Head coach Jimbo Fisher and the defending national champion Florida State Seminoles sit just two wins away from a second straight title. While Fisher and Florida State will need to beat Oregon in the Rose Bowl and then either Alabama or Ohio State to take home the first College Football Playoff Trophy, whichever head coach ultimately wins the title will have ties to Florida State.
Though he never won a national championship at FSU and doesn’t have a statue standing outside of Doak Campbell Stadium, Bill Peterson first brought football success to Tallahassee.
Born in Toronto, Ohio, Peterson coached Florida State for 11 years from 1960 through 1970, compiling a 62-42-11 record. Peterson’s team finished ranked in the top 15 three times. His 1964 squad finished 9-1-1, becoming the first FSU team ever to finished ranked, at No. 11. That year, the Seminoles also defeated rival Florida for the first time, 16-7.
“I do believe that the great work that Dad did as a coach, especially at Florida State is often overlooked,” said son Bill Peterson Jr., who is the athletic director at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia.
Though Peterson’s accomplishments at Florida State often go overlooked, the number of great coaches Peterson was able to produce is undeniable. Among those to coach under Peterson were legendary and national championship college coaches, Bobby Bowden and Don James, as well as Super Bowl winning NFL head coaches, Joe Gibbs and Bill Parcells.
After 11 years at Florida State, Peterson coached one year at Rice before trying his hand at the NFL as the head coach of the Houston Oilers, but went just 1-18 at the professional level. Peterson served as athletic director at UCF from 1982-85. In 1993, Peterson passed away at the age of 73.
In a December edition of The Spokesman Review in 1992, Gibbs credited Peterson for instilling hard work in him as an excerpt reads:
“ (Joe) Gibbs learned hard work from Peterson at Florida State. Peterson was tireless and demanded that his staff work from the same clock. ‘Peterson had a young staff and he would keep us there for hours,’ Gibbs said. ‘In the off-season he would have reams and reams of films for us to go through. His whole thought was football. He never stopped. It was the same with the players. He worked them so hard, they were productive.’”
Peterson’s son said he thinks Bowden’s offensive philosophy was shaped from working as the wide receivers under Peterson from 1963-65. Bowden’s riverboat gambler reputation may have also developed during his first go-round in Tallahassee.
“I think early on Coach (Bowden) was a run first guy, but after being at FSU in the early 1960’s, he changed his thinking. When Dad died, Coach Bowden said that he got 90 percent of his offensive thinking came from Dad,” said Bill Peterson Jr. “Certainly his appetite for trick plays was whetted when at FSU. Dad had one for every game and called it by the name of the opponent. For example, ‘the Houston special’.”
Every year since 2006, the FBS national championship winning head coach has come from the Peterson coaching tree. It will happen for a ninth straight year this season as each of the four head coaches among playoff teams have ties to Peterson.
“I know that Dad would be pleased with his legacy as a football coach,” Bill Peterson Jr. said. “Not only have the coaches that worked directly for him done well, but those who coached for those coaches have turned out to be championship coaches.”
Alabama’s Nick Saban played and coached under Don James at Kent State. Saban played for the Golden Flashes under James in 1971 before becoming a graduate assistant there the following season. James served as defensive backs coach and as defensive coordinator during Peterson’s first six years at Florida State.
Saban’s Sugar Bowl counterpart, Urban Meyer, coached under Peterson understudy, Earle Bruce. Bruce was an assistant to Peterson prior to either man getting a coaching job at the collegiate level. Prior to becoming a LSU assistant and helping the Tigers win the 1958 national championship, Peterson was the head coach at Mansfield High School in Ohio, where Bruce served as an assistant.
Meyer was defensive backs coach under Bruce in the early 1980s at his current school, Ohio State University.
The head coaches for the Rose Bowl match-up between Oregon and Florida State each have multiple branches linking back to Peterson.
Oregon’s Mark Helfrich served as quarterbacks coach under Dirk Koetter at Arizona State from 2001-05. Koetter coached under Bob Stull at UTEP from 1986-88 and Stull coached under James. Koetter was also offensive coordinator at Boston College in 1994 and 1995 under Dan Henning. Henning worked three years under Peterson at FSU.
Fisher served as offensive coordinator under Saban at LSU from 2000-04 and under Bowden at Florida State from 2007-09.
“I know he (Peterson) would be very proud,” Bill Peterson Jr. said. “He followed the careers of his former assistant coaches until the day he died. He was so happy when good things happened for them. Unfortunately, a lot of that happened after he died.”
While there will be a Peterson connection regardless of which team wins the inaugural College Football Playoff, Bill Peterson Jr. said the Peterson family does have a rooting interest.
“Our entire family considers themselves Florida State fans. I am a FSU graduate. Joanna, my wife, went to Auburn, but was around my dad for long enough to become a fan,” he said. “Two of our three sons (Will and Ben) played football here at Shorter, but would have loved to have played at FSU. Molly, our daughter, slipped off to Georgia, but deep down, she still pulls for FSU. And Sam, our youngest, is a sophomore at FSU. We are Seminoles!”
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