College Football Elites, Part 1: What makes a ‘blue blood’?

• Conference championships: 18 (last in 2013)
• 10-plus win seasons: 24
• Consensus All-Americans: 45
• Heisman Trophy winners: 3
• NFL players: 316

Just as it is with their in-state rivals the Florida Gators, the Florida State Seminoles are on this list largely because of one man. That man is Bobby Bowden, and to think his run in Tallahassee almost did not happen.

Bowden, an Alabama native, had an ultimate goal in coaching. He wanted to patrol the same sidelines as his hero Paul “Bear” Bryant. After a successful tenure at West Virginia, he took the job as head coach at Florida State in 1975 where he’d been an assistant from 1962-65. Bowden took the job to get back to the deep south. He figured if he could do well at Florida State, eventually, he’d have a shot at the Alabama job after Bryant retired. He almost did.

In 1987 the Crimson Tide decided to wait for Bowden to contact them instead of going after him aggressively. Bowden withdrew his name from consideration. Alabama came calling again in 1990, but by that time the Seminoles were a national power and FSU was home.

Bowden’s run at Florida State is one of the great coaching runs in college football’s modern era. In 34 years in Tallahassee, the Seminoles won 315 games, 12 conference titles (including nine straight) — they were an independent for 25 years of Bowden’s tenure and two national titles.

Perhaps the most impressive number of his time at FSU is 14. The Seminoles finished in the top five in 14 consecutive seasons under Bowden and won 10 or more games during that streak as well.

When Bowden retired, assistant coach Jimbo Fisher took over and continued the Seminoles’ winning ways. In eight seasons as Florida State’s head coach, Fisher won 10 or more games in six seasons winning the last BCS National Championship and playing in the first College Football Playoff. Fisher’s end was not as good as his start, however. Fisher left the program an academic and fiscal mess when he left for Texas A&M which spilled into Willie Taggart’s less than stellar tenure.

Now it’s up to Mike Norvell to pick up the pieces and restore the shine to the Garnett and Gold.