Joe, Bobby ... Thanks, but it's time move on
Two legends no longer get respect from players they need to succeed
Al Bello / Getty ImagesFlorida State's Bobby Bowden, left, and Penn State's Joe Paterno shake hands before the Orange Bowl on Jan. 3, 2006.
OPINION
By John Walters
NBCSports.com
updated 3:59 p.m. ET May 13, 2008
 | John Walters |
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Bobby? Joe? It's time to go.
Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno have devoted their long and illustrious lives to college football and in particular to Florida State and Penn State, respectively.
Bowden, 78, has been the head coach in Tallahassee since 1976. His 373 career victories are the most of any major college coach.
Paterno, 81, has been a fixture in State College since 1950 -- he took over the program in 1966. He has one less victory in his career than Bowden, although, unlike Bowden, all of them were earned at the same school, Penn State.
Venerable and venerated, Bowden and Paterno belong on a Rushmore facade of college football. Thank you, both. Now please exit the premises.
The first, and last time, these men met across the field from one another was two years ago, at the 2006 FedEx Orange Bowl. The contest lasted three overtimes due to errant kickers who missed four late field-goal attempts, including three after the end of regulation. When Penn State finally ended it on a 29-yard field goal by freshman Kevin Kelly, it was nearly 1 a.m. Paterno quipped, "It's past my bedtime."
Coach Paterno, Coach Bowden: It's past your bedtime.
Florida State and Penn State have become embarrassments, and even their fans know it, even if their head coaches do not. The latest ignominy in Tallahassee revolves around the arrest last month of wide receiver Preston Parker for possession of a concealed weapon (felony) and marijuana (misdemeanor). Parker, a sophomore and the Seminoles' MVP last season, was pulled over in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., on April 22 for erratic driving. During the stop, a police officer found a .45-caliber pistol and 4.81 grams of marijuana in the vehicle.
Two weeks earlier in State College, Nittany Lions wide receiver Chris Bell pulled an 8-inch knife on defensive lineman Devon Still in the dining hall. Still had accused Bell of stealing his cell phone case, among other items. After three Penn State assistant coaches disarmed the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Bell and led him away, he allegedly threatened Still verbally, shouting, "I have more knives and a gun up here."
Bell, who was already under suspension from the team for academic reasons, was summarily dismissed.
Of course, incidents such as Parker's and Bell's are now as much a fixture in Tallahassee and State College as Bowden's golf cart and Paterno's eyewear. Since 2002 more than 60 Nittany Lions players have run afoul of the law, and more than a few have been repeat offenders. Sixty? That's nearly double the amount of Seminoles who were suspended from last December's Music City Bowl for having cheated in a music-history class.
I will spare you the "No Country For Old Men" cracks if you will spare me the excuse that what is going down at FSU and Penn State is no different than at most schools. Two days ago Florida, the 2007 national champions, dismissed safety Jamar Hornsby after it was discovered that he had been using the gas credit card of a female student who died in a motorcycle crash along with a fellow teammate of Hornsby's last October. Hornsby, a junior, used the card more than 70 times and accrued a debt of $3,000 on it. He first used the card of the deceased, Ashley Slonina, the day after she died.
Things are thug all over.
Then again, Bowden and Paterno have helmed their programs 32 and 42 years, respectively. If ever they had set a tone for how a program should be properly run -- and, really, only Paterno has -- then that standard of decorum has since disappeared.
While most of the Penn State arrests involve off-campus fights and underage drinking (i.e., booze and broads busts), Paterno's "just kids being kids" gripe rings hollow in the face of the sheer magnitude of it all. And then there are the more serious convictions, such as last September's murder conviction of former defensive lineman LaVon Chisley.
Kicked off the team in 2005 for academic reasons, Chisley became a low-level drug dealer. Mired in deep debt, Chisley stabbed Langston Carraway (a fellow drug dealer) 93 times in his apartment in Patton Township, Pa., which is adjacent to State College. It was the first homicide in that town in 15 years.
The blotter in Tallahassee is no less shameful. Two years ago this month, A.J. Nicholson, now a linebacker with the Cincinnati Bengals, and Fred Rouse, a wide receiver who had been kicked off the Seminoles five months earlier, burglarized the house of starting running back Lorenzo Booker. The pair stole $1,700 worth of electronic equipment and you did not exactly need to be Encyclopedia Brown to solve this caper: Rouse, considered by many to be the top prep recruit in the nation out of high school, had left behind his receiver's glove that had his number (1) on it.
Bowden and JoePa belong on any short list of the greatest college football figures ever. Each has won two national championships. Bowden, by that slim margin of one victory, has more wins (373) than any coach in Division I-A history. Paterno, when he takes the field on Aug. 30 in search of his 373rd win against Coastal Carolina, will break Amos Alonzo Stagg's record for the most seasons (43) at one school.
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