Here they are, Bobby Bowden's old friends, telling stories. This is where Bowden grew up, and the guys he grew up with, all gray hair and memories, are carrying on like they're a half-century younger.

Laughter muffles words.

Remember the time ol' Bobby came home 15 minutes past 10, and Ann, his new bride, locked him out cause he was later than he said he'd be? Or the one time they ever heard him utter a four-letter word?

Or how bout this: Remember when Bowden's Florida State team beat Indiana in the 1986 All-American Bowl here at Birmingham?

"We were with him the night after they won," says Roy Vance, one of Bowden's oldest and dearest friends. "And he says, 'I got a call from [former Alabama player and prominent booster] Dr. Gaylon McCollough. He says, 'Do you want to be the coach at Alabama?' "

And this begins one of the greatest what-if tales in college football history.

Bowden, who as a boy kept a scrapbook of Alabama football and cried when the Crimson Tide lost, was 57 then. He had just finished his 11th season at Tallahassee. His Seminoles had finished in the top five once, and the top 15 four other times.

Alabama needed a coach. This was less than five years after Bear Bryant retired, and then died. And this wasn't long after Ray Perkins resigned to become coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

So McCollough, once a star center for Bryant and then a member of the school's coaching search committee, had called Bowden, and Bowden was discussing things among friends.

"We was over at Michael's," says Bill Marsh, setting the scene at the old Birmingham steakhouse.

They'd all gone to Woodlawn High with Bowden, this group of guys, and they'd gone on to college with him, too, at Howard [now Samford]. They sat there that night and listened as Bowden told them of his opportunity. He wanted to make one thing clear, though: He wasn't soliciting the Alabama job. He felt good at FSU.

So that's what Bowden told the Alabama folks - that he'd listen and consider coming to Tuscaloosa if they truly wanted him. But if he had to formally interview, well, he wasn't interested. He agreed to meet with a small group of Alabama people: the university president and a couple others.

Instead, Vance says, "Bobby went to the meeting and it was about 30-something [people] sitting there."

It turned into the job interview Bowden wanted to avoid. To this day, Dr. Joab Thomas, the Alabama president at the time, says Bowden shouldn't have been surprised.

"Clearly," Thomas says now, "we invited him to come and interview. We told him that we would have the full committee [there]."

After it ended, Bowden asked Thomas where he stood. Thomas told him he'd be in touch.

Reporters worked the phones. There was no 24-hour news cycle back then, no Internet and no place for rumors to gather. For a good while - maybe an entire day - the public perception was that Bowden was headed home, back to 'Bama.

"Everyone assumed that this was a done deal," says Paul Finebaum, a columnist for the Mobile Press Register and a sports talk radio host, who's among the most respected voices in the southeast. Finebaum covered the story back then.

Late one night, he reached his best source - a member of the Alabama Board of Trustees and also a member of the coaching search committee.

"He wouldn't say much," Finebaum says. "But he said, 'Bowden is out of the picture.' "

From there, Finebaum remembers the conversation went something like this: "Why is Bowden out of the picture?"

"Well, we just went in a different direction."

"Why?"

"We just felt like he was too old. He had too much baggage."

"It was, and it remains, one of the most stunning comments I've ever heard," Finebaum says.

Instead of Bowden, Alabama hired Bill Curry from Georgia Tech, a decision Thomas still defends.

"Bill Curry was by far the one that impressed everyone the most," Thomas says. "I think Coach Bowden was probably tired at the time of the interview. He had just finished playing a bowl game."

After it was clear that Bowden wouldn't be returning to his home state to take the job he'd always wanted, Bob Dailey, another of Bowden's best friends from Birmingham, promised Bowden he'd remember this as a good thing.

"I said, 'Bear Bryant's going to always be the man at Alabama,' " Dailey says now.

For just about the next two decades, 'Bama searched to regain Bryant's magic while Bowden built a dynasty at Tallahassee.

There would be anguish and misery at Tuscaloosa, and even when the Tide rolled and won the '92 national title, times turned bad. Between now and then, Alabama has gone through six coaches, too much heartache to measure and two major NCAA investigations that resulted in forfeited games, lost scholarships, bowl bans and probation, among other embarrassments.

So, what if? What if Bowden had rode west, up U.S. 231 through Montgomery, to Birmingham and then west into Tuscaloosa? What if he'd done that and stayed there?

"Alabama would have stayed at the top," says Billy Legg, another old Bowden friend. Legg is the director of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, where Bowden's old friends have gathered on this day to remember and share stories. "And the feelings of Alabama people, all this turmoil that we've been through the last several years, it wouldn't have been."

What would have been, then, at Tallahassee, without Bowden?

Could FSU still have developed into a national power?

"Oh yeah," says Hootie Ingram with a smile. He was the athletic director at FSU in '87, and later served the same role at Alabama. "There's enough good coaches that would love to go to Florida State - even back then."

Might FSU have gone after a young Mack Brown, then in the process of turning around Tulane? Or what about Howard Schnellenberger, who had gone from Miami to Louisville?

Bowden sat this past week after an FSU practice, just a few hundred yards from the statue built in his honor and the field that bears his name.