200 students each. More students are in Dade County’s public high schools than in all of West Virginia’s public high schools.

Florida’s players mature faster and tend to be further advanced than high-school players of the same age in other states.

Our 15 million citizens give us an advantage beyond the numbers. One equally powerful advantage is that Florida is one of the few states that permit spring football practice in high schools. The good weather is a factor, of course. Florida high school players and coaches have weeks of additional training and practice.

Another advantage is Florida State’s cozy location in the shadow of the state Capitol. FSU alumni are Capitol lobbyists. They populate the staffs of the House and Senate and the directorships of state business and professional associations, as well as the elected leadership of the Legislature. The ascension of T.K. Wetherell to FSU’s presidency has been met by equal parts envy and despair on the part of those who wish FSU no good.

More unfairness: Florida State is the glamour school. I’m not talking about the pinheads in New Jersey who anointed FSU as the top party school. No, I mean that we have celebrities and high-octane achievement: the National High Magnetic Field Lab; Taxol, the cancer drug; RS6000, the world’s most powerful supercomputer; a top film school, the Flying High Circus; and the Marching Chiefs.

Whenever anyone tunes in to Florida State, it’s show time.

FSU is the school of actors and astronauts, of acrobats and astrophysicists. We are the school with the gothic stadium and the horse and rider with the flaming spear. Wherever the War Chant is heard, everyone thinks FSU, and the War Chant is heard everywhere.

Florida State has the flashy gold helmets and the quotable old rascal coach, Evening Shade on CBS and The Daniel Huffman Story on HBO, all the Burt Reynolds and Robert Urich movies where they wore FSU gear, Neon Deion Sanders, former FSU quarterback Lee Corso being goaded to tone down his FSU hype on ESPN’s Gameday, FSU Law School grad Terry Bowden on ABC, ESPN Magazine’s splashy 2000 article calling FSU the new “Cool School.”

We are the glitzy golden boys from the shimmering Sunshine State. We share the national entertainment menu with Disney and Universal, with space explorers from Cape Canaveral and with riveting presidential political drama from courtrooms in Tallahassee to chad-counters in Miami. The 2002 NFL Defensive Player of the Year sits on our Board of Trustees.

The one advantage we have that may be the most bitterly envied and resented, privately of course, is the stature and longevity and achievements of Bobby Bowden. Now beginning his 28th season at the Seminole helm, Bowden is close to becoming the all-time winningest Division I coach in college football history.

For 15 years, Bowden’s teams ran roughshod over rivals and a proud conference. Paybacks of late have been delivered with relish. Still, even with the troubles, many still feel that FSU always gets the pass, that the power of Bowden’s personality disarms the harshest critics.

Recall how worried we were about the ESPN special to be televised nationwide after the McPherson business. FSU allowed ESPN unfettered access to our football program last year. ESPN’s offer had been accepted because we thought we had a chance to have a great season in 2002. As it turned out, last year was probably the worst possible time to have the cold eye of a TV camera inserted into every turn of circumstance.

Seminoles were relieved—even pleased—and our critics confounded, when the ESPN special came off more like a recruiting video than an exposé. Bowden’s leadership and integrity triumphed over potential disaster.

A couple of seasons ago, ESPN’s study found that Notre Dame and FSU were the only two programs viewed as top fan favorites in all nine geographic regions in America. In spite of nine losses in two years, we are still the hot school.

So there it is. You and I know that the University of Florida has advantages, unfair ones at that. And we envy the advantages enjoyed by the University of Miami.

But no one anywhere feels sorry for Florida State.