Emerald a gem for two up-and-down teams
SAN FRANCISCO – Before the trip, Bobby Bowden asked how many of his Florida State players had been to San Francisco. Only three hands went up in the locker room.
“We heard Cali, and we were thinking beaches and sun, nothing but warm weather,” defensive tackle Andre Fluellen said. “Well, we ended up a little north of that.”
But after several chilly days spent checking out the cable cars, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz before Wednesday night’s Emerald Bowl against UCLA (7-5), the Seminoles are getting comfortable being so far from home. Yet the trip won’t be a fond memory unless they can avoid sending Bowden home with his first losing season in 30 years.
Running back Lorenzo Booker has been around for five seasons of highs and lows with the Seminoles (6-6) since leaving his native California, so he understands his team’s conflicting feelings about its 25th consecutive bowl game.
“For most guys it’s a letdown, because we’re not playing in a BCS bowl like we’re used to, but I was really looking forward to it,” said Booker, Florida State’s leading rusher with 525 yards. “We weren’t looking forward to the plane ride, but it didn’t matter if we had to fly to Japan. We want to finish strong, to get that winning season and get back on track.”
Given their roller-coaster seasons, both clubs seem appropriately relieved to be in the 5-year-old Emerald Bowl, where both teams stand on the same sideline at the San Francisco Giants’ waterfront ballpark that probably will be sold out for the first time in the game’s history.
Bowden, football’s winningest coach with 365 victories, actually has experience in the unusual same-sideline format, doing the same thing at the Hula Bowl, he recalls.
“We hadn’t been in (a bowl) past Texas for a while,” Bowden said. “This is great. We’ve got so many bowls in Florida. I’d hate to go 250 miles down the road again.”
While it’s a new experience for the Seminoles, everybody on the UCLA roster has been to the Bay Area before – and their recent memories aren’t great. They were pounded 38-24 at California last month, closing a miserable stretch with four straight losses.
But after coach Karl Dorrell challenged the Bruins to finish strong in an emotional team meeting, they did so with three impressive victories over three bowl-bound teams: Oregon State, Arizona State and archrival USC.
Knocking the No. 2 Trojans out of the national title race and claiming L.A. supremacy was Dorrell’s sweetest achievement in four years in charge, yet the Bruins realize the danger of dwelling on that signature victory.
“If we lose this game, then SC meant nothing,” said UCLA linebacker Christian Taylor. “If you win three games and then you lose your last one, you’re not going the way you want to go. It’s not good for our recruiting, our preseason ranking, our off-season workouts.”