KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- He won his first game 43 years ago in the tiny Tennessee town of Maryville. He sweated out his 324th victory Saturday evening in vast Arrowhead Stadium, in front of 55,132, against a team wearing tabasco sauce-colored unis. In between then and now, Bobby Bowden has gone from Smoky Mountain obscurity to a place where only one other Division I-A coach has ventured.

The score of The Eddie Robinson Football Classic doesn't matter as much as the significance. Florida State beat Iowa State, 38-31, which will look nice enough on the game ball his players presented to a relieved Bowden afterward. But the numbers that matter -- more to football historians right now than to Bowden himself -- are those 324 career victories. Bowden has outlasted his own self doubts, the yahoos in West Virginia who hung him in effigy, the killer schedules, Wide Right, Steve Spurrier, six different Miami coaches, a better-than-anyone thought ISU team, and now his childhood and professional idol, Bear Bryant. Bryant meant everything to Bowden. Still does.

"I think he would have liked it, me getting it,'' Bowden said. "But I ain't that big on that record.''

You have to remember that Bowden grew up in Alabama and grew up on 'Bama football. He played there as a freshman. He later coached at Howard (now Samford) in nearby Birmingham. Those were the days when Bryant, in that gravel-pit voice of his, would invite Bowden to Tide practices and occasionally throw him a scrap or two from the 'Bama roster. Bryant coached his last game in the December cold of Memphis' 1982 Liberty Bowl. A month later he was dead.

Bowden, who turns 73 in early November, looks through his windshield and doesn't see retirement, or Bryant's fate, but instead another 4-eyes codger still working the sideline in State College, Pa. That would be Penn State's Joe Paterno, who has 327 career wins and a three-game lead.

You want to know why Bowden is still dag-gumming his way through another season of team meetings, booster clubs speeches, fund-raisers, practices and Tums-moment sideline dramas? Reduced to its purest form, the answer is simple enough: Paterno. Or more accurately, the idea of surpassing Paterno.

"Yeah, I don't know how to say it,'' said Bowden, trying to give meaning to this latest win. "[Bryant] can't do anything about it. Joe keeps squirming.''

Bowden doesn't need the bonus (a reported $50,000) he gets for passing Bryant, or incredibly enough, even the $2-million-per he gets for coaching the Seminoles. Bowden has money. He has fame. He has two national championships. He has a legacy.

What he doesn't have is the No. 1 next to his name. Fogey or no fogey, Bowden likes to lose only slightly less than he liked Spurrier calling him out late last season. He hides it with the aw-shucks smiles and the interview quips, but don't mistake the Mayberry RFD personality for disinterest. Bowden will coach until he spins in, or until his program spins in -- whichever comes first.

Saturday night at Arrowhead he just about wore a trench into the sideline as he paced back and forth. Didn't matter that Florida State was comfortably, to semi-comfortably, to uncomfortably ahead (depending on Heisman-quality ISU quarterback Seneca Wallace). He chomped his gum. He sweated through his burgundy golf shirt. He grabbed the headphones and chirped away at his assistant coaches upstairs in the booth. He angrily slapped his cap against his thigh when a long pass slipped through an FSU receiver's hands. The old man was engaged.

Bowden wanted this one. He wants any game that will help erase the memory of last season's 8-4 record (FSU's fewest wins since 1986), that will put him one baby step closer to the Fiesta Bowl, that will cause his buddy Paterno to glance over his shoulder.

It didn't come easily. The gifted Wallace, the hard-running Hiawatha Rutland and a clever defense saw to that. If not for a stop of Wallace on a second-and-goal from the FSU 1 with 4 seconds remaining, Joe Pa might still be four games ahead. "Oh, lord,'' said Bowden. "I might be 95 if I didn't have a heart attack on that play.''

Minutes later, when the FSU coaches and players gathered in the locker room, offensive tackle Brett Williams presented Bowden with the game ball -- a rarity on FSU teams.

"It might not mean that much to you now, but maybe 20, 30 years it will,'' Williams said.

Bowden laughed for the first time that night. "Maybe 20 years from now you'll stop by my grave and tell me that,'' he said.

Of course, Bowden keeps the career victories thing in perspective. He couldn't help it. About 30 yards from where he had paced was a field logo for The Eddie Robinson Foundation. The logo included a number: 408 -- Robinson's career wins. No way does Bowden one day catch Robinson, the all-time winningest college coach.

Does he?

Gene Wojciechowski is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at gene.wojciechowski@espn.com.