Bowden down to the master?

Florida State's 48-24 win over Wake Forest Saturday was both ordinary and extraordinary.\nIt was ordinary in that once again, the Seminoles routed an outmanned ACC opponent. It was extraordinary in that Bobby Bowden became the all-time winningest coach in Division I-A college football history with victory No. 339.\nBowden passed Penn State's Joe Paterno, whose team lost at Iowa. Paterno is also active, although with the way Penn State has played this season, calling Paterno "active" is somewhat like calling Ted Williams active. Or Pope John Paul II.\nOne sports columnist didn't even wait until the Florida State win to make a grand pronouncement about Bowden. "But let there be no debate: Bobby Bowden is a greater football coach than Joe Paterno," Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi wrote. "In fact, Bowden is greater than Paterno, Bear Bryant, Pop Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg and all the rest. He is the greatest college football coach who ever has lived. Period."\nMy initial reaction was to wonder if Bianchi was getting a little too much vitamin C in his diet. Shouldn't Bobby Bowden have won more national championships? If he's so great, how come nobody hails him as a tactical genius like they do Steve Spurrier? Or Joe Tiller? (Just kidding).\nAnd maybe most importantly, wasn't FSU referred to as "Free Shoes University" after a 1999 scandal in which star wide receiver Peter Warrick and several other players, apparently through a connection with an agent, went nuts at a Foot Locker in the Tallahassee area, buying $400 worth of merchandise for $20 as reward for a nice season? Doesn't a great coach have to have a little institutional control? \nAfter reading the column, though, Bianchi had a point. Bowden had built the Florida State program from scratch while Paterno had taken over from Rip Engle, himself a Hall of Fame coach who won 104 games in 16 seasons at Penn State.\nThe problem with evaluating college football coaches historically revolves around perception. How can the myth so intertwined with many coaches' legacies be separated from what they actually did to find who's truly the greatest? \nFor example, to declare publicly that Woody Hayes is the greatest coach of all time is considered outrageous. After all, Hayes slugged Clemson linebacker Charlie Bauman in the 1978 Gator Bowl after Bauman's game-clinching interception, earning an ignominious dismissal from the university and thereby involuntarily ending his coaching career.\nBut Hayes' record is scintillating. His 238 wins place him sixth all-time behind Bowden, Paterno, Bryant, Stagg and Warner. He's the winningest coach in the history of the Big Ten. He won five national championships and 13 conference titles. And he mentored everybody from Bo Schembechler to Lou Holtz to Bill Mallory. \nA long-told story about Hayes heard around these parts was that after the Buckeyes lost to IU in 1951, Hayes' first season, Hayes declared that he would never lose to IU again. And he never did in 27 years. And the first time IU played Ohio State after Hayes' death in 1987, IU, coached by Mallory, broke the curse and won 31-10.\nTo call Knute Rockne the greatest ever raises similar doubt. After all, was the Notre Dame legend the man who woke up the echoes? Or was he just a regular coach with faults as detailed in IU American studies professor Murray Sperber's 1993 book "Shake Down the Thunder"?\nRockne's record is without peer. He went 105-12-5, an insane .881 career winning percentage. Reportedly, Ara Parseghian and Holtz both resigned rather than break Rockne's all-time school wins record, for the burden would have been too much.\nWas he a master strategist? Well, he popularized the forward pass and invented the modern passing game. Yeah, I'd say so.\nBut Rockne isn't known for that. He's known for his "Win one for the Gipper" speech. He's known for inventing a story about his six-year-old son being hospitalized to try to motivate his team. At the time of his 1931 death in a plane crash, he was planning involvement in a film called "The Spirit of Notre Dame," a Hollywood film that would serve as further propaganda. He invented the idea of coach as master motivator/psychologist.\nBryant won a lot of games but was viewed as harsh and unfeeling. Schembechler helped establish modern-day Michigan football but had trouble winning the big ones. Stagg coached at non-traditional powers. Warner is more known for attaching his name to youth league football.\nThey all had personalities, and their greatness is told in stories others tell about them, not their accomplishments.\nThe greatest? I'll take Rockne, but the stories are making evaluating the coaches hardly ordinary.