Bowden highlights Hall of Fame class

NEW YORK – Bobby Bowden was staying off the Florida coast on the posh golf enclave of Amelia Island in mid-May when the surprising announcement came up that he would be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. In the spirit of spring, and a new round of ACC meetings before a new football season, he looked rejuvenated.

He sounded tickled by the honor – that it was coming sooner than he expected, that the National Football Foundation saw fit to amend its rules to invite him and Joe Paterno in even as their careers were still going.

“I would have had no idea,” Bowden said at the time with his trademark self-deprecating charm.

“I knew that you had to retire, you had to be out of coaching so many years, or you had to be dead. I didn’t volunteer for death, and I’m not planning on retiring, so I didn’t know anything like this was going to occur.”

You could already envision the calendar laying out before him: Another ACC Championship Game Dec. 2. Two days later, a trip to New York for the annual foundation dinner honoring the inductees. How convenient.

In the six months that have passed since that day in May, the calendar has shifted on an unexpected 6-6 season. Saturday the Seminoles did not play in the ACC title game. And last week, the morning after the final regular-season game – 21-14 loss at home to Florida – Bowden was hard-pressed to muster the same enthusiasm for this milestone he felt in May.

“It will be nice,” he said when asked what he thought tonight’s ceremony would be like. “I’ll appreciate it.”

That was about it. Those were uncommonly few words for a man who typically needs little invitation to share his most sincere thoughts, to tell a good story or retell one of his favorite jokes.

But perhaps the drama of tonight’s festivities will inspire him even at the end of a long season. College football is breaking out its black ties for a $500-a-plate dinner in a ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria.

Paterno, still recovering from leg surgery, has bowed out of the event. And so Bowden will headline it by himself. He will be the final speaker tonight and may now share the thoughts that were harder to come by last Sunday in Tallahassee.

Bowden will be inducted as part of a 15-member class, including the FSU quarterback who took him to his first national title in 1993.

“I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to go in with him,” former FSU quarterback Charlie Ward said in October when Hall of Fame festivities in Tallahassee brought him back to town. “It’s meaningful especially because this will go on and on in life, this will last for a very long time, and you can’t take that moment away.”

Former Florida tailback Emmitt Smith and Miami defensive back Bennie Blades also are in the class. The group will meet again one final time for the formal induction in South Bend, Ind., next summer.

The National Football Foundation will also recognize the 2006 National Scholar-Athlete class.