Lofty expectations are the blanket that covers the college sports world of today. In college football, the expectations are even greater due to the revenue that the sport generates and the boosters that want their team to be at the top of the rankings. These expectations have led coaches to cheat and bend the rules in the fear that their job was at stake each week of the season and on signing day in the spring. The expectations have only grown in recent years as historically dormant programs have risen to the top of the college football world.

During the course of the last nine years, Tommy Bowden has faced the lofty expectations and the pressure to win at Clemson University. Though each season inevitably brings the stories of his name being on the hot list of coaches who could be fired, he has continued to lead his team and run the program clean, knowing that there is more to life than just winning and losing football games. He has faith in God and that faith has comforted him even when others seemed to doubt his every move. I recently spoke with Tommy about his faith in God and leading the Clemson Tigers.

His Life

Tommy was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He was the son of an up and coming coach who would one day be revered as one of the greatest of all-time, Bobby Bowden. Tommy loved his father and watched closely his every move as a coach, hoping one day to be a coach himself.

Q â€" Will you tell me your testimony?

“I accepted Christ when I was twelve and I was baptized. I had always been brought up with an understanding of God, His Son, the virgin birth, and the resurrection. I’ve always had knowledge of those things. I was baptized when I was twelve, but you know, it’s like people say, “It’s more of a journey than a destination.� You learn; you become a little wiser. I know a lot more now than I did when I was twelve.�

Q â€" What effect has your father’s faith had on you and why?

“I think anytime you get involved in Christianity, it’s good that your role models, if they are going to talk the talk, they walk the walk. Just look at my father and mother; they’ve been married fifty some years. As a young child growing up, I saw examples of two people who profess Christianity; I saw it in their marriage. I saw how they communicated with each other and I saw how they were with the family. If the doors were open at church, we were there. It was a dictatorship, not a democracy. We were going and it didn’t make a difference how old you were. That’s how I was brought up. As I have gotten married and raised my children, I’ve tried to carry on the Christian qualities of my father and my mother; I have tried to do things the same way my father and mother raised me and my brothers and sisters to do. I was fortunate to have a good example in my father and my mother in marriage and how to treat people, not to mention the coaching perspective.�

Tommy spoke with the same joy for life that his father speaks with when you get a chance to speak with him. The Bowden family embraces joy and knows that thankfulness isn’t just a moment that you experience; it is a life that you lead. Their laughter is infectious and Tommy has that same wit that is associated with his father.

His Career

Tommy has achieved success in each stop along the way in his coaching career, serving as an assistant coach for nineteen seasons before stepping up to be a head coach. His first head coaching job was at Tulane, where he resuscitated a program that had flat lined, and then he took the job at Clemson, hoping to bring them to the top of the ACC.

Q â€" How hard is it to be the son of a coaching icon?

“I think when I first got into coaching as an assistant, there was not a lot of pressure. My first year at Tulane as a head coach, there was pressure. It was more self-imposed by myself to be successful than outside pressure saying, “That’s Bobby Bowden’s son. Let’s see what he can do.� I’m sure there was some of that. That didn’t really bother me that much because I had pretty much been taught by him how to deal with the media. There was some (pressure) but I was fortunate. My first year, I won seven games which was the most they had won in fifteen years and the next year, we went 12-0 which had never been done in the history of the school. So I was fortunate that I could quickly reach a pretty high level of success which took a lot of that pressure off. Now, the longer I have been here (at Clemson), the more the pressure has mounted but that is because I haven’t won a conference championship, not because my father is Bobby Bowden. It’s more so the expectations here. I was an assistant for nineteen years and there wasn’t a lot of pressure at that time. Most of the pressure came when I became a head coach.�

The ACC is a conference that is one of the most competitive in college football with each week bringing an opponent ready to knock off the powerhouse schools and assert themselves as one of the elite. This leads to an added amount of pressure at schools like Clemson, Florida State, and Miami, because of their previous success on the football field.

Q â€" What is the toughest part of coaching at a tradition-rich school like Clemson?

“I think it’s probably being realistic with the expectations. They won their last national championship in 1981 and college football has changed a lot since then. Florida State has joined the conference, they weren’t in it back then. Boston College, Virginia Teach, and Miami have also joined. The conference has completely changed. Wake Forest has gotten awful tough; they really weren’t back then. The biggest thing in coaching is just making them realistic with their expectations. There’s been a change in scholarships and teams you didn’t hear about a long time ago, Louisville, Utah, Boise State, and Rutgers were never a factor; now they are. We don’t want to lower the expectations but we do need to be realistic.�

Q â€" How good is Clemson going to be in 2007?

“If we stay healthy, win a close game, and get a break or two, we could be in the hunt to get into the championship game, just like everybody else. The last two years, we’ve lost a game by one point or we would’ve been in it. Two years ago, we lost to Georgia Tech by one point and last season, we lost two games by one point, one to Boston College and the other to Maryland. If we can stay healthy, we’ve got as good a chance as any to be in the championship game.�

Q â€" Do you prefer the BCS or a playoff?

“I think the BCS plus one (game) right now and I think that would be the process that would best benefit the bowls. The bowls have been around football for years and I wouldn’t want to do anything that would be too harmful for them. Division I-AA never had bowls. Players love to go to bowls. I know there are a lot of them and a lot of times the media complains but the whole idea is to reward players and the more, the merrier because more players are rewarded. So I think the BCS, the way it is now, plus one game a week later for all the marbles.�

Q â€" How did you know that God was calling you into coaching?

“I wrote in an autobiography when I was in the sixth grade that I wanted to go into coaching, so I really think God was putting ideas and thoughts into my mind at that time of what He wanted me to do. I’ve never really deviated from that; I’ve always felt comfortable and never had any doubt or indecision that this is what I was supposed to be doing. So at twelve, writing it down at that time, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I didn’t have one of those things where I graduated from college, didn’t know what I wanted to do, and prayed one night and God told me to go into coaching; I didn’t have one of those experiences. My father has always been a coach. A lot of kids go into banking because their dad was in banking or a kid goes into pharmaceutical sales because their dad is. I think part of it was because my dad was in coaching, but I do think that I was led into coaching.�

Q â€" What is your favorite part of game day?

“(Laughing) After we win! I hate it after we lose, I hate pre-game, and I don’t even like the game that much,� he said laughing. “It’s too much pressure!�

His Advice

The ability to stand tall when most other people would crumble has earned Tommy Bowden a great deal of respect from others. The conviction to be true to God in all that he does has also opened the ears of onlookers to hear the message that he is trying to send.

Q â€" What is the biggest problem facing Christian men today?

“Separating godly standards and secular standards and in doing so, trying not to compromise and not watering down God’s Word when you secularize it. Football’s a game of emotions, a game of energy, a game of enthusiasm that is very intense. It’s not for everybody. A lot of people think that because you profess Christianity and coach in a very intense environment, then you better curse a guy. We try not to curse a guy. We try to coach in a way that has integrity to it.�

Q â€" When was a time when you felt like God was distant?

“A couple of years ago, I’d lost to Wake Forest and had Florida State coming up and they were ranked 3rd in the nation. Had I lost that Florida State game, I was probably going to be let go and that was probably when I felt most distant. I felt a bit like Job. I was like, “Man, what’s going on?�

Tommy would get the victory less than a week later, upsetting the Seminoles and he said that he felt close to God in that moment. He shared with me that he has a quiet time each morning and he feels a connection to God in those times, a time of closeness to the true leader of his life. He also shared with me that his favorite Bible passages are 2 Chronicles 7:14 and Proverbs 3:5-6.

Tommy Bowden lives his life in a manner that makes others stop and take note. So often, we give in to the expectations of others and begin to live according to their expectations for our lives, but Tommy knows that it is the Lord’s expectations that he wishes to fulfill in his life because the payoff of seeing Christ in heaven is greater than any contract or championship here on earth. We can all learn to look to God for acceptance and to His Word for the expectations of our lives because that is where we will find fulfillment and happiness just as Tommy Bowden has found.

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