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By SCOTT CARTER, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 25, 2007

Updated: 09/25/2007 06:39 pm

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - This is the place where Robert Cleckler Bowden's passion for football, a game that ultimately introduced the down-to-earth hometown boy to the world, formed a heartbeat.

Inside the rusty chain-link fence, looking tired and worn down, the empty football field rests quietly. The Woodlawn High Colonels haven't played a game here in decades, but the tattered field with the old-fashioned goal posts planted at each end continues to serve as Woodlawn's occasional practice site.

More than 70 years ago, Bowden lived in a home only a Hail Mary pass away from the east end zone. In between the field and Bowden's home was an alley, a fence and an overgrown row of bushes. When the Colonels practiced, the sounds jumped directly into Bowden's small house.

To show his only son where all those noises were coming from, Bowden's father, a Birmingham banker named Bob Pierce Bowden, would take his boy onto the roof of their home to watch the Colonels practice. Around the same time his father introduced Bobby Bowden to the game that would eventually define his life, an hour away in Tuscaloosa, another historic journey was beginning. Bear Bryant, later to become the legendary coach of the University of Alabama, was starring on the field for the Crimson Tide. In time, one of Alabama's and Bryant's biggest fans would be that young boy on the roof.

'That's my home,' Bowden said. 'When I was coming up, the University of Alabama was always my team ... the team I cried over when they lost when I was real young; the team that I kept a scrapbook on back when I was 14 or 15 years of age. I still have it today.'

In four days at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, Bowden will face the Crimson Tide for the first time in his 42 seasons as a head coach, the last 32 at Florida State.

Bill Legg, director of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in downtown Birmingham, expects talk of Saturday's first meeting between the schools since 1974 to reach absurd levels this week in Bowden's home state.

'It's going to be one of the really special events of the year,' Legg said. 'Bobby Bowden is held in tremendously high esteem in Alabama.'

Triple Threat In High School

Bowden, 77, was born and raised in Birmingham. It's a place he returns to for a couple of weeks every summer to play golf and catch up with old friends he remains close to, despite last calling Alabama's largest city his primary home 45 years ago. That was 1962, Bowden's final season as head coach at Howard College (now Samford University).

'There's a group of us that are still close,' said Roy Vance, a former classmate of Bowden at Woodlawn and Howard. 'We are known as the Woodlawn Bunch.'

For the first five years of his life, Bowden lived in the home around the corner from Woodlawn, where he later starred at halfback after recovering from a yearlong bout with rheumatic fever when he was 13. Back then, Bowden and his buddies roamed the neighborhoods and area woods on weekends, usually slowing down only to listen to Crimson Tide games on the radio on autumn Saturdays.

On the football field, Bowden began to emerge as the star of his close-knit group of friends.

'He was a triple threat,' former Woodlawn and Howard center Bill Marsh said. 'He was a heck of a quarterback. He could run the ball. He could throw the ball. He could punt the ball.'

Marsh spent a season snapping to Bowden at Woodlawn and two more at Howard, where Bowden transferred after spending a year at Alabama. Although he dreamed of playing for the Crimson Tide while growing up, by the time he packed his bags and moved to Tuscaloosa, Bowden's heart belonged to a girl named Ann Estock. The two eloped shortly after Bowden returned to Birmingham and have been married ever since.

Back in his hometown, Bowden earned Little All-American honors as an undersized quarterback at Howard, where he graduated in 1953 and later started his coaching career.

'He knew exactly what he wanted to do when he went to college,' Marsh said. 'He was a pretty serious-minded person when he played. He would always talk to the coaches about theory.'

Overtaking His Idol

After a stop at South Georgia Junior College, Bowden returned to Howard in 1959 - one season after Bryant arrived at his alma mater to take over the Crimson Tide - to begin a four-year stint as Howard's head coach.

By that time, Bryant already had built winning teams at Maryland, Kentucky and Texas A&M. In 1961, only his fourth season as Alabama's coach, Bryant led the Crimson Tide to the first of six national titles under him.

Bowden admired and studied Bryant, making the 60-mile drive to Tuscaloosa regularly to watch Alabama practice in the spring. Bryant, 16 years older than Bowden, took a liking to his small-school colleague and often would send players who couldn't cut it for the Crimson Tide Bowden's way.

'I was kind of in awe of him,' Bowden said.

In the decades since, something happened that Bowden never imagined: He won more games than his idol, passing Bryant's 323 career wins and becoming the all-time winningest coach in Division I-A history. Yet he remains the same person his friends knew when he won his first game on Sept. 19, 1959, a 14-0 victory at Maryville (Tenn.) College.

'Bobby hasn't changed a bit,' said Hugh 'Deacon' Jones, a childhood friend and one of Bowden's summer golfing buddies. 'He doesn't duck anything. He is the most open coach I have ever known. The thing people don't know about Bobby is how smart he is. He has a mind like a steel bear trap.'

On a trip home to face Indiana in the 1986 All-American Bowl at Legion Field, Bowden's one-time dream of becoming head coach at Alabama nearly became a reality. He interviewed with Alabama officials but as he drove back to Tallahassee with Ann, Bowden decided to pull his name from consideration. Bowden went on to build FSU into a powerhouse that included an NCAA-record 14 consecutive seasons of top-five finishes starting in 1987.

'So many of us wish at one time or another that Bobby might have gotten the job down there after Coach Bryant left,' Legg said. 'For years, Alabama people envisioned, what if? What if Bobby had come in and got that job after Bear? There's been that feeling.'

Over the years, that feeling has faded, and Bowden has fully accepted that his place all along was in Tallahassee. He passed Bryant on the all-time victory list in 2002 and currently is two wins ahead of Penn State's Joe Paterno as college football's all-time wins leader.

Never Forgotten His Roots

Back in Birmingham, Bryant's large shadow is difficult to escape in the town where Bowden was born. Outside Legion Field, where the famous Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn used to be played, there is a memorial honoring Bryant's legacy.

At the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, whose inductees include such legendary athletes as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis and Carl Lewis, no one is more celebrated inside the museum than Bryant.

While Bowden may never be revered in his home state the way Bryant is, even nearly 25 years after his death, there are those in Bowden's hometown who would like to see more recognition bestowed on their old friend. Bowden was inducted into the Alabama Hall of Fame in 1986, and while his display is formidable, it pales in comparison to Bryant's.

'I don't think Bobby gets the recognition he deserves as a native son of Birmingham,' said Jones, who will be on FSU's sideline as Bowden's guest Saturday in Jacksonville. 'This city has never done anything to recognize him.'

That may be true, but don't expect Bowden to lose any sleep over the perceived snub in some people's eyes.

'He's a local boy who has never forgotten his roots,' said Legg, the museum's executive director and another Woodlawn boy. 'We have a head table at our induction banquet that has about 70 people on it usually. About 40 of those are former inductees that come back every year. There's no doubt that Bobby is the headliner when he comes. Folks flock to him around here.

'Bobby is so good for college football. He's special.'

Reporter Scott Carter can be reached at (850) 294-3088 or

scarter@tampatrib.com.

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