TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -With his 77th birthday a couple of months off, Bobby Bowden is eager to redeem a disappointing season - although one with yet another Atlantic Coast Conference title.
And the Florida State coach, with the most wins in major college football, suspects his team might be as talented as any in what he sees as a wide-open year for the national championship.
``That's the fun thing about the first of the year, when everybody's undefeated,'' Bowden said Sunday. ``Everybody's goal is the same: to win 'em all.''
Bowden said 15 to 20 schools are capable of winning the NCAA title. He pointed to one in particular - Notre Dame, led by quarterback Brady Quinn, a preseason Heisman Trophy favorite.
Bowden rolls into his 31st year at Florida State with the Labor Day opener at archrival Miami just three weeks away.
The Seminoles finished the 2005 season at 8-5, their poorest record in 24 years, and lost a bunch of top talent (four first-rounders) in the NFL's April draft, creating question marks at several positions.
``Personnelwise, I think we're just about as good as anybody else,'' said Bowden, who returns four starters on defense and five on offense, including sophomore quarterback Drew Weatherford.
``What's in store for us? I don't know,'' Bowden added, pointing to the health of the offensive line as key to the season. ``We've got to play good every Saturday if we want to get back where we were.''
Bowden said he's stayed on his coaches and players about the team's inconsistency last year when it finished the regular season 2-4, including three straight embarrassing losses in November.
``We were a funny team last year,'' he said. ``We played good people pretty doggone good. We played people we're favored over and we ain't playing good, we get beat.''
The Seminoles were outscored 89-36 in the season's final month, the worst three-game stretch since an 0-3 start in Bowden's first year, 1976, when they were outscored 92-21.
Florida State slipped into the ACC's first postseason title game with a 5-3 conference mark and then upset Virginia Tech to corner a Bowl Championship Series berth in the Orange Bowl, losing to heavily favored Penn State in triple overtime.
Florida State has not been in the national title picture since 2000, following a 14-year-run of double-digit win totals and two national titles.
And the clock is ticking more loudly for Bowden, who has a 359-107-4 record in 40 seasons and has averaged a shade of 9.5 wins a year in 30 years at Florida State.
``As long as your health is good, it makes no difference how old you are,'' Bowden said Sunday when asked about how much longer he plans to coach.
An eight-game home schedule and Weatherford's full year of experience could figure into the Seminoles being among those 15 or 20 teams Bowden sees in the title hunt.
``You hope to get a good bounce early,'' he said.
