Thanks, Tommy
What a startling day yesterday was! Many fans suspected that if Tommy Bowden didn’t at least win the Atlantic Division and get to the ACC championship game, he would be fired at the end of the season. I don’t think anyone reasonably expected (maybe some hoped) that he would be gone after 6 games. But Clemson football with Tommy has always been a roller coaster, with exciting, thrilling, and sometimes depressing, changes. The changes all Clemson fans should appreciate most were not the thrilling ones, but the program ones. Bowden built a solid foundation for the program’s future.
He began harping about facility improvement from day one, years before Terry Don arrived to actually begin the building. Cynical fans used the “must be the facilities” mantra after every loss. Bowden was eventually proved right. As the facilites improved—and it was disconcerting to learn how much more Wake Forest was spending on upgrades than Clemson was—so did the recruiting. The past three recruiting classes have been some of our best in years.
Bowden led a tremendous improvement in players’ academic accomplishments. GPAs and graduation rates are among the best in college football.
Bowden always represented Clemson with class. He was classy to the end, appearing at the press conference to announce his leaving—something you almost never see in major college football. He ended his brief statement with, “I’ll be Clemson’s biggest fan on Saturday.”
There were relatively few off-the-field problems under Bowden. That is amazing in this day and time.
So there are a lot of areas where Tommy was the epitome of a great coach. But football is football and the object is to win, especially to bring home the championship occasionally. And that proved to be Bowden’s undoing. His teams lost too often when favored, lost too many of the important games, lost too many opportunities to win a championship. He leaves my beloved Tigers in good shape, much better shape than he found them 10 years ago. He leaves the program headed in the right direction. And for that, I say
Thanks, Tommy. Best of luck.
PS Here’s a link to a similar article written much better than mine: Post by TigerTide on TigerNet