On Dabo’s invite, why Tommy Bowden is returning to Clemson for first time in 13 years
It’s not that Tommy Bowden hasn’t wanted to come back to Clemson.
He spent 10 seasons as the Tigers’ head coach and compiled a 72-45 record in that time. No sooner than he parted ways with the program in 2008, he began a career in television. It required him to work on Saturdays, so the former Clemson head football coach wasn’t able to get back for a game.
Then, life happened and the health of his in-laws and his father, Bobby, took a turn.
The elder Bowden passed away from pancreatic cancer in July. At his funeral, current Tigers head football coach Dabo Swinney told Tommy that Clemson would recognize his father, the longtime Florida State head coach, when the Tigers played the Seminoles on Oct. 30.
“It’d be a good time to come up, fly you and (wife) Linda up,” Tommy Bowden recalled Swinney saying.
For the first time in 13 years, Tommy Bowden will make his return to Clemson.
It’s almost fitting that one of the biggest influences in Tommy’s personal and professional life is the reason he’s returning to the last program where he coached. Sure, there are emotions attached with returning to Death Valley, but none bigger than the pride of being a Bowden partnered with the sadness of losing such a legendary figure in Bobby Bowden.
“I think it’s tremendous respect for my father and what he meant to college football, the ACC, the rivalry of that game. I think it’s a great credit to what my father accomplished and try to recognize it in some form,” said Tommy Bowden, adding that his grandson, Bobby, will also be at the game on Saturday, “so Bobby Bowden, one way or another, will be at the game.”
Building the Bowden name
The success Bobby Bowden, the coach, built didn’t come overnight. In fact, for much of Tommy’s life, he said his father was “just a football coach, like a lot of guys.”
The father-son duo added the coach-player dynamic to their relationship when Tommy played at West Virginia and Bobby was the head coach. The Bowden patriarch still wasn’t a college football household name at that point. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, TV announcers mispronounced the Bowdens’ last name, saying “BO-den” rather than “BAU-den.”
“Now later on as I went bouncing around the Southeastern Conference and he started accumulating victories and coach of the year honors and a bunch of wide rights and wide lefts where he about won the national championship or played for it, then I became a head coach and had to face him where the circumstances were totally different later,” Tommy Bowden said.
The Bowden son had stints at Alabama, Auburn, Duke and Kentucky, among other places, before making his head coaching debut at Tulane in 1997. Two years later, he became the head coach at Clemson.
Meanwhile, the elder Bowden flourished with Florida State, which included an outstanding decade in the 1990s. The Seminoles won two national championships in 1993 and 1999 while winning 12 ACC titles that spilled into the early 2000s. He also led FSU to a national championship appearance against Oklahoma in 2001.
The program had 14 consecutive top-5 AP poll finishes with Bobby Bowden ending his career in 2009 with 377 all-time wins, second to only Joe Paterno (409) in FBS football. Including FCS head football coaches, he’s fourth and Paterno is second.
Bowden Bowls
As head coaches, Bobby and Tommy Bowden faced off nine times. with Tommy recording a 4-5 mark in the “Bowden Bowl.” One of his wins came in 2003 via a 26-10 score after Clemson had just got blown out by Wake Forest 45-17 the week prior. Current offensive coordinator Tony Elliott remembers the game because before the contest, he challenged his teammates, which he said was rare for him to do.
Dabo Swinney had just arrived at Clemson as an assistant coach, specifically chosen by Tommy Bowden because of how he carried himself as a player at Alabama.
“Guys stand out for certain reasons, and he kind of jumped out as a player,” Tommy Bowden said of Swinney. “The No. 1 thing he had going for him, from a resume standpoint, was his recruiting background. That’s why I hired him, amongst other things. Then when I left, after working with him as a coach for however long it was, really feel like he had all the intangibles to be a really, really good head coach. … Of course, the rest is history. I don’t know if anybody anticipated the level of success he would have.”
The success came later after Swinney became the interim head coach when Tommy left in 2008. In that moment on the field before the Clemson-Florida State game in 2003, though, Swinney was a bright-eyed, young coach enamored by seeing the legendary Bobby Bowden up close and personal.
“That was one of the things I was really looking forward to, to be honest with you. Man, I’m going to get a chance to see Bobby Bowden,” Swinney said of coming to Clemson. “I’ll never forget that ’03 game ever. I was like, that’s Bobby Bowden. And I kind of thought it was cool that this was (Tommy Bowden’s) dad.”
Another surreal moment came hours later when Clemson upset the then No. 3-ranked Seminoles 26-10 in Death Valley. Tigers quarterback Charlie Whitehurst threw for 272 yards and rushed for 39, accounting for two touchdowns, while Aaron Hunt made four field goals.
“We had a heckuva night,” Swinney said. “It was one of my favorite memories.”
The Bowden Legacy
As the years developed, Swinney and Bobby Bowden would have more in-depth conversations. They discovered Bobby and Swinney’s mother, Carol, both attended Woodlawn High School in Birmingham, Alabama. A few years ago, Bobby came to speak at Clemson for a chapel meeting. He walked with a cane, but quickly put it to the side, regaining his strength as his voice reverberated throughout the Tigers’ team meeting room.
“It’s like he was 25 years ago,” Swinney recalled. “It was incredible to see that because he was passionate about what he was talking about and he was passionate about who he was talking to.”
While Bobby made an appearance on campus, Tommy had moved on from Clemson and was busy with other parts of life. In 2014, he was a co-host with Tom Werme on the “ACC Blitz Kick-off Special,” a Charlotte-based television show through the ACC Network. He also took an opportunity doing another show with Fox Sports South called “The New College Football Show” in Atlanta for about five years.
Fast forward to the present, Bobby Bowden has passed and Tommy Bowden is on his way back to Memorial Stadium to be recognized as part of a memorial to his father. The idea, which will include a videoboard presentation, was a no-brainer for Swinney. He has been impacted by both Bowdens and cherishes the example they’ve set. More than wins and national championships, football is about the relationships built, which Tommy Bowden hopes will be part of his father’s legacy.
It’ll certainly be on full display on Saturday afternoon.
“The people who really knew him, I think his legacy will be the three F’s — faith, family, football,” Tommy Bowden said. “Foundation that he lived by.”
This story was originally published October 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "On Dabo’s invite, why Tommy Bowden is returning to Clemson for first time in 13 years."
