Bowden INC.

Politics has the Kennedys, tightrope walking the Flying Wallendas.

The movies gave us the Barrymores, television the Waltons.

In college football, there is also no mistaking the First Family:

The Bowdens.

A writer once wrote: “You can’t swing a golf club in the South without hitting a football coach named Bowden.”

In Tempe this week, Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden awaits a Monday night Fiesta Bowl showdown against Tennessee for the national championship.

The 69-year-old coaching legend needed a 3,000-square-foot hotel suite to host a family reunion.

Bowdens have swarmed the desert: Bobby Bowdens, baby Bowdens, baby boomer Bowdens, Bowden brothers.

Three of Bobby’s four sons are coaches. Jeff, his youngest, is in charge of Florida State receivers. Terry, 42, led Auburn to an 11-0 record in his first season in 1993 before quitting in November amid controversy. Terry is here with his wife, six children and coaching resume.

Steve, 47, the lone Bowden son not in coaching, will handle the bean counting. He’s a financial planner.

Tommy, 44, is the one Bowden son not in Tempe, but he has a written excuse from his supervisor. After leading Tulane to an 11-0 record, Clemson hired Tommy and ordered him immediately to work in South Carolina.

“Tommy did not make it here for this bowl,” father Bobby said Thursday. “He has work to do. Terry did not have work to do.”

Bobby never wanted his boys to go into the family business. He knew of the job’s cutthroat cruelties. In 1974, while coaching a 4-7 team at West Virginia, fans hanged Bobby in effigy on campus.

Tommy remembers someone sticking a “For Sale” sign on the family’s lawn at a time when the Bowdens were not really fixin’ to move.

Jeff, who turned 39 Wednesday, recalls seeing his dad only in snippets as a kid, usually in a context involving pigskin.

“I’ve probably had 20 of my 39 birthdays at bowl games,” Jeff said.

The battling Bowdens have seen the good, the bad and the ugly.

“We’ve seen it, we’ve read in the papers, we’ve seen dummies hanging from trees,” Jeff said. “When we were little, we’d hear the fans, who didn’t know we were the coach’s sons. It’s all part of it.”

Mamma, don’t let your babies grow up to be coaches, Bobby warned. Let them be doctors and lawyers and such.

Terry, in fact, received his law degree before becoming, at age 26, the head coach at Salem (W.Va.) College in 1983.

“I did not encourage my sons to go into coaching,” Bobby said this week. “I discouraged them. I didn’t want them in there competing against me. Tommy chose coaching early in life. Terry, I didn’t know till the last minute that he would go into coaching. . . . There are things that happen that make you leery of your children going into your profession. But it happens in all professions.”

The good news is that Ann and Bobby Bowden also had two daughters, neither of whom would become coaches (although both would marry former football players). Jeff Bowden said the coaching scent was just too intoxicating. Sure, there was a down side. But, it was also true that daddy was just about the most successful coach who ever lived, currently only eight wins shy of 300.

“That’s all we knew,” Jeff said. “It’s our whole lives. It’s such an easy decision when you’re in the family, when you see what he’s gone through, how he’s built programs. Had he not won all his life, who knows, maybe we wouldn’t have gone into coaching.”

This, no doubt, has been the wildest ride in the history of the Bowden roller coaster. The soap opera would be titled “As the Worm Turns.” While Tommy Bowden was leading Tulane to incredible heights this season, brother Terry’s head was on the Auburn chopping block. Convinced he was going to be fired at the end of the season in a political coup led by an influential trustee, Terry abruptly quit his post in midseason.

How the anti-Crimson tide had turned. In 1993, Terry rode into Auburn on a white steed to rescue Tommy, an assistant about to be fired during the Pat Dye purge. Terry demoted Tommy as offensive coordinator but kept him on staff.

Meanwhile, in Tallahassee this season, papa Bowden was in a fix of his own making. Thought by pundits to be a serious national title contender, Florida State suffered a seemingly crushing September defeat to North Carolina State.

For all his cup-runneth-over success, Bowden still has never coached an unbeaten team.

His chances for a second national title appeared remote until an amazing turn of events Dec. 5. Bowden needed two of three unbeaten schools ranked ahead of him in the bowl championship series rankings to lose that day to get a back-door entrance pass into the Fiesta Bowl.

As he sat on his couch in Tallahassee, Bobby Bowden’s wildest wish came true. Kansas State and UCLA suffered heartbreaking defeats to vault Florida State into Monday’s national title game.

It was a season fraught with emotional twists and turns. Not long after the ink had dried on a contract that would pit Florida State against Auburn next season in the first matchup of head coaching fathers and sons, Terry’s career unraveled at Auburn.

Bobby wanted to back out of the game, but a contract was a contract. Now, the game has prominent payback overtones, with Florida State looking to exact revenge from the school that ran Terry out of town.

With Tommy now at Clemson, father will still end up playing son when the Atlantic Coast Conference foes meet in October.

“We’re going to play to kick his butt and he’s going to play to kick ours,” Jeff said.

The leanings of Mrs. Bowden?

“Mother cheers for the son that has the most to lose,” Jeff said.

Given the family’s competitive nature, Bobby and Jeff are not about to share Florida State secrets with Tommy, now a conference enemy.

“With Tommy now at Clemson, we can’t talk specifics with him,” Jeff said.

The families, in fact, might not reconvene until the annual Bowden summer vacation in Panama City, Fla.

The Bowdens are all business until Panama City.

“All our trash talk is on the golf course,” Jeff said. “Terry is ‘Terry toe-wedge.’ You have to watch Terry when he goes into the woods. He might start with a Dunlop and come out with a Titleist. And Tommy? Tommy will cheat you in a heartbeat.”

It is not a stretch to think that before Bobby Bowden retires, all three of his sons will be Division I coaches.

Jeff is charting his own career path to the top, although Terry’s troubles at Auburn have given him pause.

“When you see what happened to Terry at Auburn, you really appreciate what you’ve got going right here,” Jeff said. “You don’t know where you’re going to get stabbed from. You can get stabbed from a lot of different offices.”

Didn’t Bobby Bowden warn his sons there would be dark days like these?

Bobby did.

“Football is not life or death to us,” Bobby Bowden said. “Football is a method of making a living to support our families. You have to win. But if you were selling insurance, you’d have to sell that. You’d still have to win.”

Bobby Bowden hopes he has, at least, taught his sons to be resilient.

“I’ve always thought that when something bad happens to me, something good is fixin’ to follow,” Bobby said.

FIESTA BOWL: No. 1 TENNESSEE (11-0) vs. No. 2 FLORIDA ST. (10-1); Monday 5 p.m. Channel 7