stellar bear

Nobody can wipe the smile off of Kyle Fecho's face right now.

It has been just over four months since Fecho's hockey career and life almost ended when he was involved in a serious car accident just outside of Camrose on May 26th. Doctors and medical emergency staff told him he was lucky to be alive after he sustained two broken bones in his right leg, a broken left arm and a shattered index finger in his right hand.

When Bobby Bowden arrived at Florida State in 1976 to begin his remarkable coaching tenure, one of the first things he did was invite Bear Bryant down to Tallahassee to play a little golf.
Of course, Bowden was thinking about more than birdies and bogeys.



Advertisement"The idea was to get a game with Alabama," he remembered. "We were an independent back in those days. But coach Bryant said, 'No, I'm not playing Florida State. As long as I'm the athletic director, I'll never play Florida State.' So, we never got that game with Alabama."
Until now. Three decades later and in the twilight of his career, Bowden finally gets a shot at the Crimson Tide.

Florida State (2-1) will face No. 22 Alabama (3-1) in Jacksonville, Fla., on Saturday � a game that has stirred plenty of emotions in the 77-year-old Bowden, who grew up in Birmingham and always figured he was destined to follow Bryant in Tuscaloosa.

"Alabama was my school," said Bowden, who will be facing the Tide for the first time in his 42 years as a head coach. "I moved away from Alabama 40-something years ago, but that's always been my team."

Behind his desk, Bowden still keeps a scrapbook he compiled as a kid, diligently cutting out every photograph and story he could about his beloved Tide. And who knows how things would have turned out if Alabama just had the foresight to offer him its head coaching job in December 1986?

"I was ready to take it," Bowden said Thursday, speaking by telephone from his office in Tallahassee. "I was from there. I just thought that's where I was supposed to go. I thought that's the way God meant it to be, to end up back at my home."

Alas, it wasn't meant to be. While many of Alabama's big-money boosters favored the homespun Bowden, then-university president Joab Thomas had different ideas: He was determined to break football's hold on the campus, preferring a more polished coach to help him spread that message.

Bowden quickly backed out when he realized that Thomas had several candidates in mind. The Tide wound up hiring Bill Curry, who was never accepted by the Alabama faithful. Thomas became a pariah, lasting only two more years as president. Curry followed him out the door after the 1989 season.

And Bowden? The following year, he began an unprecedented run of 14 straight 10-win seasons. After numerous close calls, he finally won his first national title in 1993, and added another six years later. He passed Bryant as the winningest coach in major-college history and was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

These days, he likes to call his flirtation with Alabama "the best move I never made."

"I was always reluctant to follow Bear Bryant," Bowden said. "I knew Alabama would never lose the Bryant thing. That's his. This is different down here. This is mine."

His wife, Ann Bowden, is also glad that her husband gave up on his dream of coaching the Crimson Tide. She knows that Bryant, who died nearly a quarter-century ago, still casts a huge shadow over the program, which may explain why Nick Saban is the ninth coach of the post-Bear era.

"Even today, look in the stands at an Alabama game," she said Thursday when reached at the Bowdens' Tallahassee home. "Who's hat is everyone wearing? It's Bear Bryant's checkered hat. Even the students are wearing Bear Bryant's hat. They have not gotten over Bear Bryant. That will always be Bear Bryant's team, his program, and nobody will ever surpass it."

Her husband was able to carve out his own very distinct legacy at Florida State, though the Seminoles have stumbled a bit in recent years. They have reached 10 wins only once in the past six seasons and are trying to rebound from an especially difficult campaign, one in which Bowden's son, Jeff, was forced to resign as offensive coordinator after facing relentless criticism by restless Seminoles boosters.

But no matter what happens at the end of Bowden's career, there's no denying he'll be a very difficult man to replace � much like Bryant was at Alabama.

"I know he's worried about this situation when he retires," Ann Bowden said. "He's going to try to get out of the way."

Until then, he continues to shape and influence the coaching landscape. Saban still tells the story of Bowden offering him a job at West Virginia, so Saban could be closer to his family after his father died. He didn't take Bowden up on the offer, but he never forgot it, either.

"That's the kind of guy we're talking about here," Saban said. "When I talk about the coaching profession, people doing things the right way, this is the epitome of a man who has done it for a long, long time and done it with a lot of class, a lot of dignity, a lot of character."

Growing up in Birmingham, which is about 50 miles from the Alabama campus and used to host several Crimson Tide games a year, it was only natural for Bowden to become a huge fan.

"I just lived and died with the University of Alabama," he said. "I was one of those 10-year-olds who would cry when they lost. I would literally cry."

About that time, he started keeping a series of scrapbooks devoted to his favorite passion: college football.

"Anytime I got a newspaper with a picture of a player or a story about a game, I would cut it out," Bowden said. "I've got five of those books. One of them was just on Alabama. I've got pictures from about 1940 to 1945.

"I've still got that book behind my desk right now," he added.

After a stellar career at Woodlawn High School, Bowden enrolled at Alabama. He dreamed of playing halfback for the Crimson Tide � those were the days when most schools ran a version of the single wing, requiring someone who could run, pass and kick � but he lasted only one semester.

In high school, he met and fell in love with Ann. They got married after graduating from high school, which, in those days, prevented him from qualifying for an athletic scholarship. He transferred to Howard University in Birmingham (now known as Samford), where he majored in history and laid the foundation for his coaching career.

Bowden returned to Howard as the head coach in 1959, just one year after Bryant began his 25-year, six-national-championship run at Alabama.

"I was able to go there a lot to watch him and learn from him," Bowden said. "I was young coach, just up and coming, and he was in his prime."

Not that he modeled himself after Bryant, a rough-and-tumble man who could be brutal on his players and imposing to the media. Bowden has always preferred a more folksy approach, befriending players and reporters alike, rarely saying anything stronger than "dadgummit," someone who clearly believes you catch more bees with honey.

So, it's not surprising Bryant had the upper hand at that golf outing back in 1976. When the Bear flatly shot down the idea of Alabama signing on to play the Seminoles, Bowden didn't object.

"I was so infatuated with him, I was afraid to make him upset," Bowden said, managing to chuckle at his timidity. "When he said he was not going to play Florida State, I just figured that was the way it was supposed to be."

Until now. One of the UK's most feted stock market gurus has warned that British equities may be in the first stages of a six-to-nine month bear market.

Anthony Bolton, who manages Fidelity's Special Situations fund, believes UK markets be headed for a continued downturn based on his cyclical analysis.

Mr Bolton is one of the most trusted names when it comes to analysing what lies ahead for equities.

advertisementHis comments about the UK being on the verge of a bear market are linked to the exact same comments made four years ago when he rightly predicted the start of a bull run.

"It's been my central case that after a four-year bull market we are more likely to have a bear market than a correction and then the bull market continues," Mr Bolton said.

"It may be that we are in the first stages of that (a bear market). A typical bear market lasts six to nine months."

Mr Bolton, speaking in an interview to newswire Reuters, linked the potential for British stock markets to enter a period of negative growth directly to the problems in the US housing market.

"The U.S. mortgage crisis is not one that will be solved overnight. When people buy a lot of assets they thought were riskless and then lose a bundle, it's a behaviour-changing event that doesn't disappear really quickly."

Interestingly, in spite of the problems at Northern Rock, Mr Bolton has recently begun building up his fund's weighting in banks, an area in the past which he been rather cynical of in investment terms.

His comments will be closely followed by others in the equity markets, largely due to his past success at delivering stellar returns.

Mr Bolton is due to step down from active day-to-day management at the end of this year. He led the split of the ￡6bn Special Situations fund last year, having managed it for the last 25 years, and now manages the ￡3.1bn Special Situations UK fund.

As an example of how successful the fund has been is seen in the fact that an investment of 1,000 pounds in 1979 would be worth more than 125,000 pounds today.



But Fecho is alive and well, and the 22 year old recently began skating again on his own. Not only does he have plans to play hockey again for the Bears, he wants it to be at some point this season.

"I have been able to go out with the guys after practice and pass the puck around and have some fun," said Fecho.

"It's nice to be able to joke around and be a part of the jokes again."



Fecho's Chevy Cavalier collided with a three-quarter ton truck at an intersection on Hwy. 56. He was travelling at a speed close to 100 kmh on the highway when he T-boned the truck after the driver of the truck failed to make a complete stop.

Fecho not only is dealing with the physical injuries he sustained from that fateful night in May, he is still dealing with it emotionally. This whole experience has really put everything into perspective for the second-year Bears defenceman.

"It has changed the way I think about things. My reason coming up here that night was to pick up some equipment but to also go out with the boys and it makes you wonder what is important in life right now," said Fecho.

"They always say you never know how much you will miss something until it's gone and when I was sitting in that hospital bed I wasn't sure if I would ever play again. This whole experience made me realize how much I love hockey."

The Bears pride themselves on being a tight -knit group, in many ways they reflect a family. Many of Fecho's teammates and coaches came rushing to his side making visits to the hospital and boat loads of e-mails were being sent to him.

"Everyone was there right away and their support has been unbelievable," said Fecho.

"Alumni that I had never even played with were calling me up wishing me well. It makes you realize what it's like to be a Golden Bear."

Bears assistant coach Serge Lajoie can't imagine what kind of physical and emotional recovery his young defenceman has had to deal with. The team had high hopes coming into the season for Fecho. He was coming off a stellar rookie campaign that earned him CIS rookie of the year honours and conference all-star achievements. One of the first conversations Lajoie had with Fecho had the young man feeling like he let his team down.

"Kyle is a young man who cares about his teammates and in an unfortunate situation he's made the best of it," said Lajoie.

"There are a lot of people who would be very selfish in this situation and they would feel like 'why me'. But he has taken his obstacle and leapt over it, and he has never had that poor me attitude."

"There are a lot of people that could learn a lot from the type of person Kyle is."


Rumors have been circling Wall Street for days that Bear would seek an investor. The rounds of speculation reprise talk that started several months ago, when the firm bailed out one of its hedge funds as two others slid toward bankruptcy.

Bear's third-quarter earnings were less than stellar. Net income for the third quarter plunged 61% to $171.3m (�21m), from $438m for the third quarter of 2006. That is the steepest year-over-year profit drop in over 10 years for the firm, which prides itself on its 83 years of profitability.

Punk Ziegel analyst Richard X. Bove wrote in a research report today that the best investors would be Bank of America and China Construction Bank, investing together. While Bove reasoned that Buffett could only infuse cash into Bear Stearns, he believed that Bank of America could bring in new products, enhance management, stabilize the balance sheet and take advantage of Bear Stearns's distribution network to sell BofA products.

Bear controversially raised money in August through two $2.25bn bond offerings to bolster its cash position from $11bn to $14bn within two weeks.

The bank paid a high price on its bond offerings with an interest rate of 7.05%, 2.45% above that of five-year Treasury bonds.

Bear Stearns' chief financial officer Sam Molinaro told Financial News at the time: "The reason we sold the bonds is that it's not we felt we needed the cash, but we needed to open up the market for credit in our name. While this was an expensive trade, it was reflective of where spreads were for the investment banks at the time, and it was evidence that the investment community was willing to take our name for five years in the unsecured credit market."

Earlier this month, Bear also sold a 7% stake for $860m to Joseph Lewis, the reclusive billionaire.

Even so, speculation about a new investor has only been intensifying.

Bove yesterday said he expected Bear Stearns to attract an investor, based on information he said he gathered from two independent sources and market movements. Bove said Bear needs an investor to stabilize its balance sheet, lower its costs of funding, add a greater flow of mortgages, introduce new debt and equity products, and move it into international markets. He also said it was needed for "infusing new management talent to a team that may have grown sclerotic."

Bove upgraded Bear to "market perform" from "sell," on the possibility that the firm could get a cash infusion. He also raised his price target on the stock to $120 from $96. Less than 24 hours after he published his report, Bear Stearns' stock price was already trading at $123, jumping on the widespread rumors in the market.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that several banks approached Bear, including

Bank of America, Wachovia, China's Citic Group and the China Construction Bank.

Press reports revealed that Buffett, the billionaire investor, had casually called Bear Stearns chairman Jimmy Cayne over a month ago, offering to buy some of the firm's stock.