Bobby Bowden: “I began to lose my power… they were pulling it away from me.”
"If I'd have been winning 10 games, I could've told them what to do. I could've told them where to put it"...
As Bobby Bowden embarks on a media tour promoting his new book, he's holding little back about his less than amicable departure from Florida State. Talking to the Jorge Sedano Show on 790 AM in Miami:
"I didn't want to say y'all are not doing me fair. I didn't want to do anything like that. And I wasn't in a position, If I'd have been winning 10 games, I could've told them what to do. I could've told them where to put it."
"I was disappointed that the head of our trustees... I think he headed up everything. I hated that our president, he always supported me until then. I hated that."
Bowden also talks about how, a couple years prior, he wasn't the one who named the "coach in waiting.":
"When our president came to talk to me with the athletic director... he said I want to name a coach in waiting. I began to lose my power, by the way, the last 2 to 3 years. It was slipping away. I could tell it. They were pulling it away from me.
I told the president I always said I would recommend Mickey Andrews because he's been with us so long.
He said, 'No, I want somebody younger. I want somebody younger.' Well, the guy that it all pointed to was Jimbo (Fisher). That's who he named coach in waiting."
Earlier on the Tim Brando radio show, he detailed the final meeting after the Florida loss this way:
"I did want to coach another year. That's what I had asked for. When the president came out to see me and said, 'This isn't going to be pretty,' I still didn't think it would be fatal. And then he said what the trustees wanted to do is they want you to stay as an ambassador coach. And I said, 'What is an ambassador coach?' He said, 'Well, you just do the good things but you don't go out onto the field.' I said, 'You mean, I don't even go out onto the field?' I said, 'That's out. Forget that. That'd be stealing.' And then I said, 'What''s the other option?' 'The other option is they're not going to renew your contract.'
That didn't leave me any room, you know."
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