Tommy Bowden says his dad would be 'very pleased' to see Dabo break the record |
If someone had to break his father’s record,
Tommy Bowden says he thinks his father would have picked
Dabo Swinney.
Swinney and No. 10 Clemson traveled to Tallahassee last weekend and defeated Florida State, 29-13, the fourth consecutive win for the Tigers this season and the fourth in a row in Doak Campbell Stadium. That win was the 174th victory of Swinney's coaching career, the entirety of which has been with the Tigers. With the win, Swinney passed former Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden's 173 wins as an ACC head coach. Although Bowden remains second all-time in wins amongst all college football coaches with his 346 victories, Florida State didn't officially join the ACC until 1992, which means his ACC record only includes his wins as an ACC member. The win was accomplished on the field that bears Bowden’s name, and Tommy, who hired Swinney as his wide receivers coach and was later replaced by him in 2008, thinks his father would have loved the irony. “Oh yeah. He would've thought it would've been orchestrated by God himself, passing it from one to the other,” Bowden told TigerNet. “The guy, the coach, with the most characteristics of my father would be him. So yeah, to see it go from that, he would have been very pleased. But he would have said, ‘Okay, I see what you're doing now. Great selection. Great selection, guys.’ If my father were picking a guy, that's who he'd pick.” Bowden says Swinney embodies many of the principles his father stood for. “From a Christian perspective, both those guys, they're not shy about their faith. Some people are, they're not shy about their Christian faith and it's a very big part of their life,” Bowden said of Bobby and Swinney. “And if you're Christian, you understand that. So for somebody like Dabo – and there's other good coaches in the conference and in the country, there's other Christian coaches in the conference, maybe none as vocal as Dabo - but if you were to have to pick a guy to transfer the title from, that would be the guy. “I'm sure my father would be the most pleased with somebody that had some of the same characteristics and values that he does. Like I said, it's not that other coaches don’t, but Dabo wears it the most on his sleeve. So, I think my father would be very pleased. And from a Christian perspective, I think that's God's just saying, ‘Hey, we're going to pass it from one like you to another one.’” Swinney said that after he replaced Tommy, the elder Bowden reached out to tell him that all of the Bowdens were pulling for Swinney to succeed. “That's pretty much who he was,” Tommy said of his dad. “The fact that I was here and he had met Dabo before and knew him, made it a little more personal, made it a little easier to reach out. I'm sure he would've reached out to other people. But the fact that there was that connection between myself and Dabo and Clemson playing Florida State in the conference, he would've done it to anybody. But I think the fact that he knew Dabo made it kind of special. And I'm sure he's probably done that with other coaches.” Swinney’s longevity at Clemson is a rarity in the current college football landscape, and Bowden says there’s a reason Swinney has stuck around. “People talk about him being a good guy, and he is a good guy, and he's a good family guy, and he's a great ambassador for the school. But he's a really great coach,” Bowden said. “I think anybody goes in the coaching profession; their ambition is to do what he's doing. My father's done it. Saban’s done it. Yeah, he is a good old guy, and he does this, and he does that. He's aw shucks and has got a sense of humor, but he's a really good coach. And that's what it says about him. Yeah, he's those things a lot of people like, but the joker can coach, and if anybody can get it done without the transfer portal, it'll be him. He's proven that so far.”
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