Terry Bowden Has a Tiger in His Tank

Less than 72 hours before Auburn held on for a 22-17 road victory over Mississippi in the 1994 opener, Terry Bowden is wired up and waiting in an Auburn studio. Via satellite, he is about to do a live shot with WBMG-TV in Birmingham about 110 miles to the northwest. When the newscast goes to a commercial, Bowden greets sports director Doug Bell, and the news comes through Bowden’s earpiece that Bell’s 10-month-old son, Brooks, already is 28 inches long.

Bowden, the 38-year-old Auburn coach, brightens. Remember where you should send your son to play football, he says. “Who’s going to be the football coach at Alabama in 16 years?” Bowden asks Bell. Bell’s answer can’t be heard in the studio, but after a pause, Bowden says: “I don’t know, either. Now, who’s going to be the football coach at Auburn in 16 years?” Another pause. “That’s right. I am.”

After the commercial, the interview lasts 10 minutes. A television news consultant would be horrified at that extravagance, but the passion for football in Alabama outstrips the need for a quick talk with a coach and then a cute segue into the Pet of the Week. The interview was a hastily arranged favor for the Birmingham station, so when he finishes, Bowden is late, and he is on the run. You aren’t around him long before you figure out Bowden can seem on the run when he’s sitting down. He’s like a VCR with the PLAY and FAST FORWARD buttons engaged and the sound audible.

Across the street from the studio, the Tigers’ 15 seniors are waiting in vehicles outside the football offices. Bowden races through his office, grabs his briefcase and keys, jumps into his four-wheel drive that is ‘Bama-red--”My car dealer is in Birmingham, and he has a sense of humor,” he says--and pulls around to the front of the building to lead the caravan to his house.

A few minutes later, the seniors are filing past and looking down at their 5-foot-6 coach, going through the double doors, into the new brick home designed by Bowden’s wife, Shyrl. For the next 15 minutes, they get a tour, noticing such things as a copy of Bobby Bowden’s book on the nightstand; the still-knotted Auburn blue and orange tie Terry wore throughout the 1993 season; coach-of-the-year awards from 1993; the fishing boat in the garage; and the combined big-screen TV, stereo and sound system that makes it seem as if we should have paid $7 at the door and $11.50 for popcorn and a Coke.

Out on the deck, overlooking a small man-made lake, the steaks are cooked and waiting. Bowden turns serious and talks to the seniors who have a bona fide shot at going undefeated in their final two seasons.

Just wanted to have you guys out here because you’re the seniors, you’ve been the leaders, you’re special. Not going to kid you, guys, you know we can have a better team than last season--regardless of whether that means an everything-broke-right undefeated season can be repeated or whether we’ll lose a game. Or two. But whatever happens, you’re going to work hard.

A year into his tenure, Terry Bowden can say with considerable credibility that he expects to be at Auburn when that broadcaster’s 10-month-old son is ready for college. He is winning people over in his efforts to revive the Tigers’ program and improve its soiled image. More important, he is winning. The Tigers again have their sights on a national championship despite being on NCAA probation. And they have a solid chance to enter their Oct. 15 game against Florida (ranked No. 3 in this week’s TSN poll) still undefeated.

Bowden has a new, five-year contract with a provision for an annual rollover. It represents security in a tenuous business for a man who, after studying at Oxford (England, not Mississippi) and getting a law degree while serving as a graduate assistant at Florida State, seemingly had other options. (“I thought he’d be smart enough to go into something else,” jokes his father, Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden.) He has received high marks for his offensive ingenuity, using the framework of Florida State’s system. If he leaves, he--or someone--would have to buy out five years of his contract, so it has watered down speculation that he is in line to succeed his 64-year-old father at Florida State.

Bowden has talked like an Auburn man of the past, present and future, and you get the feeling he has studied all those Auburn legends--such as the alleged Civil War-related genesis of that famous “War Eagle” rallying call. He has hit on the gimmick of coming up with season slogans that include the school’s initials, and thus Auburn is selling buttons by the thousands. (Last year, it was AttitUde; this season it is AU-dacity.)

After going 11-0 last season but sitting at home in the postseason because of the probation, the Tigers lost standout tackles Wayne Gandy and Anthony Redmon, quarterback Stan White and tailback James Bostic. Yet especially because Bostic’s replacement, junior Stephen Davis, who rushed for 158 yards on 33 carries against Ole Miss and probably will become one of the top runners in the country, the Tigers seem capable of at least threatening a repeat. They play their next four at home, beginning with Northeast Louisiana Saturday, and are likely to be 6-0 heading into the showdown with Florida in Gainesville. And because the Tigers remain ineligible for the Southeastern Conference championship game and a bowl berth and ranking in the CNN/USA Today coaches’ poll, the national championship could get sticky if Auburn is perfect again.

“Going 11-0 last year gives us a hunger to do it again,” says junior quarterback Patrick Nix, who has taken over for the departed White and in the opener was a lackluster seven for 20 for 83 yards, as the Tigers did most of their damage on the ground (183 yards). “We have the confidence to do it again, but we know how hard it’s going to be, how much work it’s going to take.”

The question of incentive keeps coming up. Last season, the undefeated record left the Tigers with nothing but rings that said: “Best in the Southeastern Conference.” This season, Bowden says there are carrots to dangle--as well as carats.

“We’re the winningest team in the country,” he says. “For another week, for another seven days, we’re the winningest team in the country. Twelve in a row. If we do have the audacity to go 11-0 again, (the players) really believe the AP would vote them No. 1 this time.” Auburn is ranked 12th in this week’s Sporting News poll and, as in the AP poll, is eligible to finish the season No. 1.

Wait. We’re talking national championship possibilities, aren’t we? It’s easy to forget, especially for outsiders, that when Bowden took over as coach in December 1992, the program was a mess. The Tigers were coming off consecutive five-victory seasons under longtime coach Pat Dye and were awaiting the verdict of the NCAA in the wake of former cornerback Eric Ramsey’s charges about being paid during his 1987-90 career. The choice of Bowden, then the coach at Division I-AA Samford in Birmingham after guiding the program up from Division III, seemed to contradict the university’s stated goal of hiring a proven major-program coach. The administration had said nothing about getting credit for lineage.

“Everything I’ve gotten in life is because of who my father is,” Bowden says without embarrassment but with qualification. “The principles I have, the beliefs I have, the extensive training I have, are because I’ve sat around the breakfast table all my life with a head football coach. I’ve had so many coaches say, ‘Gosh, I wish I could call and ask Paterno.’ Well, I’ve been able to talk to Bobby Bowden every day of my life. So don’t think I’m ever going to say I haven’t gotten what I’ve gotten because my father is Bobby Bowden. On the other hand, I got the job at Salem (W.Va.) College (Now Salem-Teikyo University), which nobody wanted, because they fired the coach before me. I won more than anybody at Salem College. I went to Samford because they fired the coach before me for not winning, and we won and moved up.”

He has the name, but he has paid his dues.

So here is Terry Bowden, still undefeated as a Division I-A head coach after the Tigers survived a scare at Oxford (Mississippi, not England) in the opener. Ole Miss, trailing by five, had a first-and-goal at the Auburn 9 in the final five minutes, but Scott Stacey sacked Rebels quarterback Josh Nelson at the 14 on third down, and then an Ole Miss field-goal attempt was blocked. Although a five-point victory might not be compelling for poll voters, the fact is that Auburn scraped and scrambled all last season--and never lost.

“The one thing I saw was that this team still wanted it so badly,” Bowden said after the game. “That’s the thing I saw that I needed to see.”

Because the part of the probation that prevents Auburn from being on television is over, part of the nation finally got to see a Terry Bowden-coached team on live television. Yet the Tigers know their final game will be Nov. 19 against Alabama, and that they still can’t go anywhere as a group after the regular season . . . other than the team awards banquet.

In Auburn, the drugstore on College Street still has the score of last season’s ‘Bama game--22-14--painted in the front window. Mention Eric Ramsey and you get reactions similar to how history books treat Benedict Arnold. ( On the streets of Auburn, guess which program’s boosters are assumed to have “encouraged” Ramsey to, shall we say, roll out his charges like a tide? Which, now that former Alabama player Gene Jelks is making similar charges against the Crimson Tide, people in Tuscaloosa are getting suspicious.)

In this setting, where Auburn last season averaged home crowds of 81,062 in 85,214-seat Jordan-Hare Stadium, where the athletic facilities reek of the financial pressures so common to high-profile programs, Bowden wants to do at least two things. Win. And be a part of a new regional game.

Let’s say you, and not Bowden, were given the Auburn job last year. You’re aware that good coaches have been run off, or driven off, for going 8-3 and not genuflecting to the tradition of Bear Bryant or Frank Broyles.

You’re coaching against, among others, Mississippi State’s Jackie Sherrill and Arkansas’ Danny Ford, who have run afoul of the NCAA at other schools but have been able to land other jobs because they won. Mississippi, Mississippi State and Alabama are under NCAA investigation for incidents in their past (Mississippi’s investigation led to the firing of Coach Billy Brewer over the summer.) Even the virtually deified Bear Bryant, whose coaching disciples are spread throughout the South, admitted his rules and the NCAA’s did not necessarily coincide. There are coaches in the National Football League, and on sabbatical, who established their coaching reputations by presiding over renegade college programs. Now, would you think you could run a clean program and flourish?

Bowden swears it’s possible. And more important, given the fact the football program is on its fifth probation, albeit the first since 1980, it’s more than possible. It’s imperative.