So Bowden coaches on, jockeying to make FSU matter again — and to stay ahead of Penn State's Joe Paterno in the chase to be the college football coach with the most career wins (Bowden leads, 373-372). Don't think that trivial pursuit doesn't matter.

"This is all my dad knows," says Terry Bowden, a college football TV analyst and former coach of Auburn. "He doesn't tell me how much longer he'll go. But you have to think he is motivated to stay ahead of Paterno for that win record."

Why does Bobby Bowden soldier on? He'll tell you why. He'll tell you about cutting out pictures of Alabama players and pasting them in a scrapbook as a boy growing up in Birmingham. He'll tell you about bawling over Alabama losses. He'll tell you about worshiping the man who coached his Crimson Tide, the greatest coach who ever lived: Bear Bryant.

Bowden saw an aging Bear get ridiculed as his program slipped. The Bear should retire, they howled. The Bear did. Then, the Bear died.

Bowden, 78, doesn't have to squint to see himself. This is why he still climbs to the top of that coaching tower and scribbles notes from his patriarchal perch. Coaching gives him purpose. It gives him life. If he doesn't coach, he'll die.

"My dad also died about six months after he retired," says Bowden. "I think of that. But I have other reasons why I'm still going. I still have good health, so I go on. The critics who think I should leave? It's a normal reaction. If I don't win them all, you can count on people wanting me to leave."

Bowden laughs his friendly laugh. You have to like the man. He's America's treasure, a fairytale figure who has aw-shucked his way to a place between Santa Claus and Andy Griffith in the Swell Guys Hall of Fame.

But Bowden's most important audience is his players. And for Bowden, it has come to this: He is more figurehead than feared leader. They respect him as a man, as a father figure. As a coach?

"I don't think I feared coach Bowden," says former FSU quarterback Adrian McPherson, who played last year for the Arena Football League's Grand Rapids Rampage. "I thought he was a great person and a great coach. But I wouldn't say I feared him."

The low point of Bowden's 32-year tenure at Florida State came in December in a 35-28 Music City Bowl loss to Kentucky. FSU played the game without 36 players, many of whom were left home because the school was investigating the academic scandal.

It was fitting Florida State lost a "Who Cares? Bowl" against a traditional SEC tomato can. It was the rotted cherry on top of a second consecutive 7-6 season for the Seminoles, the worst two-year run in Bowden's FSU tenure.

"When I was there, it was a shock to lose," says Lorenzo Booker, a FSU running back from 2003-06. "Now, it's the same stuff."

What happened? There's no tidy answer. Blame stains many, including Bowden.

But he's not alone.

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