Bowden boxing match sign of bygone era

It was a 1982 press conference in a Fort Lauderdale ballroom with a faux boxing ring.

In one corner was Howard Schnellenberger, who was resurrecting the University of Miami football program.

In the other corner, Bobby Bowden, who had turned Florida State into a national power.

Schnellenberger needed Bowden, more than the other way around.

Yet the FSU coach was all about helping the pipe-smoking, gravel-voiced UM coach establish a program that would not only rival the Seminoles, but surpass them in pursuit of national championships.

I was sports editor for the Boca Raton News and it is the memory of these two coaches, donning boxing gloves to hype their regular season game at the Orange Bowl, that defined not only the kind of man Bowden was, but also a bygone era in college football.

Imagine Urban Meyer and Nick Saban posing like that for Saturday night's SEC championship game.

Bowden's retirement brings a close to not only a fabled career in Tallahassee, but a time when one intrastate rivalry was about real respect and mutual admiration, off the field as well as on it
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