Bowden, PT and Ward answer the question "what if?"

The Hombre Golf Club once again hosted a fundraiser for Florida State PC, and for the 27th time, had Bobby Bowden as the guest of honor!

It also brought in the likes of former Seminoles Mickey Andrews, Mosley alum Jason Whitaker, Ken Unglab, and star quarterbacks Jimmy Jordan, Peter Tom Willis and Charlie Ward.

Willis and Ward in particular played in an era where FSU was unbelievably dominant.

Over the course of 14 seasons from '87 to 2000, the Seminoles had a 152-19-1 record, did win two national titles, but finished number 2 twice and number 3 five times.

So I asked the guys after their round Friday, do they ever think about what might have been if today's current playoff format had been used back then.

Coach Bowden replied quickly "I guess you can think back on it, but there ain't a darn thing you can do about it."

"I think there were a lot of years" says 1989 FSU starting quarterback Peter Tom Willis "we were playing our best football at the end of the season. And I think it would have given us a chance to win more national championships."

Ward won the 1993 Heisman and helped FSU win its first football national championship. He says of the playoff format, there are no guarantees. "Being there is one thing, but winning it each and every year would probably be something totally different. You know that's where Alabama is right now. You know they won a few, but they've been there quite a bit so it could have been very similar to Florida State back in the day."

"The flip side of it" says Willis "is it was a great run for all those years. And you know the bowl system was pretty cool too."

Coach Bowden put perhaps the perfect cap on this subject "It would have been very interesting to see what we could have done, or if I'd have had (placekicker Sebastian) Janikowski every year, we would have won a couple more championships."

Tough to argue with that!