JONESBORO -- Jeff Purinton is still furnishing his office.
Arriving at Arkansas State as athletic director in July, the 47-year-old is still sorting through where to place all his memorabilia from stints at Florida State, Alabama and the Orange Bowl.
Among the things he has actually placed, Purinton motions to a frame he says went up in recent days. It's perhaps his most prized possession: A handwritten note from former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden fashioned above a photo of the two on a golf course in Florida, Purinton's right arm wrapping around Bowden's shoulders.
The sentence directly above the image means as much as the photo itself.
"Thanks for all you've done for me," it reads in part, "and God bless you and your family."
Purinton, who worked under Bowden as a sports information director at Florida State, laughs when he sees that line. He still thanks Bowden for propelling his nearly 30-year career in college athletics.
When Bowden died in August 2021, gratitude poured in for the College Football Hall of Famer. His further impact was evident from the hundreds of former players and assistants that attended his funeral.
The branches of the Bowden coaching tree will stretch to Jonesboro this weekend when his son, Terry -- now in his second season as head coach at Louisiana-Monroe -- plays against Purinton's Red Wolves.
Ahead of Saturday's games, some of those closest to Bobby Bowden reflected on the lessons they took from the two-time national champion -- as a father, as a coach and as a leader.
• • •
Bowden had six children with wife, Ann -- Terry, Tommy, Jeff, Ginger, Steve and Robyn. His three oldest boys all followed him into coaching, even if wasn't something he encouraged.
Tommy Bowden, former Clemson head coach (1999-2008) and the second-oldest of Bobby's five children: "My father being a head coach, particularly [when I was] at a young age, just wasn't around very much. He didn't have quantity time, but he had quality time [when] he was with his family."
Terry Bowden: "I've wanted to be a football coach since I was about 12 years old. My dad was a college football head coach since I was born, so every day I played or listened or watched."
Tommy: "We're a close family, as witnessed by going on family vacation for 57 years with 100% attendance."
Purinton: "He was almost like the dad/grandfather rolled into one."
Terry: "If you look back at my career, everything I've gotten was pretty much from my father."
Tommy: "I've been married 45 years, so to see how he took his losses home, how he reacted to his family after a win, there were more important lessons than Xs and Os."
Brad Scott, an assistant under Bobby Bowden at Florida State (1983-93) and former South Carolina head coach (1994-98): "He didn't have to go in and just sell the university. What he said [to recruits' parents] was, 'I'm going to take care of your son like he was my own.' "
• • •
In 1999, Tommy and Bobby made history as the first father and son to coach against one another in Football Bowl Subdivision (then-Division I-A) history. Bobby's Florida State teams won the first four before Tommy's Clemson teams won four of the last five "Bowden Bowls."
Tommy: "I had a 14-3 [lead at the half in 1999] ... and I can remember thinking [at] halftime, 'I know exactly what he's saying,' because I was in there as a player and I was in there as a young coach."
Purinton: "Those games, you could tell, were a little bit harder on him, playing Tommy."
Tommy: "I can remember when I lost that first game to him. We met out there on the field. There's a bunch of media. It wasn't a long conversation, but he put his arm around the back of my neck and pulled me close and he said, 'You better go recruit.'
• • •
With more than 50-plus years as a coach, with stints as a head coach at Samford, West Virginia and Florida State, Bowden helped spawn the coaching careers of hundreds of assistants -- among them Jimbo Fisher, Mark Richt and Kirby Smart.
Scott: "Tampa, Florida had an all-star game called the Lions American Bowl and Coach Bowden was the coach of the North squad [in 1976]. ... I just took a liking to him. He was a down-home personality, he was funny, so during that week sometime, I just shared with him how one day I'd like to get into college coaching and he said, 'Well, stay in touch with me.' "
Terry, who spent the 1982 season as a graduate assistant under his dad at Florida State: "He was a really good play-caller back in the 80s, so I self-scouted for him back before computers were around and I learned how to call his plays."
Scott: "He mentored his staff. He was extremely competitive and winning was something that was very important to us all, but it wasn't the thing that determined success."
Tommy, who worked for his dad at Florida State in 1978 and 1979: "Not very many young [coaches] get to be around a Hall of Fame coach at a young age."
Terry: "For my first 15 years as a coach, I copied everything."
Scott: "[He showed] that you can win with character, with integrity, with making sure that you treat others fairly and that you can look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and knowing you're doing things the right way."
• • •
For all the on-field accomplishments -- notably, 12 ACC titles and a nearly 74% winning percentage -- those who best knew Bowden laud his leadership abilities to this day.
Purinton: "A lot of it, with Coach Bowden, he'd tell stories and you'd learn from those stories. It wasn't a 'Hey Jeff, you need to do this with your life.' "
Terry: "He taught me how to be a leader, how to put football in perspective, how to try to change young men's lives on the inside more so than on the outside."
Tommy: "I remember the two words he left me when he took me to the airport for my first full-time job at East Carolina. He said, 'You've got to have patience. You've got to have perseverance.' "
Scott: "People often ask me, 'Was Bobby Bowden everything that we thought he was? I say, 'No, he was 10 times that." He was as special as any man, not to mention coach."
Tommy: "I felt pretty comfortable that to his players, he was more than a football coach. Nothing confirmed it more than the funeral."
Terry: "The longer we're in this [business], the more we're grateful that we have a bunch of guys that kneel in front of us every day with an opportunity to influence them."
Purinton: "The main thing he taught me, above anything else, was just how to treat people. That's it. That sounds really simple, but there's an art to it."
Scott: "Every day that I coached, I thought, 'I wonder how Coach Bowden would handle this situation.' "
Purinton: "The number of people he impacted -- I'm talking about former players and beyond, people in that community -- just seeing the magnitude of that was the thing I took away [from his funeral]. He was a special man."
Up next
ARKANSAS STATE vs. LOUISIANA-MONROE
WHEN 6 p.m. Saturday
WHERE Centennial Bank Stadium, Jonesboro
RECORDS Arkansas State 1-3, 0-1 Sun Belt; Louisiana-Monroe 2-2, 1-0
LINE Arkansas State by 71/2
TV None
INTERNET ESPN-Plus
RADIO Red Wolves Sports Network
Terry Bowden — the son of former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden — is in his second season at the helm at Louisiana-Monroe, which is 2-2 this season and 1-0 in Sun Belt Conference play heading into Saturday’s game against Arkansas State. (AP/Vasha Hunt)
Former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden will have an influence on Saturday’s game Louisiana-Monroe and Arkansas State when Bowden’s son, Terry, leads his Warhawks against the Red Wolves at Centennial Bank Stadium in Jonesboro. (AP file photo)
Jeff Purinton