Tommy Bowden anxious to see "amazing" changes in first Clemson visit since 2008

Bowden will be at Clemson for the first time since 2008 on Saturday.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Thu Oct 28 08:00:06 GMT-04:00 2021

Tommy Bowden hasn’t been back to Clemson since the day he left, way back in 2008. He’s never seen the new facilities or walked through the stadium after several upgrades, and he hasn’t driven around the campus. But when he walks into Death Valley Saturday afternoon, his mind will be on his dad, former FSU head coach Bobby Bowden.

Clemson will honor the late Bobby Bowden during Saturday’s game against Florida State. Bobby, who was FSU’s head coach from 1976-2009, passed away in August at the age of 91 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in July. Head coach Dabo Swinney also said that Clemson will recognize Tommy Bowden, Clemson’s head coach from 1999-2008.

Swinney began his coaching career with the Tigers when Tommy hired him to become the wide receivers coach back in 2003. Swinney was named assistant head coach in 2007, took over as interim head coach in 2008, and was given the permanent head coaching job after the 2008 season.

Swinney is excited about honoring two men he admires.

“We are going to honor coach Bobby Bowden,” Swinney said. “I am excited about that. Tommy Bowden and Linda (Tommy’s wife) are coming in town...So, I am excited to be able to recognize him as well and show appreciation for him and what he did at Clemson.

“I certainly wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him (Tommy). If I wasn’t here, C.J. Spiller wouldn’t be here, and if C.J. Spiller wasn’t here, there are a lot of things that probably wouldn’t have happened around here. I think it is a great opportunity and a great time to not only recognize the contributions of Bobby Bowden to this conference, to this game of football and to the Clemson-Florida State game but also a good time to have coach Tommy Bowden be a part of it.”

Bowden told TigerNet this week that he isn’t quite sure how he will feel when he steps back on campus – he is expected to tour the facilities Friday and then attend the game Saturday.

“When I got through at Clemson, the ACC started a show and I was on it. And we shot live in Charlotte every Saturday at noon,” Bowden said. “So I missed ... For the next eight or nine years, I was working on Saturday during the fall. And then, I got through with TV, my father's health started to decline. This has been the first time back since I left Clemson. As I've looked at what's happening, Clemson really hadn't lost this many games since I was there last. They've lost three. My last year I went 9-3. So, I don't know if I'm going to be open to coming back or not (laughing).

“I've already convinced myself - I think it's accurate that I'm not going to recognize the place. And then they say it has really changed and, yeah, I knew it was growing. My wife has been back, and my wife has been over and seen Dabo's house and seen the facilities. My son, my daughter ... but for me, I think the biggest thing is going to be the newness of it all, and of course, the way the athletic facilities have grown. I can remember about nine years, not so much fighting, but trying to get a facilities building and then finally kind of got one started. I think we were about six months away. I think Dabo went into it after six months, but that part would have been new. But it's grown so much since then it will be amazing to see how much it's grown.”

Swinney said this week that one of the first telephone calls he received when he was named Clemson’s interim head coach was from Bobby Bowden. In addition, Terry Bowden, now the head coach at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, joined Swinney's staff as a graduate assistant in 2019.

Swinney and Clemson Athletic Director Dan Radakovich attended Bobby Bowden’s funeral last Aug. 14 at the Tucker Civic Center. They also mentioned to Tommy their desire to honor Bowden, who coached 33 seasons at FSU and built the program into a perennial power with two national titles.

“I think it was just a great honor for the schools to recognize him. And then Dabo and Dan Radakovich, the AD, came down for my father's funeral. He was in there talking to my mother and myself, and Dabo was standing in front of the athletic director and said, ‘Hey, it's about time, we'd like to recognize your father. When we play them, how about you coming on up?’ He might have put his AD on the spot right now, but I can remember it being initiated by Dabo at that particular time.

“And then, I just dropped it, figuring that if he was going to follow through he would follow through and I’d find out when it was time. And then he texted me last week, said, ‘Hey, we would kind of like to start to finalize these plans on getting you and Linda up here when we honor your father.’ So I said, ‘That'd be great, we'd surely appreciate it, enjoy it.’ I think it was all initiated by Dabo himself. And fortunately, the AD is probably in favor of it, and it's nice that they would do this.”

Despite the time away from Clemson and away from Death Valley, Bowden has an idea of what will be on his mind when he steps onto the field.

“I'm probably going to have memories of the very first time we played my dad, that first Bowden Bowl where we had them 14-3 at halftime,” he said. “They ran the table, went undefeated, won the National Championship. Florida State ended up winning 17-14, but I just remember all the attention going into that game two weeks before with the media interviews I had to do. So I'll probably have memories of that time, being there on the field of that first time playing my father back in 1999.”