Clemson staff member Terry Bowden named ULM head coach
Terry Bowden came to Clemson to learn under Dabo Swinney in hopes of getting another head coaching opportunity down the road. Now the 64-year-old is getting his shot.
Bowden was named the head coach at Louisiana-Monroe, the school announced Wednesday. Bowden spent the past two seasons at Clemson working as an unpaid grad intern.
Bowden has 25 years of experience as a college head coach, including a stop at Auburn. He was most recently a head coach at Akron from 2012-18.
“I didn’t go to Clemson to find a way to hang on in this profession,” Bowden said in a release. “I chose to go to Clemson because I wanted to be around the top head coach and college football program in America and continue to study and learn how to be a better coach myself.”
Bowden was fired from Akron following the 2018 season. He then reached out to Swinney about joining Clemson’s staff as the Tigers were coming off of the 2018 national title.
The only opening Clemson had at the time was for an unpaid grad intern position, so Bowden enrolled in school at Clemson, paying his own way. He worked towards a master’s degree in athletic leadership, to go along with his bachelor’s and law degrees.
Bowden told The State last year that he was hoping to land another head coaching job at some point where he could use what he learned from Swinney and Clemson and apply it to his own program.
Bowden is 175-114-2 as a head coach. He is the son of legendary Florida State coach Bobby Bowden and the brother of former Clemson coach Tommy Bowden.
“For the first 18 years of my life, I sat around the breakfast table with one of the greatest college coaches of all time,” Bowden said. “For the last two years, I have had the great honor to sit around a football office with the very best head coach and coordinators in the business today. In between, I have been fortunate enough to win a bunch of games and watch losing programs become winners.”
Bowden is taking over a ULM program that went 0-10 last season. Louisiana-Monroe fired Matt Viator as its head coach earlier this month.
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 10:10 AM with the headline "Clemson staff member Terry Bowden named ULM head coach."
