Called to Coach by Bobby Bowden

Author:Bobby Bowden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books
Published: 2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

WHERE IS PABLO?

Pablo Lopez was an offensive tackle on our teams in the mid-1980s. Pablo grew up in a tough neighborhood in Miami, but was really starting to come into his own by his junior season, in 1986. He was a big boy, probably six feet four inches and 280 pounds. He was a star player at South Miami High School, where he played with Mike Shula, who later was the University of Alabama’s quarterback and the Crimson Tide’s head coach. Pablo was inconsistent during his first couple of seasons at Florida State, but I thought he had the potential to play in the National Football League.

Pablo was always a free spirit and was one of the most popular players on our team. He always had a great attitude and made jokes and pulled pranks on his teammates. But off the field, Pablo was starting to find direction in his life. He had a baby girl and married his girlfriend. He was starting to become a man.

Only four days after Pablo was married, he was murdered on the Florida State campus.

September 13, 1986, was one of the worst days of my life. It was the week after our second game in 1986, and we did not have a game that Saturday. I released the boys after practice on Friday, and most of them went home for the weekend. But Pablo injured his shoulder in our 34–17 loss at Nebraska the week before, so he stayed in Tallahassee to receive medical treatment.

On Friday night, Pablo watched television with three of his teammates in their off-campus apartment. Later that night, they attended a fraternity dance at Montgomery Gymnasium. Someone pulled a fire alarm during the dance, so everybody in the gym was evacuated into the parking lot. Police later told me that Pablo and another man argued after someone kicked the car Pablo was riding in. They argued for a while, and the man left and went to a friend’s house. He came back with a shotgun and found Pablo.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” Pablo told him.

The man shot Pablo in the stomach. He died before the ambulance reached Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center.

The police called me at about 1:30 A.M., and it was the sort of call you never want to receive as a football coach or a father. When your phone rings that early in the morning, you know one of your boys did something to get into trouble. I will never forget the scene I saw in the hospital. Most of our players were there, and they had not yet been told that Pablo was dead.

Ken Smith, our team chaplain, and I pulled all of the boys into the hospital’s chapel. “Boys, Pablo is gone,” I told them.

Immediately, many of my boys started wailing. They were on the floor kicking and screaming, and punching walls. It was complete chaos. I had never seen anyone react to death like that before. Fred Jones, one of our linebackers, played with Pablo in high school and was his college roommate.

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