Finally got it right

Sporting News, The, Oct 18, 1993 by Tim Layden

Early on a bright Sunday morning in the part of Florida where the panhandle begins, Bobby Bowden awakened from a post-Miami sleep and was struck by a most unusual thought. Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep. So different. He had conditioned himself to sleep late after a Miami defeat, because daylight only reinforces what took place on the previous afternoon.

This was part of Bowden's well-oiled, homespun Miami schtick. How he wanted to have "At Least He Played Miami," inscribed on his headstone. How one more tough loss to Miami was about all it would take to push him off some emotional cliff. (Hardly - Bowden has a gift for perspective and for humor.) How these things run in cycles and cycles turn, "But in whose lifetime," Bowden says, "I don't know."

How every Sunday morning after another of his Florida State teams, collections of high school All-Americas and Players of the Year, had been beaten by Miami ... after the last two losses, in which Florida State missed field goals in the final seconds (both, you know. . . wide right), Bowden would rise in misery on Sunday morning, convinced that he was cursed. So here he awoke on the second Sunday in October, firmly ensconced as the No. 1 team in the country, in possession of a solid 28-10 victory against the Hurricanes and, by God, it felt good. "I could not help but realize how good it was compared to what it's been," Bowden says. "In fact, I must have woke up a million times last night.

"That's a heck of a monkey off our backs," he says. Of course: "The bad thing is we've got to play them again next year." Well, anyhow . . .

The entire weekend had been a catharsis of sorts for the Florida State community, built on the sense that This is the year. Six times in the past seven years Miami had beaten the Seminoles, costing them the chance to play for at least three national championships and leading to a sort of parochial inferiority - and clearly, a Miami fixation - that only Floridians can fully comprehend.

When sophomore safety Devin Bush intercepted a Frank Costa pass and returned it 40 yards for the clinching touchdown with 4:59 to play last Saturday, finally ridding Florida State of the Hurricanes - "They're tough to lick, you never know you've got them beat," Bowden says - and when freshman kicker Scott Bentley (who, bless his frayed nerves, did not have to decide the game) put the ensuing kickoff through the end zone from his 20, the hollow of Doak Campbell Stadium was filled with a roar. And the roar lasted until the finish and beyond.

"So sweet, you can't put it into words," says junior linebacker Derrick Brooks, who missed portions of the game with severe dehydration and cramping. And on the morning after, Bowden, relieved of this role as the tragic clown of college football (at least until he plays Notre Dame on November 13), had another notion. He was thinking about Charlie Ward, his senior quarterback who routinely shredded Miami for 256 yards (21 for 31, a touchdown, no interceptions) and was cool enough afterward to say: "We did what we needed to win. We survived."

It occurred to Bowden, after watching Ward operate Florida State's free-form shotgun offense, scrambling like a rodeo clown to set formations and call plays as the play clock winds down, and then making some outlandish big play, that the whole deal really hangs on one quiet kid from Thomasville, Ga.

"If he gets hurt," Bowden says, "I'm out of a job."

If the Heisman Trophy can be won - or at least clinched - on a single play, then that play was run in the final 90 seconds of the first quarter last Saturday. Here's the deal: Miami has just driven 80 yards in nine plays to score what would be its only touchdown, tying Florida State at 7. Now the Seminoles have a third-and-10 on their 28.

Ward handles the snap and settles into the pocket, but is flushed right by Miami's Warren Sapp. On the fly, Ward appears ready to tuck the ball and run. Meanwhile, senior wideout Matt Frier has broken off his pass route near the right sideline. "When Charlie leaves the pocket, we're supposed to flow with him to the sideline," Frier says. "I was already at the sideline, so I ran deep." Miami linebacker Rohan Marley went briefly with Frier, but when Ward started to run, Marley froze, and then moved toward Ward, who instantly floated a soft throw to Frier for a 72-yard touchdown that gave FSU the lead for good.

"How he saw me, I don't know," Frier says. And a question was posed: How many quarterbacks make that play.? "One," Frier says. "Charlie Ward."

It has been a remarkable season for Ward, in which he has completed 69 percent of his passes for an average of 261 yards a game, with 13 touchdowns and only one interception. All this, while controlling a complex offense completely on the move. "There's nothing else you can say about him except he's absolutely the best," Georgia Tech Coach Bill Lewis says. "He makes it look almost too easy at times."

Funny thing. Ward was saying last Thursday that the volume of crank calls had jumped in recent days. "Somebody called and told me he was from the Downtown Athletic Club," Ward says. "I just didn't give him anything at all." Probably was a joke, but you know . . . these are the people who give out the Heisman and it seems perfectly appropriate to wrap up the old hunk of bronze and ship it south.