PANAMA CITY — Bobby Bowden found the proper audience with whom to share his beliefs about the importance of prayer and faith in the home.
Bowden, the all-time leader in wins in major college football, joined his son, former Clemson football coach Tommy Bowden, in speaking at a fundraiser for the local chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes on Tuesday at Gulf Coast State College. The elder Bowden said he promotes the FCA around the country, and he said he will present the FCA’s award for college football’s player of the year prior to the BCS championship game in Pasadena, Calif., next month.
“There is such a great need,” Bowden said of the FCA and its objectives. “This country is crumbling morally. Parents are not getting their kids to church anymore. … The FCA is a Christian organization that specializes in athletes — male and female — and trying to get them to be role models.”
Bowden, now 84, used to take his football players to churches in Tallahassee on Sundays during his tenure at Florida State, and he steadfastly believes young people should be sitting in church pews more regularly.
“Can you imagine? There are kids coming up today who don’t know how to pray,” Bowden said. “When I was coach at Florida State, we used to have a lot of boys who didn’t have daddies. … I used to tell my coaches that we may be the closest thing to a father those boys will ever have.”
Though still young enough to pursue another coaching opportunity at 59 years old, Tommy Bowden has discovered that an early retirement has its benefits, too. Tommy’s brothers, Terry and Jeff, are coaching at Akron and just completed a five-win season. Tommy, however, expressed no desire to return to his past profession.
“You live here?” asked Tommy, who now lives in Santa Rosa Beach. “Why would you leave? … When coaches get out of coaching, they usually visit other campuses and see what trends have changed (in the sport). Want to know what I did? I went to Israel.”
The Bowdens have been returning to Bay County and this area for several decades. First it was Bobby when he was a young lad growing up in Birmingham. Then it was Bobby and his wife, Ann, after they got married in 1949. The Bowdens’ six children soon were in tow and, eventually, their spouses, too.
“We’ve spent more time here than in any other city,” Bobby Bowden said.
Bowden said his brother and sister honeymooned here like he did, and his sons celebrated their nuptials here, too. Now the entire family reunites at Bobby and Ann’s home at the end of June each year, some 40-plus people in all.
Tommy Bowden recalled a simpler time when he spoke of his trips to Bay County as a child, and he noted the considerable changes to the community with high-rise condominiums gobbling up beachfront property and tourist destinations now dotting the landscape.
“What we did, I can tell you we did with no sunscreen,” he said. “Dad couldn’t afford it. There were no sunglasses. We played in the sand. And we went to the bathroom in the water.”
Bobby Bowden hasn’t slowed down much since he coached his final game for the Seminoles at the Gator Bowl in January 2010, ending a 44-year career as a head coach at the college level. He appeared at a pair of FSU home games this fall, one for individual recognition and another as part of a celebration of the 1993 national championship team.
Bowden quipped that he enjoyed those moments, but he signed so many autographs and shook so many hands that he didn’t have a chance to enjoy the games. He’ll be watching the Seminoles intently on Jan. 6 as FSU takes on Auburn for the national championship at the Rose Bowl.
“Florida State’s got its hands full,” he said. “Jimbo Fisher understands that. Now he’s got to get those boys to understand that, too.”