TAMPA, Fla. -- In a way, Bobby Bowden acknowledged, cobbling together a lineup without seven suspended starters isn't much different from trying to navigate through a spate of injuries.

"You take the next-best player and move him up," the Florida State coach said Friday.

The difference is that a coach usually doesn't get all seven injured players back at once. And that's the challenge facing Bowden and his staff as they make final preparations for preseason drills.

"The big thing is how you handle the guys who get back for the fourth game," Bowden said as the Florida Sports Writers Association's annual gathering wrapped up.

"It'd be a shame if we get to the fourth game and we're going pretty good and those suspended guys aren't ready."

No fewer than 10 players still must sit out three more games in the aftermath of last year's academic cheating scandal that swept through nearly the entire athletic department.

Top receiver Preston Parker also faces a two-game penance after a guilty plea to misdemeanor weapons and marijuana charges stemming from an April incident in Palm Beach Gardens.

Nor does that include losing offensive linemen Evan Bellamy (blood clot) and Daron Rose (academics) for 2008.

Add it up, and 40 percent of FSU's projected starting unit will be unavailable when the Seminoles open with games against Western Carolina and Chattanooga. Parker will return to face Wake Forest in the ACC opener.

All the suspended players will be available on Sept. 27, when the Seminoles meet Colorado at Jacksonville, Fla.

"We haven't been through this before," Bowden said. "The way we play those three games might very well determine whether we're going to have a big year or not."

The answer may hinge on the play of several incoming freshmen along the offensive and defensive lines.

With jobs open along the offensive line, four freshmen are in line for an extended look during fall workouts. Meanwhile, three of FSU's suspended starters come from the defensive line.

"We have to give the newcomers more practice time, more reps," Bowden said. "We'll do that gradually and see who can handle it. Some can handle the workload, some can't. I don't want to destroy them."

The coach also drew encouragement from FSU's performance in its Music City Bowl loss to Kentucky. Playing without 17 key contributors there, the Seminoles twice rallied from 14-point deficits to keep the outcome in limbo until the final drive of a 35-28 final.

"And Kentucky had a doggone good football team," Bowden said. "That was encouraging and we've just got to build off it."

Coming off back-to-back 7-6 seasons, the Seminoles find themselves in the midst of their worst down cycle since Bowden's hiring in 1976. But the 78-year-old coach rejected a suggestion that the program's once-lofty stature had taken a permanent fall to middle-of-the-pack material.

"No, we're above that. We're better than mid-pack," he said. "But when you reach the top, everybody expects you to be there every year. I don't know of any school that can do that."

Bowden still subscribes to the notion that the Seminoles could be one gamebreaker away from returning to elite status.

"What would a Charlie Ward have done for our team last year?" he said. "Or a Chris Weinke?

"To be a successful team, you have to win the close games. ... That's what separates the top from the middle of the pack."