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How did former Auburn coach Terry Bowden land a job on Clemson’s staff? Dabo Swinney explains
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Considering his history as a head coach in college football, it was quite surprising to see Terry Bowden take on an unpaid graduate assistant job at Clemson this offseason.
This time last year, Bowden was the head coach at Akron but now he ranks near the very bottom of Dabo Swinney’s Clemson staff. How did that come about? According to Swinney, the longtime head coach was simply willing to do whatever was necessary to get on the Clemson staff in order to work with an elite program once again.
Clemson’s head coach recently explained Bowden eagerly jumped at the chance to fill the only position on his Tiger staff.
“I said, ‘Well, we don’t have volunteers and I don’t have any jobs open. The only option you’ve got is you could be a grad intern, but you’ve gotta be a full-time grad student,’” Swinney recently said according to Matt Connolly of The State. “He’s got to pay for everything. He doesn’t get anything.”
While some may have taken that as a cue to give up and look elsewhere for an opportunity, Bowden went the other direction and enrolled in school at Clemson.
“The next thing I know, he’s like, ‘Hey, I enrolled in grad school.’ So he’s working on his master’s,” Swinney said. “He’ll just be a grad intern. Happy to have him. Super nice guy.”
Bowden was the head coach at Auburn from 1993 until 1998, when he resigned during the middle of the 1998 season. He led the Tigers to a 47-17 record during that time, which included a perfect 11-0 debut season. Bowden later went on to coach at Akron for seven seasons.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
