The first thing you’re going to notice, obviously, is the delivery method.

Today, Bobby Bowden’s message to his players would’ve been blasted out instantly and tastefully via Teamworks. In 1977, there was no such thing, and so the head football coach at Florida State University had to rely on the United States Postal Service — plus, likely, a relative — to get his message from typewriter, to envelope, to mailbox, to counter, and then in front of the eyeballs of his football team. 

But I want to focus on the date here.

This letter, posted to Twitter via Facebook, was dated Aug. 3, informing the 1977 Florida State Seminoles that they were to report to camp by Aug. 19 — excuse me, 11 a.m. sharp on Aug. 19.

How deep into prep will your 2026 football team be by 11 a.m. on the 19th of August? 

Forty-nine years later, we now know Bowden would go on to win 377 games and two national championships. But Bowden himself didn’t know any of that on Aug. 3, 1977. At the time, he was trying to whip into shape — metaphorically and literally — a Seminoles team that had gone 5-6 in 1976, his first in Tallahassee. At 47 years old, Bowden had won at Howard and West Virginia, and he was trying to establish himself and his program, which had enjoyed only bits of moderate success after re-starting in 1947. 

And by the way, Bowden and the 50 toughest men he could find went to Hattiesburg, Miss., on Sept. 10 and whipped Southern Miss, 35-6. The ‘Noles started the year unranked but climbed into the AP Top 20 — that’s all they ranked in those days — after hammering Auburn on Oct. 22 to start the year 6-1. 

Florida State played one regular-season game on TV, their 37-9 win over Florida on ABC, and qualified for one of the 13 bowl games in existence at the time: a 40-17 hammering of Texas Tech in the Tangerine Bowl.

That season was, more or less, the springboard that Bowden used to eventually build the most consistent winner in college football history. Florida State went 8-3 and didn’t make a bowl game in 1978, but went a combined 21-3 with two AP top-10 finishes in 1979 and ’80. By 1984, Florida State kicked off a run of 22 consecutive ranked seasons, apexing with the run of 14 straight AP top-5 finishes from 1987-2000. Bowden’s only losing season was his first one. 

It all started with that letter he sent back on Aug. 3, 1977.

(Okay, not really. But you get the point.)