Remembering Bill Peterson

By Jim Joanos

When I learned that Jim Crosby, sportswriter and media personality, had published a book about Bill Peterson, I made a special trip to the mall and bought a copy. The little book entitled, You Can't Become a Football Overnight, is well worth the twenty bucks that it cost me.

Bill Peterson

Peterson was Florida State University's head football coach from 1960-70. He had a way of scrambling words, mixing metaphors and replacing similar sounding words with others of quite different meanings so that specific quotes of things that he said are simply hilarious. Examples include statements like, "I've always had great repertoire with my players," "don't burn your bridges at both ends," and "just remember the words of Henry Patrick: kill me or let me live." In the book, Crosby sets out some of the funniest "Petersonisms," as he calls the statements, and builds around them with pictures, stories and information about Peterson. In the process, he pays great tribute to a man who did so much for FSU football.

The book captures in a nutshell the fun that was Florida State University football from 1960 to 70 when Peterson was Florida State University's head football coach. I remember those years with a great deal of pleasure.

Under Peterson's command, FSU moved from a promising program to one that could win consistently against some of the better teams in the country. In those eleven seasons some of the most significant events in FSU football history as well as national football history occurred. During that span, FSU attained higher rankings than ever before and became a leader in changing the very manner in which college football was played. FSU, with Peterson at its head led the movement that changed college football from a basic conservative run oriented type of game to one with a wide open style in which the forward pass became the key ingredient.

Bill Peterson grew up in Ohio and played football at Ohio Northern University. After college, he coached high school football for ten years and then became an assistant coach for Paul Dietzel at Louisiana State University where their team had great success which included the winning of a national championship in 1958. Consequently, when FSU needed a head coach in 1960, Peterson was hired to lead the Seminoles.

The first four Peterson years at FSU were filled with close games but did not total great records. However, the program was gradually improving. Big time success was reached in 1964, when under Peterson's leadership, FSU showed the nation that it could be one of the "big boys" of college football. Employing a wide open passing offense featuring quarterback Steve Tensi and wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff, that team built a 9-1-1 record including a 36-19 beating of Oklahoma in the Gator Bowl at the end of the season. From that point forward, FSU would no longer be that fledgling football school seeking recognition among the old time programs. Peterson's pass crazy offense would thereafter also greatly influence the way in which college football was played.

FSU followed the outstanding 1964 season with two mediocre ones but again in 1967 put together another great season as FSU went 7-2-2 including an end of the season, 17-17 tie in the Gator Bowl Game against Penn State. That team featured quarterback Kim Hammond and wide receiver Ron Sellers. Great moments of that season included the 37-37 tie at Birmingham against coach Bear Bryant and the University of Alabama as well as the first ever victory at Gainesville over the University of Florida, 21-16.

In the 1968 season, the Seminoles did well again and went 8-2. The 40-20 victory over number eighteen Houston in Jacksonville was a special treat for Seminole fans. The season ended with FSU's third bowl trip in a row and the fourth in five years. Prior to Peterson's tenure at FSU, FSU had participated in only a total of three bowl games. This time the Seminoles played but lost to the LSU Bengal Tigers in the inaugural Peach Bowl game in Atlanta.

In Peterson's last two seasons at FSU, the team went 6-3-1 and 7-4. Following the 1970 season, Rice University came calling with lots of money and a number of other incentives. Peterson moved on to that institution where he stayed for a short while before becoming the head coach of the professional Houston Oilers football team. After the Oilers, he later served as the athletic director at the University of Central Florida. Following that he spent the last years of his life back in Tallahassee assisting FSU in an administrative and fund raising capacity.

Following Bill Peterson's death, in 2002, "H" style goal posts were placed in Doak Campbell Stadium so that FSU players could "run through the goal posts" as they did during Peterson's tenure at the head of FSU football. It has been a fitting tribute to the man who many believe and as one fan put it, "was the first to really put FSU on the big time football map." For us old timers, it brings back a lot of great memories to watch our present day Seminoles run through "Pete's posts."

In the meantime, FSU continues to have a great football passing team and as he would put it: "We're going to throw the football come high or hell water. We're not going to be any three clouds and a yard-of-dust team."