TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Bobby Bowden wanted to find out what his Florida State team was made of: men or mice.
Trailing North Carolina 17-6 at halftime and playing badly, Bowden and his coaches tore into the Seminole players with a verbal lashing the coach said they deserved.
“You are not playing up to your potential,” Bowden told them. “You’ve got 30 more minutes to go out there and become a man or a mouse.”
The Seminoles gave up another touchdown and trailed 24-6 midway through the third quarter before they broke loose behind Christian Ponder’s brilliant passing.
With Ponder hitting his last 16 passes, the Seminoles scored 24 points in less than 15 minutes to grab a 30-27 win over North Carolina on Thursday night.
“I can’t remember a better performance by a quarterback under the circumstances,” Bowden said Friday. “How could it be any better?”
Bowden compared Ponder’s performance to a fourth-quarter comeback win led by the Seminoles’ Charlie Ward at Georgia Tech in 1992 and a second-half comeback engineered by Chris Weinke that fell short at Miami in 2000.
“They’re winners,” Bow- den said, grouping Ponder with his two Heisman-winning quarterbacks.
Ponder’s heroics saved Bowden from his first four-game losing streak at Florida State (3-4, 1-3 Atlantic Coast Conference) and temporarily quieted critics who want the 79-year-old coach to retire from a program that has slipped from its status among the collegiate elite in recent seasons.
“You can imagine what it would have been if we had lost,” Bowden said. “The only answer is to win. You have to win. That’s where the pressure comes.”
