Bobby Bowden The Man Behind the LEGEND

By: Steve Bornhoft

Decades before Bobby Bowden became synonymous with Tallahassee and Florida State University, the football icon as a young man developed a relationship with Bay County and its magnificent white sands. In an interview with Panama City Living, Bowden, now 83, reflected upon his years as a Panama City Beach boy and touched upon other topics including his ultimately successful effort to make peace with retirement. We meet here a man both familiar and revered, a man not impeccable, but “dadgum it,” nearly so.

PCL: Soon after you arrived at Florida State in January 1976 as its new head football coach, you determined that selling people on the university was your least dispensable job. It seems that you’re still at it. You have signed a marketing contract with Seminole Boosters, Inc., for two years beginning in January. What do you consider to be FSU’s greatest assets?

Bowden: FSU has an outstanding reputation, both as to athletics and academics. The faculty is world class. The university is made up of all kinds of people who are good to be around and work around. The very fact that FSU is in Florida is a big selling point. The name “Florida” is golden outside the state. Over half of Florida residents originated from somewhere else. People love it here. Plus, Tallahassee is not an overwhelming metropolitan area.  It has lots of natural beauty and the feel of a southern town. And, it’s the state capital. It’s a great location for a university.

PCL: Tell us about your connections with Bay County. What do you like to do when you’re here? Do you own property here? What’s your favorite Bay County restaurant?

Bowden: I’ve had a relationship with Bay County for just about all of my life. I had just turned 11 years old when I first visited Laguna Beach with my parents and sister. I immediately fell in love with the place. When I was in high school in Birmingham, I didn’t have any money, but I’d thumb [hitchhike] my way down to Panama City Beach and we’d sleep in boats or anywhere we could find. When I was a student at Howard College, a group of us would have a house party in Panama City Beach every spring. Howard (now Samford University) would play football against FSU and run track against them and there was always a side trip to the beach.

Ann [the former Ann Estock, Bowden’s high school sweetheart] and I have been married for 64 years and it used to be that she and I would visit the beach. Then it got to be me and Ann and our six kids. Then, it was the six kids and their spouses and their kids. Now the reunions sometimes include spouses of our 21 grandchildren and we’ve got five great-grandchildren. We just had a reunion of 40 family members at Seagrove Beach. We still own a place at Regency Towers in Panama City Beach and we own our place at Seagrove Beach at the western edge of Deer Lake Park and seven places at Carillon Beach.

I was an assistant coach at FSU in 1963 when I first met Jimmy Patronis, who was operating the Seven Seas Restaurant in downtown Panama City. Then, I went off to coach at West Virginia for 10 years and by the time I got back, Jimmy had moved out to the beach and opened Capt. Anderson’s. We still enjoy eating there when we get the chance.

PCL: How’s retirement? What do you miss most about being an active coach?

Bowden: Retirement has been good. But, at my age, it’s all about your health. People get to the point where money can’t buy them good health anymore. I miss the fellowship with the boys and, you know, I never had a problem with communication and relationships with my players no matter how old I got. We were always close; you can earn respect no matter what age you are. I missed coaching at first because I had been doing it all my life and, all of a sudden, I wasn’t doing it anymore. But I got over all of that and I especially don’t miss the physical part of coaching. Toward the end of my career, I had to assign more and more parts of my job to others. It seemed like they were adding steps to the top of the coaching tower all the time.

PCL: You coached in the college ranks for 57 years, 44 of them as a head coach. Will any present or future coaches enjoy careers of that length?

Bowden: That’s not likely to happen anymore. Coaches make so much money nowadays. They make millions of dollars. And the good ones don’t stay long at one place. They get good and then they move on to the next job.

PCL: You have said that humility and honesty go hand in hand, that humility is an honest appraisal of one’s fallibility. How would you assess your legacy, both as a coach and as a man?

Bowden: All of my life, I did something that I wanted to do. My first job in coaching was an assistant at Howard College. I had six different coaching jobs in my career and I never applied for any one of them. People would call and say they wanted me. Now, I did apply for some jobs that I didn’t get. But I have always been blessed. I don’t consider national championships to be the most important part of my legacy. What is important to me is that I tried to do it the right way and that I served God’s purpose for my life. If the good Lord agrees with me, then I’ve won the big one.

PCL: You have said that “when two partners agree, one of them is not necessary.” Tell us about your partnership with your wife, Ann. What role has she played in your success?

Bowden: Well, we haven’t always agreed. She was very reluctant to leave West Virginia (where Bowden coached from 1966-1975). But none of the success and happiness I have enjoyed would have occurred without Ann. A lot of coaches marry a woman who is just not a good coach’s wife. It takes a special person to put up with all that a coach goes through. I’ve never made a decision without consulting Ann; we have been and we are a true partnership. I can honestly say that Ann and I have been happily married for nearly 33 years.  That’s not bad considering we got married in 1949.

PCL: I’ve been told by your son, Stephen, that you and Ann eloped on April Fool’s Day.

Bowden: Well, that’s right. I was 19 and Ann was 16, but she had been double-promoted twice so she was just a year behind me in school. I was at the University of Alabama on a football scholarship and I learned that a friend of mine was dating Ann, who was a cheerleader, back in Birmingham at Woodlawn High School. I had to do something about that. I had heard from friends of mine who had eloped that you could go to the tiny town of Rising Fawn, just across the Georgia line, walk into the office of the justice of the peace, get married and walk out, which is what we did.

My parents had taken a train to Atlanta for the weekend for a business meeting, so I “borrowed” the family car, swung by Ann’s house to pick her up early on a Sunday morning about 7 and we drove to Rising Fawn. I left with $25 in my pocket and I got a $10 speeding ticket on the way and the marriage license cost me $5. But the $10 I had left was enough to get me back to Birmingham. We didn’t even stop on the way home. We needed to get back before anyone got suspicious. I dropped her off at her house and I went on to my parents’ house and it was six months before anyone knew about the marriage. The perfect caper.

PCL: Talk to us about your successor, Jimbo Fisher. How would you rate him as a sideline coach, as a recruiter, and as an ambassador for the university?

Bowden: He’s tops. I don’t think FSU could find a better coach anywhere. People think there is some animosity between me and Jimbo, but there is none. They forget that I hired Jimbo at Florida State. We worked together for three years. Jimbo played for my son, Terry, at Samford and Terry hired him as an assistant there and brought Jimbo on as an assistant at Auburn when he moved there. Jimbo has it all. When I hired him, I thought it was possible he might succeed me. I knew the end of my career wasn’t that far off. But I intended for the job to go to Mickey Andrews. He had been an assistant for 27 years and it was important to me to support him, but the university president [T.K. Wetherell] decided he wanted somebody younger.

PCL: In addition to Jimbo, are there other active coaches that you admire?

Bowden: I like what Mark Richt is doing at Georgia. And I am impressed with what Les Miles is doing at LSU. But Alabama’s Nick Saban is probably the best right now. I really like him. A lot of people don’t like him, but if he keeps on whipping you, well, you can’t help but not like him.

PCL: You are known as a coach who was willing to extend second chances to players, especially those who came from impoverished backgrounds with little or no parental influence or exposure to religion. How personally are you affected when you encounter a story like that of Aaron Hernandez this summer? [Hernandez, who played at the University of Florida and with the New England Patriots, has been charged with murdering a friend after the two had a dispute during a trip to a nightclub.]

Bowden: It makes me sick, literally sick. I feel badly for any coach who worked with him. You know, as a college coach, you have a hundred children and you intend for all of them to succeed. You meet their parents. You meet their girlfriends. My coaches and I knew that it’s hard enough to keep a good guy good when he’s off at college.  We realized it wouldn’t work to bring in a great athlete if we knew he would be trouble.  We did our best to learn from his high school coaches, his teachers, and his family.  Did he have the kind of character to succeed?  You want to give a kid a chance to succeed in what he does well.  But you can’t always know.  Most of the kids who came from troubled backgrounds did fine.  A few didn’t. We took a chance on some players who had great athletic ability.  Most times it worked.  Sometimes it didn’t.

PCL: You will be returning to Doak Campbell Stadium for a couple of games this season (versus North Carolina State on Oct. 26 and versus Syracuse on Nov. 16). What will that experience be like for you?

Bowden: It will be OK. It will have been three years that I stayed away and I had planned to stay away for five. I wanted to give Jimbo a chance to become established without me being a distraction. An old head coach hangs around and friction develops. But I will be glad to be back at Doak Campbell and we hope to raise a lot of money for the Seminole Boosters. That’s really what it’s all about.