Bobby's in Big Trouble

Posted December 23, 2007, 9:36 am by Growing Bolder


FSU has just released its travel roster for the Dec. 31 Music City Bowl against Kentucky and 25 scholarship players on FSU's bowl media guide roster are not making the trip, including 11 players who started regularly during the season and are not injured.

The scandal centers on a tutor providing answers to online tests. Two of the Florida's major newspapers wrote editorials calling for Bowden to step down but Bobby's not budging. "Our university found this problem," he told reporters. "It's not like I had anything to do with this. It ain't time to cut and run. I ain't never run from a fight, and I ain't running from this one."

Bowden is college football winningest coach with 373 wins, just two more than Penn State's Joe Paterno and the two seemed locked in a battle to see who can retire with the record. Paterno celebrated his 81st birthday on Friday and announced that he has no plans to step down or institute a plan of succession as FSU recently did.

Obviously, age isn't what it used to be on the sidelines of major college football. And it's not what it used to be on the field either. This past summer, over a few beers with friends, Mike Flynt lamented that he was kicked off his college football team for fighting. Rather than carrying the regret around with him for the rest of his life, he decided to do something about it.

So, at the age of 59, he tried out for and made the varsity football team at his old college, Sul Ross State University in Texas. Thirty-seven years after he last suited up, Flynt became the oldest college football player in the country and maybe of all-time.

The grandfather, who is eight years older than his head coach, talked to Growing Bolder about enduring grueling two-a-days and playing side-by-side with teammates younger than his children.

To listen to our conversation with Mike, click the play button below his photo on the right.

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