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Bowden: On football and faith Wednesday, Sep 26, 2001 By Ray Melick |
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But even though he's reached icon status as a football coach at Florida State University, Bowden sometimes finds himself wondering, “Why me?” “I've asked that many times, many times,” said Bowden, sitting in his office overlooking the playing field inside FSU's Doak Campbell Stadium. “You get my age, you see your buddies passing away, guys that were some of the greatest guys you'd ever know. And I say, ‘Why me? Why am I still going?’ “I don't know. The Good Lord has to answer that. I know I'm trying to do what He wants. I know He's in control. But I do sometimes wonder, ‘Why me?’” Bowden is almost as well known for his faith as he is for football. Raised in Ruhama Baptist Church in the East Lake community of Birmingham, which used to be the location of Howard College before it became Samford University and moved to the south side of Birmingham, Bowden has always felt the presense of God in his life. At 13, confined to his bed for almost a year with rheumatic fever - practically unknown today but in 1943 potentially a fatal disease - Bowden remembers the people at Ruhama praying over him, and his mother telling him to pray for a miracle. “It was one of those, ‘God, let me be a great football player, let me go to (the University of) Alabama, and I'll dedicate my life to serving You,’ kind of prayers,” Bowden said. “You know, when you're young, you don't always understand what Christianity is all about. In fact, for most people, religion is `If I'm good, I'm going to heaven; if I'm bad, I'm going to hell.' But that's not what Christianity is all about. You can't be good enough. It's faith and believing in Jesus Christ. But I was 23 before I figured that out.” Religion and football are often one and the same in the south, particularly in Alabama. Bowden pursued both with much the same fervor, considering going into the ministry when he was an All-America quarterback at Howard College. “The people at Ruhama made me the youth minister,” Bowden said. “That gave me my first opportunity to speak to an entire church congregation, and I remember it well. When I finished, there were four or five people come forward (in response to the message Bowden had given), and I had people telling me afterward, ‘You ought to be in the ministry.' So I thought about that for a long time afterward, but I really didn't feel like I was called for that. To be honest, I didn't think I was a good enough person to go into the ministry. And football took over.” But always, Bowden has felt like God was in control. He says he never got a job that he applied for, but that his coaching career, which included head coaching jobs at South Georgia College, Howard (Samford), West Virginia and, for the last 26 years, Florida State, has always been the case of people coming to him. The key to his longevity, of course, is his success. He took over FSU when the school was on the verge of disbanding its football program, and turned it into the most successful program in the country, with two national championships; nine consecutive Atlantic Coast Conference titles; an NCAA record 14 consecutive 10-win seasons; an NCAA-record 14 consecutive seasons of being ranked in the top five in the country in both major polls; a record 14-game bowl unbeaten streak, including an NCAA-record 11 consecutive bowl wins form 1986 to 1996. Bowden's 317 career victories (going into the third game of the season) ranks fourth all-time behind Paul “Bear” Bryant (323), Joe Paterno (322), and Glenn “Pop” Warner (319). “All I've wanted is to be a winner, and to help influence others to either find Christ, or live a better life,” Bowden said. “That's what I hope. “And I am a winner. Look at the record. But the reason I say I want to be a winner is not because winning is the most important thing. It's because if I'm 0-30 as a coach, no one listens to me. But if I'm 30-0, I go to talk to young people and they're on the edge of their seats. Winning is not the most important part, but it does attract people who don't know about the other.” There have been many other coaches who were strong Christians, “guys who are a lot better Christians than I am,” Bowden said. “They live the life better than I do. They were great coaches. But they got in programs and couldn't win, or didn't last. That's when you go back to that question, ‘Why me?' I just don't know.” Bowden rises each day “between 4:30 and 5” a.m. and starts the day with his own quiet time, reading a passage of scripture and maybe a portion of a book on Christianity. Sometimes, he does it with his wife Ann, whom he married when he was still in college, “but usually she doesn't get up that early,” Bowden said. His favorite passage to speak on is Psalm 42, “the first one my mother taught me,” he said. “It's always made sense to me. We all have a hunger for something in our lives,” but when he gives out Bibles - which he does regularly - he always tells people to start with the Gospel of John. “When I talk to people who are not Christians, who don't know what it's about, I say, ‘Start in John,” Bowden said. “The first verse begins with ‘In the beginning was the Word...' I used to have the whole first chapter memorized. Then I say to go back and read Matthew, Mark and Luke. “Then, only after you've read that, go back and start with Genesis. I always say, ‘Don't start with Genesis. You might die before you get through.' I want them to get the answer first, which is Jesus. And I think John explains it all the best.” There are critics, of course. Much has been made of the disciplinary problems Bowden has had on his FSU teams, and there are those who point to Bowden's `religion' and call it inconsistent with his leniency toward those players who break rules, whether it be team rules, school rules, NCAA rules or even the law. “I've not been as strict on discipline as I was at Howard College,” Bowden said. “I'd kick a guy off the team at the drop of a hat back then. But I'm not that way anymore. Our society is too complex. I have too many players who were not raised in a home, who never saw their daddy or were raised by their grandmother or a sister. I've got one player who raised himself. Everybody he knew died by the time he was 14. “So I think back on times when I was a kid and did things wrong and somebody forgave me. Unless they've done something really terrible, I try to give kids a second chance. Most people learn from mistakes. A kid makes a mistake, you don't want to throw him back on the street, because that's the problem we have today - too many kids on the street with no guidance. I want to try to save him. ... I'm a forgiving coach. I do forgive.” Bowden remembers vividly one of his own youthful pranks, when he and some buddies de-railed a trollery car on Halloween night in East Lake. The police came and chased them through the woods, and Bowden has never forgotten the sound of shots being fired - in the air, he supposes. “It scared us to death,” Bowden said. “I see kids doing things today, and I say, ‘We did things back then, too,' and we were caught and forgiven. I turned out OK, so if these guys can learn a lesson ... we still punish them. I don't kick them off the team, but I can take away their scholarship, take away the training table, make them run up and down these stadium steps at 6 a.m. There are other ways to punish them. But if I kick them off the team, I can't save them. Some of them have got no place to go.” Too many people find that self-serving. Bowden says he reads it in the Bible as something called ``Grace.” And Grace is something Bowden does understand. It's the only explanation he has for why God has blessed him the way He has, when Bowden knows he's done nothing to deserve it. “You ask me, what is the responsibility of man, and to me, it's to glorify God where ever He puts us,” Bowden said. “That's what I try to do.” How successful has Bowden been at mixing football and faith? His success in football is a matter of record. His success at living out his faith - he'll leave that in God's hands. --30--
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