Clemson coach Dabo Swinney passed Florida State legend Bobby Bowden for most wins at the helm of an ACC program on Saturday as the Tigers beat Florida State 29-13 on FSU’s Bobby Bowden field at Doak Campbell Stadium. The win improved Swinney to 174-44 in his 16th season leading the Tigers.
Bowden amassed a 377-129-4 career record with 304 of those victories coming during a 34-year run at Florida State. However, the Seminoles were independent for the first 16 years of his tenure before joining the ACC in 1992. Thus, Bowden amassed just 173 of his victories when the Seminoles were league members.
Though Swinney did not work or play for Bowden, he was an admirer of the two-time national champion, who died in 2021 at the age of 91. Like Swinney, Bowden was a man of deeply held religious conviction. Both men were born in Birmingham, Alabama, and enrolled as football players at Alabama, although Bowden transferred after one semester.
Swinney then worked for Bowden’s son, Tommy, as Clemson’s wide receivers coach from 2003 to 2008.
“I already had a high respect for him and high thoughts of him,” Swinney said in 2021 before Clemson honored Bowden while hosting the Seminoles. “But when I met him, he even far exceeded them (because of) who he was. He was a very kind man. He loved his players. He loved Florida State and I think he’s a coach who truly knew his calling and his purpose. I also had a lot of respect because he was a strong man of faith, and he was such a great example to all coaches out there.”
Bowden and Swinney went 1-1 against each other during their brief overlap as ACC head coaches. Their first meeting came in 2008 when FSU beat Clemson 41-27 during Swinney’s third game as the Tigers’ interim coach after Tommy Bowden resigned.
“I have a picture in my office of when I had one win — one,” Swinney said after tying Bowden’s ACC mark in a win over Stanford last week. “It’s a picture of me and Bobby Bowden. We lost the first game to Georgia Tech as an interim and then we won at Boston College and then we’ve got to go down to Tallahassee to play the ‘Noles and Bobby Bowden. He was one of the first people to call me that night as an interim. He became a mentor of mine, a friend of mine. He impacted me greatly both through Tommy and himself.
I can’t express enough how much love I have for him and the entire Bowden family … I’ve still got voicemails on my phone from him; he would call me and encourage me long after he was out of coaching.”
Another of Bowden’s sons, Terry, later worked at Clemson as a graduate assistant under Swinney.
