Note: The following appears in the Florida State football gameday program.

I would be hard-pressed to think of a Clemson regular-season game that received more pregame publicity than the Oct. 23, 1999 game between Clemson and Florida State at Memorial Stadium.

Florida State was ranked No. 1 with a perfect record under Hall of Fame Head Coach Bobby Bowden. Clemson was 3-3 and unranked under first-year Head Coach Tommy Bowden.

Whenever the top-ranked team in the nation comes to your stadium, it is a big deal, but this was the first meeting of father-and-son head coaches in Division I college football history.

Personally as Clemson sports information director, I never put in more time to manage one regular-season game in my career. Just as they say student-athletes come to Clemson and Florida State for these games of national interest, these are the types of games I came to Clemson to work in the sports information office.

The Bowden family was very media savvy and knew the attention on this game would be good for both programs. They embraced it.

A month before the game, Florida State’s sports information director, Rob Wilson, and I were already getting countless interview requests from national media. There were just as many requests for interviews with Ann Bowden, Tommy’s mom and Bobby’s wife of over 50 years.

So, I asked Tommy if he was willing to do a teleconference call with his mother 10 days prior to the game. This was unprecedented in that I had have never asked a coach to do a press conference 10 days prior to a game with another game in between.

As I said, the Bowden family embraced the situation, and we had a teleconference with Tommy and his mother on Thursday, Oct. 14, nine days prior to the Florida State game and two days prior to Clemson’s contest at Maryland.

We had media on the line from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York. I cut the call off after an hour.

On gameday, we had so many photographers and television media covering the game that was nationally televised by ESPN that Wilson and I had to plan the pregame meeting of head coaches on the field. The only way we could allow the most media to get pictures of the meeting of father and son was to keep all the media inside the field hashmarks.

Wilson and I communicated with the media hours before the game and personally managed the pregame. To everyone’s credit, they obeyed our request and everyone got pictures of the historic pregame greeting.

One of my most memorable moments of my career took place during this pregame meeting. After the media had gotten what they needed, I somehow ended up on the field one-on-one with Bobby. He grabbed me by the arm and said, “Isn’t this great?”

I smiled as I thought how secure he was in his job and how great it was that he could appreciate the moment. In the middle of his first year at Clemson with a 3-3 record, I was not sure Tommy was feeling the same.

Many Tiger fans feared this could be a blowout in the Seminoles’ favor. Florida State was averaging 40 points and well over 500 yards per game on offense behind quarterback Chris Weinke and Heisman Trophy candidate Peter Warrick, who had torched Clemson for 372 all-purpose yards in Death Valley two years earlier in a Florida State victory.

For once, a game lived up to the hype. It was a contest the still Death Valley record crowd of 86,092 fans will not soon forget.

Clemson took a 14-3 lead at halftime behind a seven-yard touchdown pass from Woodrow Dantzler to Rod Gardner and a one-yard touchdown run by Dantzler. A trick play played a role in the first touchdown when punter Ryan Romano completed a 23-yard pass to Braxton K. Williams. It was Romano’s only career pass attempt and Williams’ only career reception.

The Clemson defense, behind linebacker Keith Adams, who had 19 tackles in the game, held the Seminoles to just one field goal in the first half and only one touchdown in the game.

Florida State scored 11 points in the third quarter, and the game was tied 14-14 entering the fourth quarter. The Seminoles took the lead on Sebastian Janikowski’s 39-yard field goal with 5:26 remaining in the game.

The Tigers then drove 53 yards in seven plays to the Florida State 25. On fourth-and-one, Tommy decided to attempt a 41-yard tying field goal by Tony Lazzara. But the attempt was tipped by Tay Cody. Florida State ran out the clock and escaped with a 17-14 victory.

The win was the 300th of Bobby’s career and allowed the Seminoles to remain No. 1. They ran the table to give him his second national championship.

It would be the closest game Florida State had in Bowden’s second national championship season.