Loss doesn’t get Florida St. down

By Andrew Carter

Published: November 9, 2008

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — It would have been a "masterpiece,” Bobby Bowden said, "a classic.”

Trailing at one point by two touchdowns, losing by 11 entering the fourth quarter, Bowden’s Seminoles were three yards away from scoring the go-ahead touchdown with less than a minute to play last Saturday at Georgia Tech. It would have been a come-from-behind victory, Bowden said, that would have ranked alongside the greatest in school history.

And then FSU fullback Marcus Sims fumbled on the 1-yard line. Georgia Tech recovered in the end zone. Game over.

After thinking about it a while, Bowden, who has coached 504 games, said he had never experienced a similar loss. And how well the Seminoles respond — both at home on Saturday against Clemson and beyond — could well define their success in their final four regular-season games.

"It can do one of two things,” sports psychologist Alan Goldberg said of the kind of debilitating defeat FSU suffered. "It could fire them up if it’s handled the right way and get them more focused. Or it could put a pin in the balloon of their season and explode it.”

A longtime Massachusetts-based sports psychologist, Goldberg has worked with professional and amateur athletes alike, including the 1999 national champion Connecticut men’s basketball team. He said the key in Florida State’s recovery rests with "how the coaches frame” the team’s defeat.

And around here, where negativity has blossomed in recent years amid consecutive 7-6 seasons, Florida State coaches have attempted to project calm and confidence in the wake of a defeat that brought back memories of Wide Right and other similar Seminoles heartbreaks.

Before practice began this week, Bowden said the focus of him and his staff would be to avoid making the players "feel like a bunch of losers.”

"We’ll attack it positively,” Bowden said. "Just like the other games — we were fixin’ to win it . . . but we turned the ball over. Had we not, we probably would have won it.”

Bowden’s program does not utilize a sports psychologist, but he and his assistants this week have played the role of one. They have attempted to ensure that, when Clemson comes to town, the Seminoles will be as strong mentally as they are physically. FSU coaches on Monday gathered the team in the film room and reviewed several plays that affected the outcome of the Georgia Tech game. The idea was to lessen the negativity surrounding Sims’ late-game fumble.

During position meetings, coaches reiterated the positives of their defeat — that FSU rallied from two touchdowns down, and that the Seminoles were just a few feet away from winning the game. Compared to the aftermath of difficult defeats in recent seasons, backup quarterback Drew Weatherford said, "There’s a lot less negativity.”

Weatherford, a fifth-year senior who has started 33 games during his time at FSU, said the Seminoles in recent seasons allowed bad vibes to hang over them. After a practice in the middle of the week, though, he said there were no such vibes lingering over this team.

"We have a lot of good guys and I think the coaches do a really good job of helping everybody move on,” he said. "A big part of that was that everyone was still proud of how we played . . .

"There’s no such thing as a good loss. It’s heartbreaking, but at the same time very encouraging to see young guys like that out on the field fight back and put themselves in position to win.”

When he walked onto the practice fields on Monday night, junior defensive end Everette Brown was worried he might experience a repeat of past practices following difficult losses.

"Sometimes you get in tough situations where you have tough losses like that and some people just don’t show up on Monday,” Brown said. "They’re still down on themselves or they’ve given up on the team.”

Instead, Brown said he witnessed his teammates practice with passion and focus — the kind of qualities he’s hoping to see on Saturday. After the Georgia Tech game, Brown said he told his teammates that "last week is over.”

"This is our week this week,” he said.

And now the Seminoles can redeem themselves.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service

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