Meet Our Keynote Speaker - Coach Terry Bowden
Coach Terry Bowden has compiled a career record of 159-92-2 as a head college football coach. Terry Bowden started his coaching career by building two programs from the ground up. At 26 years old, the youngest head college football coach in the country, he turned around an 0-9-1 Salem College team by winning the WVIA Conference Championship in just his second season, and then repeating as Conference Champions the next year.
Bowden moved on to Samford University, a team that had won a total of just six games in their previous three seasons, going 9-1 in his first season, and setting many national records. He then engineered their move from Division III non- scholarship football all the way directly to Division I-AA, and within two years was competing for the national championship.
Terry Bowden then became the youngest head college football coach in the country again, when at age 36 he took over at Auburn University; where the Tigers were coming off of two straight non-winning seasons. Winning his first 20 straight games, including an undefeated first season (the first coach in NCAA history to do so in his inaugural season at the highest level of college football) both astonishing feats, especially in the SEC; Bowden went on to win 73% of his games at Auburn. In his inaugural and perfect 11-0 season in 1993, Terry swept virtually every national coach of the year award; including beating out his own father, Bobby Bowden (who won his first National Championship that season) for the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award.