NOTRE DAME Bowden has FSU near top again

He's at 339 career wins and counting.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- He has buried opponents in "dadgum," bludgeoned them with "aw shucks" and along the way piled up more victories than any other Division I-A college football coach.
But while Bobby Bowden's demeanor may be down home, his instinct, just days shy of his 74th birthday, remains killer.
On Oct. 25 Bowden guided Florida State to a 48-24 victory over Wake Forest for his 339th victory as a Division I-A coach, one more than Joe Paterno of Penn State.
In his 28th year leading the Seminoles (7-1), Bowden has his fifth-ranked team atop the Atlantic Coast Conference and poised for a major bowl as it prepares to visit Notre Dame (2-5) today.
A year ago this weekend things didn't appear so bright. The Irish's 34-24 victory at Florida State left the Seminoles a pedestrian 5-3. They finished 9-5, but for a coach whose teams had lost only 13 games in the 1990s, the five losses gave critics fodder to say the game has passed Bowden by.
The problems only worsened after the season when multi-talented freshman quarterback Adrian McPherson, whom Bowden dismissed from the team on Nov. 25, went on trial for gambling.
Emotional ploy
But Bowden, far from panicking, used the upheaval to unite his team.
"Things like that happen," Bowden said. "It seems like we went years and years and years and years without having that problems ... [but] you get beat, people start looking for reasons and excuses. Our kids did that."
The Seminoles' staff, though, addressed the problems at their roots.
"After the season was over, our first goal was to get our unity back. So we stressed it and kids were ready," Bowden said. "They saw where we had gone wrong. And they corrected it, and now we have better results."
Can it really be that simple?
For Bowden, yes, according to assistant coach Odell Haggins. Haggins, an All-American nose guard for the Seminoles in 1986-89, said Bowden always has had the ability to distill a team's challenges into simple, succinct terms.
Simple message
On Nov. 7, 1987, with the fourth-ranked Seminoles taking on Auburn in front of 85,170 hostile fans at Jordan-Hare Stadium, Bowden reminded his team of the key to victory at halftime.
"We had them (27-3)," Haggins remembered. "And Coach Bowden came in and said, 'Guys, if they don't score, we win.' "
That may seem like stating the obvious, but there is nothing elementary about Bowden's football acumen.
He always seems to know which questions to ask, which innovations to adopt and in which direction success lies.
"Don't ever be lured by the 'aw-shucks' thing, because you know he's as competitive as any guy there is," Notre Dame assistant coach Greg Mattison said. "He wants to win more, as much as anybody, and he's tremendously intelligent."