Bill Curry, College Football 19y

Family matters more than football

Herb Barks is a close friend of mine. The headmaster at a wonderful independent school emphasizing diversity with a "global" perspective, he is a lifelong believer in the educational value of athletics. Last Friday he was driving to a football game with four ninth-graders in his truck.

Dr. Barks decided to allow rap music in an effort to create a "cultural experience" for himself. In time the kids turned off the rap, tuned in to local sports shows, and began to call in on their cell phones (each child had one), speaking with authority about their favorite subject.

Care to hazard a guess as to the source of current adolescent fascination, even preoccupation? (No, not that.) Their passionate interest had been aroused, and they were determined to be included in the dialogue. These children were questioning coach Lou Holtz's ability to select the proper starters for the South Carolina Gamecocks. Furthermore, the stated objective was to couch the rhetoric such that it would achieve maximum play in the public forum.

Bear in mind that these are good kids, simply mimicking the behavior of our culture. Welcome to the life of football coaches, even legendary ones, in this millennium.

What have we wrought when we somehow encourage little people with braces and pimples to publicly challenge a guy with 244 Division I-A football victories?

It may be a stretch, but I believe there is a natural segue here from Holtz to the Bowden family. If Lou is taking heat from children, how might we expect the lives of Clemson coach Tommy Bowden and Florida State coach Bobby Bowden to be on the eve of their teams meeting in Bowden Bowl VI? Bear in mind that the family suffered a horrendous loss three weeks ago when a freakish automobile accident claimed the lives of Bobby's former son-in-law, John Madden, and a 15-year-old grandson, Bowden Madden.

That devastating event was followed by three of the most painful football losses (two for Tommy, one for Bobby) I have seen in recent years.

Center Stage is a clever title, drawn from the fertile minds of some of ESPN.com's college football editors. It has to do with the fact that I played in the center of things for many years, and that as a head coach I was on stage for many more. Our objective here is to bring the reader into the middle of the huddle, the pileup, and the emotions of a marquee football game each week. There are times when the only drama is the game itself, its subtle nuances, hidden yardage, coaching points and the like.

This game, this week, is not one of those times. This time the action is in the hearts and psyches of the coaches, their families and their players.

Clemson at Florida State, circa 2004, contains so much emotional and human substance that it could easily generate a book. No doubt some enterprising young sports writer is busily compiling just such a tome, filling the pages with numbers, Bowden lore, a family tree or two, and a glowing or scathing testimony to the combined coaching legacy, depending on her or his perspective.

We are not interested in any of that here. I want you to understand how it feels to be the center of this kind of scrutiny when real tragedy is combined with the crucible of defeat in our sport, and how profoundly it affects coaches, players and their families.

First things first: it is customary in our culture for virtually everyone to grieve with families in time of loss, to commiserate together for a few months. Not so for coaches who lose games. In the perverse world of fan entitlement all the sympathy dissipates with the first blown game, quickly turning into a kind of toxic waste.

The viciousness of the attacks is stunning, especially coming at such vulnerable times, and is expressed in the press, by booing in the stands, on the Internet and in the absurd call-in shows.

Coaches' wives and children are accosted by angry, often drunk thugs as they make their way into the games, by nasty remarks from adjacent seats during the action, and are forced to read clever banners around the campus and in the stands proclaiming the coaches' stupidity.

Wives literally cannot go to the cleaners or grocery store without getting the comments, questions and angry stares of the thoughtless and inane critics of the program. Voicemail becomes an ordeal, perhaps containing a death threat or two.

The children are harassed at school, sometimes coming home in tears from the abuse. The most difficult time I recall in that regard was when our son was 13 and clearly distraught about the things he had heard about me at school. I tried to calm him by reminding him that kids really don't think about such things, and were just repeating the things their parents said. He said, "That is not the problem, Dad. I can handle the students. It is the teachers' negative remarks that really embarrass me." I was speechless, and still am all these years later.

In all my years of Bowden watching at FSU I have never heard Bobby criticize his fans. His most recently published remarks on the subject of their booing quarterback Chris Rix are as follows: "These are PlayStation All-Americans. Really, I loathe these kind (sic) of people. It's like me watching Dr. Kildare and thinking I could perform brain surgery."

So it is that the Bowdens' lives are laden with pain right now. At the very moment they need consolation and solace they are dealing with irrational public embarrassment. I assure you that the teams' performances have been deeply affected by the tragedy, and I'm afraid that the rough patch for both programs is far from over.

This game, in which the father and son are required to compete against each other, has all the characteristics of an episode from Rod Serling's classic horror/science series, "The Twilight Zone."

It makes for great theater, but for those of us who watch it is important to remember we are observing a grieving family that has been given no respite, no private time to recover from their personal ordeal.

Some things are even more important than football.

ESPN college football analyst Bill Curry was an NFL center for 10 seasons and coached for 17 years in the college ranks. His Center Stage examinations of marquee matchups appear each week during the college football season.

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