TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In Willie Taggart’s first season as coach, Florida State is in real danger of having two noteworthy achievements come to an end: its NCAA-record streak of 36 consecutive bowl appearances and its 41 consecutive winning seasons (one off the NCAA record).
Florida State is 4-6 and finishes the regular season against No. 20 Boston College (7-3) on Saturday and No. 13 Florida (7-3) on Nov. 24. Both games are at home, but that doesn’t seem likely to produce enough of an advantage.
Advertisement
With all the angst shown by current and former players, coaches and fans about the possibility of missing out on the postseason, you’d think the last FSU team that missed a bowl game — the 1981 squad — would be embarrassed by its status in the program’s history. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Part of that is where FSU was a program then; another part is the death march of a schedule that the Seminoles faced.
Bobby Bowden was headed into his sixth season in 1981, fresh off leading the Seminoles to back-to-back Orange Bowl appearances. He was 43-14 as the Seminoles’ coach, and his only losing record had come in his first season. But FSU was still an independent and fighting to earn both local and national respect.
“Back then, Florida State was not — even though we had the good year before, a lot of people thought that was just a fluke,” Sam Childers, who started at tight end on the 1981 team, told The Athletic. “We weren’t as well-known as Florida State is today. Florida State was considering dropping the football program until Coach Bowden got there. They went through some rough years, and they were losing money.
“Hell, you could walk in the stadium at any game and sit on the 50-yard line. Our program was down. Back then, we weren’t like FSU’s known today. We weren’t known like that back then at all. We were the young guys; we were up-and-coming. Even though we went to two Orange Bowls, I don’t know if they all took us serious.”
The three seasons before Bowden’s hiring saw the Seminoles go a combined 4-29, including an 0-11 record in 1973 under Larry Jones. But Bowden turned things around quickly. FSU was 5-6 in his first season in 1976, then won 10 games for the first time in school history in ’77; the Seminoles were ranked 14th in the final poll that season, the first time they had finished a season as a ranked team.
Advertisement
FSU was 11-0 going into the 1979 Orange Bowl but ranked just fourth. Oklahoma beat the Seminoles 24-7, and FSU finished No. 6. Another Orange Bowl appearance followed in 1980, when a one-loss FSU team was ranked second going into the bowl game. But any chance at a shared national title disappeared with an 18-17 loss to Oklahoma, which scored a TD and hit on a two-point conversion in the final minute.
In an attempt to bolster his claim that he had one of the better programs in the country, Bowden configured a hellacious schedule in 1981. He never was afraid to play on the road, but he went a bit overboard in 1981. Games 3-7 were on the road and it was a Who’s Who of opponents: Nebraska, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Pitt and LSU. Again, all five of those games were on the road, in a six-week period (the off-week came between the Nebraska and Ohio State games). There also were games against Miami, Southern Miss and Florida.
“This year, all you need to look at is who we are playing and then where the games are being played to see it’s the toughest,” Bowden said in FSU’s 1981 media guide. “It isn’t fair to say the schedule is a challenge. It’s more than that. This is probably the toughest schedule ever in the history of college football.”
Hyperbole? Maybe — but maybe not. Notre Dame, Nebraska and Pitt opened the season in the top 10, and Ohio State was 11th.
FSU had lost just three games in the previous two seasons, so Bowden had reason to be confident.
“It was a very tough, demanding schedule,” Rick Stockstill, who started at quarterback that season for FSU now is the coach at Middle Tennessee State, told The Athletic. “Our guys, we fought our tails off, we competed our tails off and got a winning season out of it. Nobody in the country plays a schedule like that. I bet nobody’s ever played one since, as tough and demanding as that schedule was.
Advertisement
“We were 19, 20 years old. We were fired up, you know? Now, as a coach, you look back on it and you say, ‘Man, what were we thinking?’ As a player, you’re not going to back down. We didn’t back down from anybody.”
While the 1980 team finished No. 5, FSU lost a ton of talent from that squad, including four key defenders in Monk Bonasorte, Bobby Butler, Reggie Herring and Ron Simmons. FSU also lost leading rusher Sam Platt and two starting offensive linemen in Ken Lanier and Greg Futch.
Regardless, Florida State opened with wins over Louisville and Memphis State. Then came the road tests.
• No. 17 Nebraska 34, Florida State 14, Sept. 19: The Huskers got their rushing attack cranked up and simply ran over the Seminoles. Nebraska rushed for 472 yards and blew it open with two special teams TDs in an eight-second span of the third quarter. Irving Fryar returned a punt 82 yards for a TD, and the Huskers quickly scored again when they caught a fumble out of the air on the ensuing kickoff and took it 13 yards for a TD.
• Florida State 36, No. 7 Ohio State 27, Oct. 3: Stockstill threw for 299 yards and two TDs, including one to Childers, as he outdueled Art Schlichter, who threw for 458 yards and two scores. The difference was FSU’s rushing attack, as the Seminoles outgained the Buckeyes 215-38 on the ground.
• Florida State 19, Notre Dame 13, Oct. 10: The Irish had been No. 1 in the nation a few weeks earlier but were 2-2 entering the game under first-year coach Gerry Faust. Stockstill threw two TD passes in the second half to propel the Seminoles to the win. Junior RB Ricky Williams rushed for 135 yards on 15 attempts in what might have been the best game of his career.
• No. 3 Pitt 42, Florida State 14, Oct. 17: Pitt rolled up 503 yards in crushing the Seminoles. Dan Marino threw for 251 yards and three scores, and the Panthers also scored on an interception return (by future FSU assistant Sal Sunseri) and a punt return. FSU committed five turnovers.
Advertisement
• Florida State 38, LSU 14, Oct. 24: The Seminoles took a 17-0 first-quarter lead, then coasted home to finish off the road trip. Stockstill threw for just 103 yards but tossed two TD passes, and that was all that was needed as Greg Allen rushed for 202 yards; that was the first 200-yard game in Seminoles history. FSU held LSU to just 26 rushing yards.
“You look back on that team, it was pretty amazing what we accomplished being as young as we were,” Stockstill said. “We didn’t back down. We won three of those five games. You think about it today. You beat LSU at LSU, Ohio State at Ohio State and Notre Dame at Notre Dame — shoot, you’re going to be the talk of the country.”
The Seminoles were the underdogs in all five of the road games and faced some of the best players in college football, including Marino, Fryar, Schlichter, Nebraska running back Roger Craig, Nebraska center Dave Rimington and Notre Dame linebacker Bob Crable. Of note about Stockstill’s performance against Ohio State: His big day came against a secondary coached by some guy named Nick Saban.
“You were the underdog,” Childers said. “In essence, we really had nothing to lose. They thought they were going to have a cakewalk with us, and they didn’t. You really kind of felt like, ‘Hey, we’ll surprise ’em,’ and we did.
“Then, we surprised ourselves when we came home at the end of the season.”
FSU was 5-2 headed into the home stretch, then beat Western Carolina to move to 6-2 and up to No. 14 in the rankings. Alas, in November, FSU lost to No. 13 Miami and Jim Kelly 27-19 and No. 14 Southern Miss and Reggie Collier 58-14, making the season finale against Florida (also 6-4) a play-in game for a Peach Bowl bid.
“That was our motivation,” Stockstill said. “That’s what I’m proud of. Coach Bowden, we were going to play as hard as we could for him. I’ve always said, besides my father, he’s the biggest male influence of my life. I try to coach like Coach Bowden did. I’ve been in this profession a long time, and he’s the guy that I try to emulate as much as possible. He was a great coach and a great man, and we didn’t want to let him down.
Advertisement
“We wanted to play as hard as we could for him because of the respect and love that we had for him. Florida was better than us. You got to give people credit. I don’t want to say we ran out of gas, but physically and mentally, it took a toll on you just how demanding that schedule was.”
At halftime, the game in Gainesville still was winnable for the ’Noles. They trailed 13-3, the same deficit they faced before they rallied to beat Florida 17-13 in 1980.
“For some reason, I don’t know what happened to us. It’s just we kind of gave out at the second half,” Childers said. “I have no idea. I couldn’t put my finger on it, to be honest.”
Florida outscored Florida State 22-0 in the second half, eliminating the Seminoles from the bowl picture; there were 16 bowls that season, and 6-5 teams were not in great demand.
“There weren’t many bowl games,” Stockstill said. “We were not in a conference. Had we gone 6-5 in today’s time, we would’ve been in a bowl game that year. We just played an incredibly tough schedule physically and it just took a toll on us.”
Among the Seminoles’ opponents that season, Ohio State, Nebraska, Miami and Pitt finished in the top 15 and Southern Miss finished 25th.
Everyone on the team was disappointed with the final outcome of the season, but that didn’t mean they considered it a wasted campaign.
“Coach Bowden obviously was a little dejected, but he’d never show that to us and he wouldn’t blame it on anybody,” Childers said. “He was the head guy. He did not put blame on any one person. He did like most leaders do: They blame themselves and their coaching. But Coach Bowden was … I mean, I’m telling you, if there’s a better coach in the United States, I don’t know one. I know Saban’s good and all that, but Bobby Bowden was good.”
Stockstill took it a step further.
“Coach Bowden’s the best,” he said. “There’s not a college coach in the history of this game that I feel can wear Coach Bowden’s shoes. Coach Bowden, he was a great communicator with us. As players, he motivated us. We weren’t the most talented players there, but we played for each other, we cared about each other, and he had the unique ability to make an average player play good and a good player play great.
Advertisement
“Stars weren’t invented back then, but we didn’t have four- and five-star guys running around. We were all two-star, three-star guys who just played our hearts out for the love of Florida State, the love of our teammates and the love for Coach Bowden. Coach Bowden never blamed us or anything like that. He was the best and still is the best in my opinion.”
While Bowden is a legend and garners a level of respect that’s unattainable for anyone else in Tallahassee, that doesn’t mean Taggart can’t learn from him and use his experiences to shape his own legacy. Like Bowden, Taggart has taken over a program in the midst of a rebuild and in desperate need of a culture change.
“You got to go back to when Coach Bowden came here; the first year, people didn’t perform,” Childers said. “His players weren’t playing up to his expectations. What he ended up doing was the last three or four games, he started all freshmen and sophomores that were going to be the future. Look how that turned out.”
After the 5-6 season in his initial campaign at FSU, the Seminoles didn’t have another losing record under Bowden.
“Willie Taggart’s along the same lines,” Childers said. “He hasn’t made that drastic move yet because it’s his first year, too. He may next year. But it is — it’s a rebuilding situation. Coach Bowden has met with him four or five times. … It was at Willie’s request. It wasn’t Coach Bowden. Willie has reached out to Coach Bowden and wants to use his experience and his advice and learn from it.
“He’s got a learning curve, and he’s got players he’s never recruited playing for him. They got to adapt. It’s just kind of a transition time. I think he’ll be fine. He’s a good guy. He conducts himself professionally, and he’s smart. He’s just got to work out the kinks. I think we’ll be fine.”
The roster is flawed but talented, and seems to have bought into the coaching staff’s ideology. In addition, FSU currently has the No. 10 recruiting class in the country, as per the 247Sports rankings, and is in the running for several high-profile recruits.
“A lot of kids want to still come to Florida State,” Childers said. “The opportunity Willie Taggart has is to tell a kid or recruit, ‘Do you want to come to Florida State, or do you want to go to Alabama and sit on the bench for three years and then play? Or would you rather come here and have an opportunity to start as a freshman?’ … I’d want to go play. You didn’t go to college to be on the scout team the whole time.”
Advertisement
No one associated with Florida State wants to be the ones associated with the streak coming to an end. On Monday, Taggart dubbed this week the beginning of a two-game season and has made getting to a bowl a goal.
“It’s important to us,” Taggart said. “It’s important to our players, it’s important to our fan base, it’s important to the teams that came before us that we keep it going. We talked about it as a team, and our guys understand what’s at stake. It’s important for our seniors to leave here and not be that senior class that didn’t go to a bowl game. It’s important for a lot of reasons.
“There’s a lot of people counting on us.”
The players feel the pressure that comes with maintaining what’s become tradition. FSU simply doesn’t miss bowl games or have losing seasons.
“That’s the only thing that’s on our mind right now,” defensive back Stanford Samuels III said in the aftermath of last Saturday’s loss to Notre Dame. “That’s the main thing Coach is talking about — making sure these seniors go out with a bang. Making sure we finish the season how we’re supposed to. Not ruining the legacy. Not ruining the dynasty. It’s huge for the program.
“We definitely don’t want to be looked at as the ones that ended the bowl streak.”
While Stockstill obviously is focused on his own team at Middle Tennessee, which is 7-3 and tied for first in the East Division in Conference USA, he also hopes the FSU streak doesn’t end.
“It’s pretty incredible what Coach Bowden did while he was there and the amount of bowls that he went to,” he said. “Then Jimbo (Fisher) continuing that tradition and now Willie taking over. I root for Florida State. Hopefully, they find a way.
“I hope the tradition can continue.”
(Top photo of Bobby Bowden before the 1981 game at Pitt by George Gojkovich / Getty Images)