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 Friday, December 13, 2002
Chemistry an unmeasurable trait
By Terry Bowden
Special to ABC Sports Online
We're a long way from the championship game at the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, but I'm sure that when we finally have a national champion, it will largely be because of that team's chemistry.
Ever since the BCS was created, we have become much more astute as to what it takes to get to the national championship game. Not only is it about talent and schemes, but also strength of schedule and margin of victory. However, one of the most important elements of a championship-caliber team is something that cannot be calculated or evaluated. I am talking about chemistry, and it goes to the very heart of what makes a good team great or a great team a champion.
|  | | Bowden's '93 Auburn Tigers rallied together to post an 11-0 season. |
A perfect example of this was our 1993 undefeated team at Auburn University. Anybody who saw us play -- and since we were on probation, very few did -- knew that there was something very special about that team.
First of all, I need to give you some background about what led up to Auburn's only 11-0 season in history. Auburn was coming off back-to-back five-win seasons and many of the players had been labeled losers over that time. The former coach had resigned under pressure, and the football program was found guilty of major rules violations and put on two years probation. Finally, they hired little ol' me, the youngest Division I-A head coach at the time from lowly Division I-AA Samford University.
We had no television, no postseason possibilities and nobody's respect. These became the motivating factors for getting our team to circle the wagons and come together as a team.
Our players became so focused on proving they were a good football team and they were winners that all personal egos and objectives were set aside for the goals of the team. Nobody cared what role they played or who got the most attention as long as we just won. To me, this is what you call chemistry.
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Memorable teams:
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For those of you who want perspective, the team that has reminded me most of that 1993 Auburn team was the 2000 Oklahoma team that won the national championship.
People had lost respect for Oklahoma. The Sooners had won seven games and lost a bowl game to Ole Miss. They had a brand new coach, a young guy. Energetic, talked about positive attitude. Josh Heupel couldn't make an NFL team. They had great chemistry.
With Heupel, Rocky Calmus and young Bob Stoops, the only way they beat 17-point favorite Florida State in the national championship game, it was because of great chemistry.
--Terry Bowden
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I've always thought of chemistry as to when you mixed three or four ingredients together and make a product that was even better. Well, in football, chemistry is when you put 11 players on the field who play better than their individual talent would suggest. When people say the total is greater than the sums of its parts, this is what they mean. I just call it "Getting our guys to play better than their guys."
There were two teams that we played that year that I remember especially. We should not have had a chance against Florida or Alabama. Florida was one of the top two or three teams in the country, and Alabama was the defending national champion. However, because of the urgency and the need that our team had to prove itself, we were able to upset both of those teams by coming from behind in the last minutes. It wasn't because of talent or coaching that we won those games. Their players wanted to win, but our players had to. And of course, once you start winning, you begin to go into games believing you are going to win, and this whole thing begins to snowball into something real special.
That's exactly what happened to us at Auburn in 1993.
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