Saturday, October 05, 2002
A real football school - and proud of it
By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Writer
Wars have been halted to play soccer games. A vote-swap was arranged in England's Parliament once so a Labor Party bigwig could watch his son's matches at Wimbledon. By those standards, canceling two days of classes to play a football game doesn't seem like such a big deal.
But if you're looking for a way to distinguish a real football school from schools that just play football, it's as good a measure as any.
Clemson at Florida State for a game Thursday night sounded like a bad idea from the beginning.
For openers, it pitted father against son. FSU coach Bobby Bowden is going against Clemson's Tommy Bowden for the fourth time, but the first time that both desperately needed a win. Either way, it's going to be one very interesting Thanksgiving at the Bowden household.
The last time the two tangled in Tallahassee, with not as much at stake, dad's team put a 54-7 hurting on the son's. Ann Bowden, wife and mother, went to visit Tommy and daughter-in-law Linda soon after and described her stay this way: “They let me sleep there,” she told the local newspaper. “But that was about all.”
Yet it's more than an unlucky kink in the schedule. The hotels, restaurants and assorted other merchants who make a killing on weekend games doubted their usual customers would skip two days of work to come down. But that wasn't the biggest headache Bowden Bowl IV presented, either.
That would be traffic. It seems fans would be descending on campus and 80,000-seat Doak Campbell Stadium just about the same time state workers leave their jobs only a few blocks away.
Realizing that something had to give, FSU cleared the entire student body to play hooky Thursday and threw in Friday for good measure.
Let's not get too sanctimonious about this. But upon first hearing the announcement, some people assumed that Dean Wormer of “Animal House” fame had left Faber College for FSU.
But no. It was just FSU president Sandy D'Alemberte, who is retiring early next year and apparently doesn't want anybody at his going-away party to be mad. Besides, he promised no more home weeknight games would be scheduled while classes were supposed to be in session.
“A fall break,” D'Alemberte said Monday, “seemed to be the answer for both the long-term and short-term challenges.”
Ten years ago, some do-gooders peeked below the surface of big-time college sports and came up gasping for air. Last year, at considerable cost, they did it again. Their conclusion: The stench was worse.
Some surprise.
Last June, the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics found the same skeletons in the closet — academic cheating, corruption and growing commercialization in college sports — only there were many more of them. No sooner did the panel warn of an escalating “financial arms race” than it began escalating even more.
The few headlines the commission report generated had to do with its modest recommendations: schools would need a 50 percent graduation rate to play conference championships and in the postseason; no corporate logos on uniforms; and an oversight committee to hold university presidents' feet to the fire of public and peer review.
Hodding Carter III, the former White House aide who served as president and chief executive officer of the Knight Foundation, left a news conference that afternoon with a warning: “If nothing happens within three months to a year, then I believe it won't be more than another piece of paper.”
Nothing's happened — at least nothing good — and that's because the Knight Commission and all those reformers derided as “pointy-headed” by athletic directors nationwide can't begin to compete with the piece of paper D'Alemberte was handed by ESPN just before he deposited it in the school's bank account.
The cable network televises as many as a dozen Thursday night games every college season and Florida State, one of its biggest draws ever in that slot, never turns down an invitation. That's how real football schools behave.
At age 72, Bowden is proof that if you live long enough and win often enough, speaking plainly is a virtue instead of a burden.
“I like it and I don't like it. I think this year here,” Bobby Bowden said about playing his son, “I dislike it more than any game we've had.”
And he's probably not the only one.
———
Jim Litke is the national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org
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Aiken 27, Belmont 6
Anderson 37, harrison 34
Batavia 44, Williamsburg 0
Bethel Tate 35, Clermont NE 0
CCD 55, Landmark Christian 28
Chaminade-Julienne 57, Purcell Marian 13
CHCA 37, Columbus Bishop Hartley 0
Clinton-Massie 33, Blanchester 0
Colerain 31, Oak Hills 13
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Dayton Dunbar 46, Western Hills 18
Dixie Heights 24, Conner 6
East Central 31, Lawrenceburg 7
Glen Este 21, Winton Woods 14
Goshen 14, Hillsboro 7
Holy Cross 36, Bellevue 6
Holy Cross 36, Bellevue 6
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Indian Hill 19, Wyoming 0
Indiana football scores
Kentucky football scores
Kettering Alter 28, Badin 14
Kings 42, Ross 13
Lakota West 33, Milford 21
Lebanon 7, Carroll 0
Lemon-Monroe 17, Talawanda 14
Lloyd 37, Newport 7
Loveland 35, Norwood 13
Madeira 29, Finneytown 0
Mason 39 , Northwest 21
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Meadowdale 34, Jacobs 6
Middletown 14, Fairfield 6
New Richmond 35, Western Brown 0
NewCath 48, Ludlow 0
North College Hill 44, Lockland 7
Ohio football scores
Prep football scores
Princeton 42, Lakota East 21
Reading 34, Deer Park 0
Ryle 24, Boone County 9
Scott 56, Grant Co. 6
Simon Kenton 26, Campbell County 22
St. Xavier 35, LaSalle 7
Sycamore 49, Hamilton 7
Taylor 17, Mariemont 14
Turpin 20, Amelia 12
Wilmington 6, Little Miami 0
Woodward 26, Shroder Paideia 0
A real football school - and proud of it
