Academic Scandal Threatens 'Bucket Race' Between Bowden, Paterno

Until now, they've both played it so cool. Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno, eighty-something-ish college football coaches, and when it's over, one of them is going to have the all-time victory record. Paterno is 82 with at 383 wins. Bowden's numbers are a few months under 80 and 382.

But they're both just there for their love of coaching, their love of developing kids. Record? What record? Did I just say, "When it's over?'' That sounds uncomfortable, doesn't it?

Well, Bowden is on the verge of being eliminated from the competition, as the NCAA might take away 14 of his victories because Florida State used ineligible players who were involved in an academic scandal.

Fourteen victories to an 80-year old man is too many to overcome. So Bowden had decided to speak up.

And what has been exciting, is now getting ugly, and even a little morbid. There's no doubt about what this has become:

A Bucket Race.

"I think they're really stepping out of bounds by doing that (taking away the victories)," Bowden told a group of supporters, according to the Palm Beach Post. "Maybe they'll change their minds once they think it over real good.''

So you're getting a peak now inside Bowden's head. This race means plenty to both coaches.

Bowden was asked if he saw this as the NCAA deciding the outcome of the race.

"Oh yeah, oh sure, because I'm not going to stay in it that much longer,'' he said. "It will mean something to me. You'd like to leave something for your grandchildren, and ..."

Hold on a minute. I've heard this before somewhere. We all have. He just wants to leave something to his grandkids? This is exactly the guilt trip grandparents have mastered, playing up how little time they have left. That's how this has become the Bucket Race, where Bowden and Paterno want to get something done before they, well, uh, you know.

The NCAA is in a spot here. In the academic scandal at Florida State, staffers were helping students on tests for an online music history course in 2006 and 2007. It was not said to include football coaches. And the NCAA has ordered Florida State to forfeit victories in several sports for using players who are now deemed to have been ineligible because of their participation in the scandal.

The school has appealed to the NCAA on the football forfeits.

Should the games be removed from Bowden's total, all-but finishing him off in the Bucket Race? (That didn't sound right.) That's a tough one. Paterno said that Bowden should be able to keep the victories, that despite best efforts, no one can truly be sure that he's clean on all records. Still, when the police catch a law-breaker, they don't let him go because they know others were doing it, too.



First off, it isn't fair to the other teams, the teams Florida State beat with ineligible players, to allow Florida State to keep those victories. But come on, the games were actually played and Florida State won, and it's hard to go back now and pretend otherwise.

If the games didn't really happen, then I guess that will be great news for the hundreds of thousands of people who paid to see, well, officially, nothing. This is a suggestion that you all write to the NCAA and ask for your money back.

And did you see where Paterno, now feeling healthy again, said that he has been coaching at Penn State again?

"Last year,'' he said, "all I did was supervise.''

Should supervisors get credit for coaching victories? This could be an angle for Bowden fans to pursue.

Soon, we'll be looking back through both coaches' histories, looking for hanging chads. This isn't going to end well. It's a fun race with an ominous finish line.