Explaining the Bowden Factor in the Balogun case
Published: 8/20/2009 11:01 PM
Last Modified: 8/20/2009 11:01 PM
It's funny. I didn't think it possible for anyone to be mad at Bobby Bowden. I always figured he belonged in a barber or donut shop with the old backslappers who laugh as the world goes by. I pictured him bouncing grandchildren on his knee easier than drawing up plays to beat Miami.
But then Mike Balogun popped up on the BCS championship telecast last January, the Florida State compliance buzzkills phoned the Big 12 office, and now everyone invested in Oklahoma football wants to poison Grandpa Bowden's Geritol.
They also want to know why he did it. Why did Bowden care enough about the Sooners to turn them in?
Was it lingering bitterness over the 2001 Orange Bowl? Or the 1981 Orange Bowl? Or the 1980 Orange Bowl? Maybe Forrest Valora haunts his dreams still.
More likely, Bob Stoops idolizes Steve Spurrier, and Spurrier's hobby was once tormenting Free Shoes University. Maybe this is Bowden's way of poking back.
It's possible, of course, it's all a mistake. Bowden has gotten so loopy the past couple years he might have thought he was turning in Florida, Spurrier's alma mater and the team that embarrassed Florida State for the '94 national title.
It's conceivable Bowden doesn't even know he has a compliance department. Given some of FSU's recent lawlessness, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know how to use one.
Then there's the explanation that the Seminoles were simply researching its own Balogun case. Wide receiver Corey Surrency followed Balogun's semipro-to-JUCO-to-Division I path, and was granted just one year of eligibility after losing his NCAA appeal.
Matt Hinton, Yahoo!Sports' blogger, isn't buying it.
"FSU went after another team's player – a team it doesn't even play (Balogun will be long gone no matter what when FSU and OU hook up in 2010-11) – out of something like pure spite," Hinton wrote. "Law-abiding spite, but spite nonetheless. Even if they couldn't keep their own guy from getting the ax, you have to respect the pure mercenary venom in that compliance department, if nothing else. That is cold, 'Noles."
In the end, OU faithful must find their own way to a conclusion many of them have already made: If Darrell Royal really is the Sooners' alltime villain -- Tim Griffin of ESPN.com made that assertion just this week, calling Royal "the ultimate turncoat" -- Bobby Bowden might become one of his henchmen.
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
