My View: The "Bowden Way" Should Have Been The Highway

As the Tampa Tribune reports,"In his book "The Bowden Way," released five years ago this month, Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden wrote that when confronted with the possibility of not being able to promote his son, Jeff, to be FSU's offensive coordinator in 2000, he made up his mind to resign rather than hire someone else to replace Mark Richt."

What resulted was a power struggle between then FSU President Sandy D'Alemberte and Bobby Bowden. The winner in that struggle was Bobby Bowden who was able to hire his son Jeff. FSU then set up a sham procedure to avoid violating the nepotism law.

What emerges from this is a very unfavorable picture of Bobby Bowden.

This so called "Southern gentleman" and soft spoken man turns out to be someone who essentially held an athletic program hostage for personal reasons. Even though hindsight is always one-hundred percent,there should have been someone in the circle of power that should have told Bobby Bowden that this was unacceptable.

Essentially he should have been told thanks for his years of service to the football program and then shown the highway. This is a very unsavory picture of big time college football. And it occurred with a man that has always worn his morality on his sleeve. We now see a truer picture of this man and the picture is not pretty.

Here is a man that was more concerned about nepotism than with a program. Self interest transcended the greater good. Hopefully this will never happen again at FSU.