Jimbo Fisher's Great Escape from Bobby Bowden's Shadow

LOS ANGELES — Sports legends aren't just people who have done great things in sports. They are also people who can do an amazing magic trick. All the bad things that happened in their careers—poof, they disappear from fans' memories. After retiring, the longer that legends are gone, the better they get.

Soon, Michael Jordan will have been able to dunk from half court.    

So you don't follow a legend. You can't. It's absolutely impossible. Just ask Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher.

"He don't have any problem with it," Bobby Bowden, the legend he followed, told Bleacher Report on Wednesday. "I'm the one who's forgotten."

That wasn't bitterness. It was one of those jokes with a little bit of truth. Fisher followed the winningest coach in major college football history, the guy who built a program and put it on the map. And now, in Fisher's fifth year, the fans have already completely moved on.

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Sure, winning a national championship and being in position to win another one this year—Florida State plays Oregon Thursday in the College Football Playoff semifinal—is the big reason. But people don't even compare Fisher and Bowden the way, say, Alabama fans talk about whether Nick Saban has reached Bear Bryant levels.

And Fisher did it in his first big-time head coaching job, where he had to learn, really, who he was.

"I don't think you ever stop learning yourself as a coach," he told Bleacher Report. "The thing I thought I had to do was be myself. I don't believe people who follow people try to emulate (them). A lot of my core values and traditions were from Coach Bowden, years ago when I was around him.

"I learned from all the coaches I was under, and I've taken things that I've liked and disliked from everyone. But at the same time, I don't think, when something happens, 'What would Coach Bowden do here?' or 'Coach Saban do here?' or 'Coach (Les) Miles do here?' I don't ever think like that. You learn from people, but the key is you've got to put your own stamp, your own personality, on your own program."

The people who replace legends are always such immediate targets. Bob Davie couldn't replace Lou Holtz. Ron Zook had no shot replacing Steve Spurrier.

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"I've known all the great coaches and known all who followed them," Bowden said. "And they don't last. But what Jimbo's doing doesn't surprise me. I'm glad to see it because it brings back Florida State. When I was here, we were on top a few years, and all of a sudden (if the program falls), you're forgotten and Florida State is forgotten. I'd love to see them win one more."

Fisher, who had been Bowden's offensive coordinator, put his stamp on the program by modernizing. He cleared out several of Bowden's assistants, which was risky. But Fisher also put in place sports psychologists and nutritionists and a GPS monitoring system that uses a thousand tracking points on each player in practice to measure exertion, performance, etc.

The big thing he did, of course, was win big. But Oregon coach Mark Helfrich, in his second year, has been winning too. Yet he hasn't erased his predecessor, Chip Kelly.

Before Helfrich took over last year, I asked him what he was going to do to put his stamp on the program. He said he didn't care about stamps, that Kelly's system was working fine and it would be stupid to drop it.

Helfrich is still compared to Kelly.

The big difference is that Kelly left on a high note and became the Philadelphia Eagles coach. When Bowden left, he was forced out after the program had dropped from the sport's elite.

It wasn't a pretty ending for Bowden, who did not want to leave. He stayed away from Florida State for a couple of years and then returned last year.

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"I just wanted to stay one more year," Bowden said. "It's not like I wanted to keep on coaching. I was already 80. But I knew it was going to be a good team, and I'd have liked to have gone out with that.

"You get over things like that, and I'm working with the Seminoles boosters now, making talks for them."

Bowden said that when he left, he recommended his longtime assistant Mickey Andrews for the job.

"I told Jimbo when I hired him that I was going to recommend (Andrews), but the president told me they wanted to go younger," Bowden said. "I said, 'Well, Jimbo's the next best man.'"

Bowden said he won't be at the Rose Bowl Thursday, that he doesn't like to go to games. He said that even at last year's national title game, he was there for the pregame coin toss and then went back to his hotel for the game.

Just hard to stay and watch someone else coach your team?

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"No," Bowden said. "I just don't want to get in that crowd. I don't enjoy trying to park. At Florida State it's like 35, 45 minutes to get out of the parking lot. I don't enjoy that. I'm 85 years old. At home, I can watch every play three or four times, and the refrigerator is only 10 feet away.

"No, I'd give anything to see them win again. I can't wait for that game. I'm still picking them."

While Fisher tries to get another national title, Bowden will be like everyone else: just an anonymous legend at home watching on TV.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report.