I’m not making excuses, because I know I sucked. But, I was 16 going into my senior year of high school and I was a late bloomer. I was a tall skinny kid and I wasn’t much use at all to my high school football coaches.

My first year out of high school, I power lifted regularly and bulked up considerably. But, that was too little and too late although if I had the chance to do it all again I would walk-on at a smaller school.

But, that’s not the route I chose at the time.

My senior year started off with a boom. Although, I had very little to do with it, our football team started off with 6 straight wins and we just blew everybody out in the first few games. All of the

towns around my little town that we usually played were shocked about the way we were rolling all over them.

The high school I graduated from has not won a district championship in football since 1971. Let that sink in for a minute. Unless you have been living in a cave somewhere and have no idea what year it is, the present year is 2015 and they still haven’t won their district’s championship.They have been to the playoffs, but that was after the powers that be watered down the playoff system significantly allowing 4 teams from any given district into the playoffs. In my day, it was the champion only.

So, needless to say, we didn’t win district this season, either. After our 6-0 start, we met a brand new team in our district and they upset us 21-19. We came back and won our next district game and then hosted our biggest rivals the following week and lost something like 27-13. It was a crushing blow to our team and to those that had worked so hard to be in that position and everyone kind of gave up, including the coaches.

We had one last game to end the season and we were 7-2 on the year. Our last game was against a town about a hundred miles north of us and they had never been in our district before. They were pretty good, and we had given up.

It was sleeting and snowing that night and I had never been so cold in my life. Everybody got to play because our season was basically over.

We wound up losing 28-0 and I still have so many regrets about how things turned out.

My football career came and it went without anyone even ever knowing, or caring.

 

I recently purchased a book about Bobby Bowden because I am interested in the Florida State

Seminoles and I am really interested in their rivalry games against the Miami Hurricanes and the Florida Gators and especially all of those years when the national title was basically on the line.

The book is called ‘Called To Coach: Reflections on Life, Faith and Football by Bobby Bowden and Mark Schlabach

Younger people may not know this unless you are a student of the history of the game of football, or you find it fascinating just like I do. But, the Florida State Seminoles have not always been a big time program.

In fact, right before they hired Bobby Bowden, there was even talk of dropping football. I’m not sure how legitimate such talk was.

The Seminoles were  horrible when Bowden took over as their coach in 1976. They were just plain awful, which might be difficult for younger people to believe because the Seminoles have been a powerhouse seemingly forever. Their coach in 1974 and 1975 was fired after achieving a record of 4-18. Those are just Kansas State numbers before they hired Bill Snyder back in the 1980s.

For sure you are not really tripping on such a generico cialis on line dosage. In some men, erectile dysfunction is a genetic disorder, while others canada viagra buy http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482311037_add_file_10.pdf develop ED due to unhealthy lifestyles. Recent research studies have thrown light upon additional benefits of using viagra price canada medication – that goes beyond the treatment of erectile dysfunction. There are lots of online pharmacies that http://www.icks.org/data/ijks/1482458908_add_file_5.pdf buy generic cialis are offering erectile dysfunction medication and Kamagra is the leading favorite amongst them. It was a long time ago, seemingly a lifetime, but I am not sure I had ever even heard of Florida State before Bobby Bowden arrived. In the 1970s, it was Notre Dame, USC, Alabama, Penn State, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan and maybe a few more.

Florida State had not yet arrived on the scene.

In his book, Bowden wrote of playing a game in Denton, Texas against the North Texas State

University Eagles. It had been 80 degrees in Tallahassee when the team had left, and it was snowing in Denton, Texas when they arrived there.

I didn’t think much of it at the time I was reading until later. Then, it hit me that this was the same weekend that I was playing my very last football game and I do use the word ‘playing’ extremely loosely. It was the same weekend that we got drubbed and none of us even had jackets on the sidelines. Did I mention we were cold? I am originally from the tropics, basically, and I had never really seen ice and snow and especially without some kind of jacket on.

The Florida State Seminoles barely survived the cold of that game and had to rally to beat the Eagles of NTSU. The school in Denton changed it’s name a few years ago to the University of North Texas and it’s nickname to the Mean Green after it’s best ever player NFL Hall of Fame member Mean Joe Greene. Joe Greene had grown up near where we played our last football game and only went to this smaller school because of racial segregation and nobody else in the state would take him at the time even though he was a killer on the field.

But, to illustrate how far Bobby Bowden took his Seminoles, the NTSU Eagles or UNT Mean Green has usually been a starter school each season for a school like the University of Texas to warm up on. The Longhorns schedule North Texas for a sure win and to get something under their belts before

taking on the meat of their schedule. It’s almost a guaranteed win for Texas and a nice pay day for the Mean Greene.

I was shocked to learn that the mighty Florida State Seminoles and the even mightier Bobby Bowden had ever played them and had ever traveled to Denton to play a college football game.

 
I was even more shocked to learn that my very last game on the football field was the exact same weekend that Bobby Bowden’s powerful Seminoles had played somewhat close to where I had played.

My no career was over before it ever even started, but Bobby Bowden’s was just now really getting going and he coached the Seminoles another 38 years, or so.

I’m probably the only person in the world that finds this fascinating.

 

 

A few months ago, I wrote about the top college football coaches in my life time and Florida State’s Bobby Bowden made #2 on my list but only because #1 was the legendary Bear Bryant.

http://collegefootballcrazy.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=580&action=edit

Here is another post I wrote about the Florida State dynasty:

http://collegefootballcrazy.com/the-dynasty-florida-state-1987-2000/