In the dying seconds of last week's wrathful slaughter of Georgia Tech, Tommy Bowden was caught by cameras flipping out on kickoff team scrubs, over meaningless penalties, wildly exaggerating his frustration to drive home a point to his team: y'all still ain't nothin'. Because Clemson dominated in an emotional home environment, embraced the inner Frank Howard deep in its run-oriented core and opened eyes everywhere by burying a decent opponent on a featured national stage, but Bowden saw even before the zeroes what loomed: five days of congratulatory hype, of his suddenly fawned-over young running backs getting full-page spreads, trying on heroic monikers and being compared to Reggie Bush by opposing coaches, of basking in the best position the program's been in at the end of October in years, and, oh, then a game at wounded but proud Virginia Tech - the precise recipe for boiling over any coach's ulcer-growing cauldron of perpetual worry.
Not too worried, to send not-so-subtle messages to certain struggling family members via newspaper:
"Now, the more they put in there, we just put another tight end in and let our backs go."
Tommy's discovery has sent ripples throughout the Bowden Clan. Since he doesn't want to deal with the running game and he's not going to sit there and wonder why his team's not blocking this guy or that guy or other, like, job-type stuff when he calls plays, Jeff Bowden, like the old Tommy, has been inclined when in doubt to chunk the ball up and ignore his one-time all-world recruits at running back against teams other than Rice. But if Tommy acted in the Christian tradition of brotherhood, sharing and non-stop e-mail forwarding, SMQ bets the article was blinking in Jeff's inbox when he rolled into the office this morning, and Saturday at Maryland we'll see: if Lorenzo Booker and Antone Smith's combined carries break into the double digits, we can all hail the genesis of Smashmouth Bowdena.
An extra tight end? Is that legal? I mean, I totally thought of it myself...even though I didn't want to.
Related and recommended: What's Wrong With FSU's Storied Program? by Emily Badger (The Orlando Sentinel)