a black TN shirt

Somebody has to do something and this is a great idea.

And no, I’m not talking about Bowden. I am talking about this embarrassing, childish idea of a ‘blackout’ which as an FSU fan embarrasses me far more than anything our coaching staff has done. I understand being frustrated with the situation at FSU. I understand complaining about it. I understand making a respectful attempt to influence the people who will decide Bowden’s fate (including Bowden). It’s clearly time for him to go and if he doesn’t want to go himself, then his boss should make the tough decision and fire him.

But it’s just embarrassing to see someone who has produced such an otherwise excellent site (I really your analysis of the games) suggest such an idea as this stupid blackout. It’s embarrassing for me as a lifelong ‘Noles fan, someone who sold cokes at the games when I was a kid, someone who attended Bowden’s football camp, someone who was a fan before the string of winning records began. Based on what I’ve seen from you on this site, it surprises me that you would use this public forum to whip up an attempt to publicly embarrass the man who essentially created the FSU program.

Yes, I know you’re tired of hearing that, but you know what? That simple truth is not going to go away just because you want to have a more morally defensible reason for attacking the man. The fact is he has given his life to this university. He had chances to jump ship, more than once, and he remained loyal to this program and its fans and players. And no, ‘suffering’ through non-championship winning seasons doesn’t give fans a right to be a**holes.

Again, I understand you are upset. I am too. But such exaggerated attacks on his character don’t reflect well on your judgement. Yes, he’s an old guy who has lost his ability to coach at a top level, but he is certainly not ‘a senile old man’. And considering the extraordinary economic impact he has has on the university and the local community, he is certainly not ‘stealing’ his $2.5 million a year. Once he’s gone and our new coach (whoever he may be) has returned FSU to greatness and you’re sitting there in that absolutely gorgeous, glorious stadium, I hope you’ll remember the man who made that possible with kinder words than ‘senile old man’ and ‘thief’.

As for him choosing to leave on his own, think about who he is. The same thing that is driving you crazy now, his stubborness, is the thing that made him and this program great, the thing that made us all love him. This stubborness comes from his passionate love of the game and the people who have fought with him for all those successes (and failures) over the years. So how can you honestly expect such a man to suddenly admit to himself that he doesn’t have it any more, especially when the team so clearly has the talent to succeed – if they are allowed to do so with even just decent coaching.

So, yes, it’s time for Bowden to go. But please don’t embarrass yourself, and more importantly, the university, with this kind of petty, ill-spirited public attack on Bowden’s character. It would say a lot more about the effete, spoiled fan-base we have than it would about our poor coaching.

in a damn fantasy world.

In the real world, Bobby is flatout stealing money and all Nole fans are paying the price for it. I don’t think any of our fans want to take this approach, but what other choice has Bobby given us?

Yeah, I live in that fantasy world where people are actually trying to live as human beings and respect one another as human beings. Yes, even when they are less than perfect. Besides, it’s not Bobby Bowden’s job to give us ‘choices’ about his employment. Do you ask your boss and colleagues if you should quit your job because you functioning at a championship level? Yeah, I didn’t think so. You focus on keeping your job and you leave it up to your boss to decide if you get fired or not. If you want Bowden out, then talk to his boss. Make your argument based on his lack of production, on your belief that he simply doesn’t have the ability to win like he once did.

Then if you lose that fight, you lose. Take it like a man, not like a whining priss. Sure, if you lose the fair fight, you can ‘cheat’ in your efforts to get him fired with sucker punches to his character if you like. You can call him a senile old man and claim that he’s stealing $2.5 million dollars a year from a university (whose teamed earned more money than that in one game at the end of last season). Why not? If we can’t win the fight fairly to get Bowden to step down, let’s just act like a bunch of a**sholes and embarrass him and ourselves in front of the rest of the nation. At times like this I’m even more impressed by Nebraska fans, who have dealt with worse than we have (if FSU has a losing season this year it will be our first in…do you remember how long ago that was without looking it up? I doubt you do.) And yet somehow the Nebraska fans manage to hold themselves with dignity and respect.

Responding to fsuncensored’s “It seems that you are not able to evaluate Bowden objectively because of your experiences with him.” There’s nothing more annoying than someone claiming ‘objectivity’ in this situation. Is there really something ‘objective’ about attacking someone’s character? As for myself, I actually only met the guy once. I’m not part of this Bowden persona/legend crowd of apologizers. I don’t care about that crap. I’m talking about the principle of not turning on people who have given you something special, as Bowden has given our Seminole fan community and whose life history is so much a part of who we are as a team, like it or not. So, yeah, I feel comfortable with my level of objectivity. In what world do ‘objective’ people start wetting themselves because their fragile egos are so attached to their football team being the best (instead of just average, which i feel is a fairly objective assessment of the FSU program over the past 9 years), that they start publicly attacking someone who has been a part of the ’Nole family and helped create this family.

As I said before, It’s not Bowden’s job to step down or not. Any passionate person is going to keep believing that he can turn it all around, if he just has one more year. That’s the character of a man who was once a great coach. It’s ridiculously illogical to expect this kind of once-great man, after half a century of coaching, to suddenly say, ‘Oh yes, I guess you obnoxious guys who are attacking my personal character are right. I just don’t have it any more; thank you for letting me know what a horrible person I am,’ and step down. If you don’t want him working here, if you want him to leave, there’s a perfectly rational way to approach it which I imagine would appeal to an ‘objective’ person. Convince his boss to fire him. If you’re unhappy with with his boss’ decision to keep him on, then find a way to pressure his boss to do it. This would be an objective approach to the problem. Attacking Bowden (and others) personally does nothing but embarrass this program (or if you prefer, ‘it does nothing more than add to the embarrassment of the coaching situation’) and ourselves.

Hmm, why don’t you leave this conversation to those of us who can actually read?

How is this not a personal attack: “Black Out Bobby Bowden” and “game is on national TV, and everyone wearing black will be a fitting way to show that FSU fans will no longer support a senile old man stealing $2.5 million from Florida State…” Yeah, what was I thinking. That’s not personal at all.

I wonder if fsuncensored would consider me unobjective if I were to call you an illiterate idiot :) But hey, hey, it’s all in fun, right? I mean, it’s fun to call each other names when we feel like the other person just isn’t listening to us, isn’t it?

Why would you want to ‘black out’ the players? The problems with our team clearly rest on the coaches. We have very talented players, some of whom know how to work and some who don’t. Someone’s got to teach them how to work and how to focus. Most 18-22 year olds don’t excel at that naturally – they need someone to lead them, to COACH them. For the most part this is not happening right now, especially with the defensive staff. The coaching staff as a whole is obviously a mess. What do you hope to achieve by embarrassing a group of young men who have practically no control over their situation considering the disarray in the coaching staff.

fsuncensored, I actually agree with you that it would be best for Bowden to announce this is his last season, but I refuse to resort to character assasination if he doesn’t. And while I think that for the most part you do try to offer relatively objective and honest analysis here, there’s nothing analytical or objective about venting your emotional frustration about the program or even with Bowden’s coaching by bad-mouthing his character. I’m just saying…

Regarding his economic impact, I totally disagree with you here. Perfect storm? Really? I haven’t seen very many of those storms around the country. So he just got lucky for 15 years in building the FSU ‘brand’ that has brought in all that money? That’s a hell of a run of luck, my friend. He should go to Vegas with that kind of luck. No, Bowden was a saavy promoter, of FSU football and himself. Just because he’s lost it now doesn’t mean he didn’t have it before. Whatever charcter flaws he may have, stubborness being one of them, he was masterful in his creation of this program. If anything, I’d say his bad luck (aka our kickers) kept him from winning a couple more championships).

There you go. That’s how I feel about it too. If you don’t want to support the team, then don’t. Don’t go to the games. Don’t watch them. Sure, complain about how things are run. Trash the present ‘system’ in all its useless chaos. But please, please get over this obssession with the personal destruction of Bobby Bowden. The only thing worse than how he’s running the program is how some so-called ‘fans’ are attempting to personally humiliate him and embarrassing us all in the process.

I suppose I shouldn’t be overly concerned about it. Considering the smashing success we’ve had with our recent ‘white outs’ and so on, I don’t see this ‘black out’ achieving much either :)

is carring the game next Sat.?

i hate everything that is going on over there…..JIMBO 2010!!!!!

We need to let the broadcasters know what is going on because maybe they can talk about it/even mention it briefly on TV. I think signs are neccessary for this one

Let’s pay a plane to fly over the stadium with the message “Bowden you are a corrupt, decrepit old waste of human flesh and we the saviors of FSU and all things good hereby demand that TK smite you, and then that he himself be smited for not having smit you sooner!”

She responded, “i thought we got rid of the black uniforms because we always lose with them… i dont get it.”

facepalm

is there any way we can make this movement more explicit for the women?

Since you have so much time on your hands and so much to say, let me help you out:

president@mailer.fsu.edu

Let us know when you’ve convinced TK to fire Bobby.

On the new facebook group I noticed jarmon fortson as a member. I’m glad he is for this blackout move. says a lot if you ask me

the loss to USF.

All may not end well for Bobby Bowden, and that is unfortunate.

FSU can’t win at home, a cardinal sin. Saturday’s 17-7 loss to USF (which featured a redshirt freshman making his first start) dropped the No. 18 Noles to 1-4 in their past five home games.

Perhaps worse, FSU fell to 2-2 this season.

Instead of finishing his time withe Noles amongst the sport’s elite, the aging Bowden is in danger of walking away amid whispers that he simply didn’t know when to quit, AND HIS PROGRAM PAID THE PRICE.

That’s an outsiders perspective.

Sorry if I upset anyone. I was expressing my honest opinons for the most part, but to be honest with you I was using this forum for a private student of mine, to demonstrate the use of rhetoric, both effective and ineffective methods, how it can be used to affect group dynamics and manufacture specific types of responses and how easily manipulated an online crowd can be by a single poster (poser). As I said, I do believe most of the things I’ve said here, though I would generally state them more politely. At least I think I would – I’ve never taken part in one of these online forums before. Anyway, best of luck to those of you who have genuinely good intentions! (and screw the rest of you! >:) Go Noles!

so much for a graceful exit. can someone tell me how i ‘unenlist’ or do I even need to? Sorry, again, never joined an online group before and it’s not really my thing.

btw jaguar, the goal wasn’t to change your mind. based on my brief experience here, i’d say that anyone who tries to actually change someone’s mind on a fan website is clincally insane. the point was to express my opinion in a way that caused you to react and take part in the discussion and reveal your biases. and i’d say that mission was accomplished fairly well here today :) incidentally, if you actually read what i wrote you’ll see that i agree with the generally accepted goal of bowden leaving and jimbo getting his chance, though i disagree totally with the methods put forth to achieve that goal.

there’s a big difference between being a nay-saying troll and using rhetorical resistance to provoke reaction. and knowledge of these skills is useful for when you do want to manufacture consent in a group, which, let’s face it, is what you want to do here.

for example, if you want to build mass consent to make a statment saying it’s time for Bowden to retire, then you should base your efforts on an approach that is more scientifically sound. You need to base your idea for this protest on something more positive. Yes, you can easily get the loud, angry folks on board with an ill-spirited display, but you’ll never get the really large crowds unless you can manage to emphasize the positive side of what you hope to achieve. In real life, the ‘average’ person just doesn’t like to et nasty. It’s been proven over and over again that ill-spirited attacks have a very short-term effect and frequently unleash all sorts of unintended negative side-effects…this despite the repeated efforts of nasty people to prove otherwise.

For example, instead of making this anti-bobby or anti-whatever, you make it pro-retirement, you (strongly) emphasize the absolute, ineluctable need for change, while softening the obvious downside (old legend loses his job) by pay homage. As I think someone semi-referenced above – i have come to praise bobby, not to bury him….though bury him we must. The masses are much more willing to get involved when they have the impression (even if it’s illusory) that they are doing something ‘good’. Granted, this kinder, gentler approach is infinitely more difficult and requires both creativity and compassion (or at least empathy), something that is generally in extremely short supply on fan websites….but it’s worth looking into if you want your campaign to actually achieve something. If you’re just venting though I guess it doesn’t really matter. Whatever, I’m sure when BB finally does retire, the haters will all throw a party and walk around flexing their ‘power’, like the rooster who thinks he raises the sun in the morning.

wow, this stuff really is addictive, isn’t it?

im sorry for my abrupt departure last night as i was getting bitched out for being on the computer and not in bed with my other half.

but i see nothing improved from the arguement and attacks by immature minds who had nothing more intelligent to say then post their opinions and physical stats.

at least scalpem still has a real fan writing for them.

“As for a blackout:

Evidently there’s a Facebook group out there promoting that everyone wears black to the game against GT in order to black out Bobby Bowden, even thought the game isn’t a blackout. Let me first say, that I get the point. Let me also say that if I was able to go to the game Saturday night, which I won’t because I’ll be recovering from surgery, I would not wear black to the game. I’d wear garnet like usual. Why? Because wearing black, or not showing up doesn’t really send a message to anybody, it just makes the fanbase look stupid in my opinion. Wearing black does nothing to hit the Athletic Department wear it counts, in the pocketbook. Neither does not showing up after you’ve already paid for a ticket. Sure, it might send a "We don’t like you" message to Bobby Bowden and / or the players, but judging from postgame interviews, does anybody really think Bowden would let that get to him? I don’t. I’m not sure he’d even noticed. The denial in post game interviews over the last 10 years is an 11/10."

i knew we had fair weather fans like any other team in the nation. but some of you kids just amaze me. but i guess i couldnt expecting more. some of you dont deserve to wear the colors.

dunno how that came out.

ill be there in my schools colors.

look for me, ill be wearing my fuck hurricanes shirt.

looking for the 6’3 225 guy in a black shit screaming at our sidelines. shaking my head in disbelief.

what makes people think that a few kids can?
instead of doing this, why not boycott the warchant? not only does it symbolize something that we no longer are( an intimidating, fierce team), but a stadium not doing our most famous tradition shows that we don’t like whats being produced. plus, you dont give any money towards a dumb gimmick

Why not let Coach Bowden do his job? The team doesn’t need these distractions.

Interesting the group grew so quick and diedaround 4,800. Not that it means much, only 1/2 of the members at best will probably be attending the game. Better hope this movement has good word of mouth.