Meet Wertheim College student Bobby Bowden

Named after the legendary FSU football coach, Bobby Bowden is enjoying his time as a business-analytics graduate student in the Herbert Wertheim College of Business. He’s embarking on his second term after earning undergraduate degrees in management information systems and risk management/insurance from the Wertheim College.
Photo by Robin Doyle

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Bobby Bowden rather enjoys the pauses. You bet he does, buddy.

They usually happen on the first day of classes, when a professor works through the course roster and lands on a name that sounds less like a student and more like a statue.

“Bobby Bowden?”

“Here,” Bobby Bowden replies.

Then come the jolted expressions, the double-takes and the images of a football coaching legend.

“It’s always kind of fun on that first day,” he says.

Robert Garland “Bobby” Bowden is especially enjoying his time as a business-analytics graduate student in the Herbert Wertheim College of Business at Florida State University. He’s embarking this week on his second term after earning undergraduate degrees in management information systems and risk management/insurance from the Wertheim College.

And the answer to your question is yes: Bobby Bowden the FSU student was named after Bobby Bowden the FSU icon -- the coach who built a college football powerhouse in the 1980s and became one of the nation’s greatest coaches and most memorable figures in college football history. The late Bobby Bowden remains beloved not only for his extraordinary success but for his exceptional warmth, humility, kindness and accessibility. To him, everyone was “buddy.”

“My dad loved him,” student Bobby Bowden says.

His dad, Todd Bowden, attended FSU in the late 80s and early 90s, when FSU became a fixture among college football’s elite and won its first national championship in 1993. Todd Bowden, who earned an MBA from FSU in 2012, attended virtually every game and became such a fan of Bowden and the Seminoles that when he proposed to his future wife, Janene, he stipulated that they must name their first son “Bobby.”

“My dad just told me that story for the first time the other day,” Bobby says with a smile.

The answer to your other question is no: Bobby Bowden the FSU student isn’t related to Bobby Bowden the FSU coach.

Bobby Bowden, the future FSU student, met Bobby Bowden, the legendary FSU coach, during an event around 2013. "I remember him being very surprised that anyone would ever name their child after him," says the namesake, about 8 years old at the time.
 

Student Bowden’s only encounter with Coach Bowden came during a speaking event in the Tampa Bay Area around 2013, about four years after Bowden’s final season at FSU. Bobby, who was about 8 at the time, attended the event with his dad.  

As Bowden the student recalls, Bowden the coach was rushing out the door to catch a plane immediately after the event when he got word that a boy named Bobby Bowden was there and eager to meet him. The coach came over, shook every buddy’s hand and posed for a photo with his young namesake.

Says Bobby Bowden the student: “He seemed happy to meet us. I remember him being very surprised that anyone would ever name their child after him.”

Namesake Bowden grew up in Sarasota, where he played football as an offensive lineman at Riverview High School. He says he chose an academic career at FSU over opportunities to play football at a couple of small, private colleges in the Northeast and Midwest. He doesn’t regret it.

Now on track to graduate in the spring with his business-analytics degree, student Bowden says he’s considering going into cybersecurity, underwriting or perhaps a field that combines both: cyber underwriting.

He calls his time so far at FSU “some of the best years of my life.”

That includes sharing his good name with the place that knows it best.

“I’m honored,” he says.

You bet he is, dadgummit.

-- Pete Reinwald