Posted by William Kristoph

As I was watching the season finale of Mad Men the other night, there was a line that Don Draper said to Bert Cooper that described the FSU Football / Bobby Bowden / What Happened To The Dynasty question. Draper, “And you old men love building golden tombs and sealing the rest of us in with you.” Someone, somewhere needs to utter that line to Bobby Bowden, T.K. Wetherell and pretty much everyone else in charge, because that’s exactly what’s gone on with FSU Sports for the last decade.

When we’re children, many of us play with Legos. We build castles and then we enjoy tearing them down. It’s fun, but it doesn’t hurt anybody and we get to do it again and again. We also are the sole owners of those Lego castles, and if we’re not, big sister or big brother is ready to fight about it. In real life though, building the castle is too tough and tearing it down is too easy. The castle isn’t owned by one person. FSU Football in the 1980′s and 1990′s was the epitome of a Dynasty. Sure, you can add other teams to the Dynasty discussion, but FSU truly dominated the Top 5 for 15 years. Maybe it’s just a fact of life that all great dynasties fall. What’s amusing is that they generally fall for the same reasons, poor personnel choices, selfishness, lack of vision and greed. Maybe it was FSU’s time to fall and fail.

All of this makes writing about FSU Football, specificially, nearly unbearable. I’m not blaming the team, mind you. It’s not the players’ fault. There are great stories there. Christian Ponder has been a highlight, but so have a better than expected wide receiver corps, an offensive line that doesn’t move on defensive offside penalties and HCIW Jimbo Fisher. Heck, even the FSU Defense is interesting, if for no other reason than they are historically bad for the Noles. It’s a shame that Mickey Andrews, a true FSU / Tallahassee lover is going to go out this way. No, it’s not them that makes it hard to write an article. It’s the continued garbage that we witness from the people in charge, from the president down to the head coach.

What’s scary, is that the golden tomb that is being sealed does not just contain the football team. And, I’m not blaming Bowden solely. I’m blaming the circus that is the whole situation and dates back to the asinine policy that started when FSU was far too full of itself coming out of the fat and happy late 90′s / early 00′s when they started giving out lifetime contracts and naming fields after sitting coaches. They erected statues and stained glass windows and started letting the inmates run the asylum. In 2009, we see the result; less than mediocrity from the money maker sport at FSU. Remember folks, college athletics are the one major place that trickle down economics works, but when the well dries up from football revenue (as it is now, slowly but surely) everyone starts to suffer.

What’s scary about all of that? The camp that is complacent and defends Bowden’s “rite” to stay as FSU Football Head Coach as long as he wants doesn’t offer ANY suggestions on how to improve the situation. They’re happy to watch the castle crumble before their eyes. Change is necessary, change is the only way to avoid continuing the downward spiral of irrelevancy. Change will make it easier to write about the team for better or for worse. Change will get the Noles off of ESPNU and Raycom at noon. And yes, we all know that change is coming eventually. However, it’s that “eventually” part that’s worn thin over the last 7 or 8 years and continues to wear on even the biggest FSU fans.

Leave me a comment… let me know if it’s a struggle to get excited each week for FSU Football and what you think about the overall struggles at FSU thanks to all of the varying reasons (policy, economy, etc.).