Terry Bowden

About Terry Bowden

Terry Bowden is a college football analyst/commentator, motivational speaker, and former college football coach. Bowden is the son of Florida State head football coach Bobby Bowden. His siblings include Tommy Bowden, the former head football coach at Clemson, and Jeff Bowden, former offensive coordinator at Florida State. Bowden currently serves as the color commentator for the Westwood One radio network's national NCAA game of the week, and as a college football writer for Yahoo! sports. In a July 2007 column, he stated his desire to return to coaching for the 2008 football season. As of November 13, 2007, Bowden continued to express an interest in returning to coaching. When West Virginia University coach Rich Rodriguez left for the University of Michigan coaching vacancy, Bowden called West Virginia "the dream job" for him. However, Bill Stewart (football coach) who was an assistant coach at WVU was offered the job instead after his win over the Oklahoma Sooners in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl.

As a college football coach, Bowden compiled a 111-53-2 record with head coaching stints at Auburn University, Samford University, and Salem College.

In his first season at Auburn in 1993, he led the Tigers to a perfect 11-0 season (the team was ineligible for post-season play because of infractions by the previous coaching staff). Bowden's Tigers would run the string of undefeated games until the final game of the 1994 season against arch-rival Alabama and finish his first two seasons with a 20-1-1 record. The win-streak is still the longest in AU football history. During his tenure at Auburn, Terry Bowden recruited 18 players that were drafted into the National Football League, including three players taken in the First Round ("NFL Draft History by Team".). In 1997, Bowden's Auburn Tigers lost a 20-7 lead in the SEC Conference Title game where they gave up a last minute, 73-yard touchdown pass to Peyton Manning of the Tennessee Volunteers. The next season, after a string of injuries at the center position and disastrous start, Bowden resigned in the middle of the 1998 season the night before Auburn was to play Louisiana Tech. Bowden was given no assurances he would have a chance to remedy the situation for the next season and believed his firing was imminent when he was told that influential and powerful board member Bobby Lowder was promising the head coaching position to someone on Bowden's own staff (Lowder, five years later, played a controversial behind-the-scenes role in a botched attempt to remove Bowden's successor Tommy Tuberville). Bowden had fallen out of favor with Lowder the previous season.