The Penn State Football Show

A couple thoughts on the Bowden retirement: It is clear that the University kind of forced him out, which is unfortunate. He said after his last game that he wanted to return next year, and then a few days later he announced he’s retiring. He’s done so much for the school, you don’t want to see him go out like this. Florida State was not a competitive football program before Bowden arrived. He turned them into a national powerhouse.

Drew’s post says “Paterno wins.” Personally, I think it’s Penn State that wins, because the school has allowed Joe to go out on his terms and is handling Joe Pa with the respect he deserves, which make the University look good, especially compared to Florida State. Granted they asked him to step down a few years ago, but when he refused, they listened to him and didn’t force him out. I’m not going to get into the whole conversation about whether or not Joe should go. I can quickly sum up my own thoughts on the matter by saying I think he should retire, but he has earned the right to stay as long as he would like.

The whole “Bowden vs. Paterno” race is something that gets way more attention than it deserves. First, you will hear a lot of people say that they think Joe will now retire because he knows he has the record over Bowden. The people that think Joe has been holding out until Bowden retired are completely clueless. There is no way that has ever, or ever will, factor into his decision to retire. I’m not saying Joe doesn’t care about having that honor. I went to nearly every press conference Joe had in my four years at Penn State and can tell you the man definitely has an ego. I’m just saying the race with Bowden has nothing to do with his decision to stay in football this long.

More importantly though, in my opinion, there never has been any race between the two. Bowden’s first 31 wins came at Howard, a Division IAA school. I’m not saying these wins don’t count. I have no problem counting these wins. But if we count these wins, then you have to count ALL of Eddie Robinson’s wins at Grambling (also DI-AA). Robinson had 408 wins in his career, which is more than both Paterno and Bowden.

So there are only two ways you can look at it. Either you count all NCAA wins, or you count only Division I wins. Either way works for me because they both make sense. Under the first scenario Robinson holds the record. Under the second scenario, Paterno holds the record and Bowden is pretty far back. Either way, there really is no significant race between Paterno and Bowden.

It just doesn’t make sense to count Bowden’s 31 IAA wins toward this “record” but disregard Robinson’s entire career. It’s all or nothing. I don’t know why more people don’t realize this.