Louisiana-Monroe named former Auburn coach Terry Bowden as its next head coach, the school announced Wednesday.
Contract details are not finalized, according to the announcement, and the move is still pending approval by the University of Louisiana System’s Board of Supervisors.
Bowden spent the past two seasons as an unpaid graduate intern on coach Dabo Swinney’s staff at Clemson, a position Bowden said he took to refresh his coaching education.
“We’re extremely excited to welcome Terry Bowden to our Warhawk family as head football coach,” said athletic director Scott McDonald in a release. “He brings a winning pedigree to our program. He has won at all levels of college football, beginning as the youngest head coach in the country in his first job at Salem College and continued that through his tenure at Samford and Auburn, where he consistently competed for SEC Championships. He followed with success at North Alabama and at Akron, where he led the Zips to their first bowl victory in school history.”
Bowden was hired as Auburn’s coach in 1993, and the Tigers finished 11-0 that season. He was named Coach of the Year and was fired in 1998 after the team started the season 1-5.
He returned to the Division I ranks in 2012 and coached Akron to a 35-52 record before being fired in December.
Overall, his record as an FBS head coach is 82-69-1. He also coached at North Alabama, Samford and Salem.
“I got introduced to ULM back after the 2015 season when a contingent flew up to Akron and talked to me about the job,” Bowden said in the release. “They did a great job of selling me on the potential of this program and the commitment they had to turning it around.
“Although the timing just wasn’t quite right, I did remember feeling that with my success at places like this, and my desire to get back down South to a college town very much like Auburn and Clemson, that this was a perfect place for me to be. I felt then that I was the best guy they could find to build a winner at ULM and I still do.”
Bowden, 64, will replace Matt Viator, who was fired after the Warhawks posted an 0-10 record. His first duty will be to rebuild the roster of the Sun Belt Conference team, which saw 24 players enter the transfer portal before the season.
Bowden played at West Virginia and began his coaching career in 1982 as a graduate assistant to his father, the legendary Bobby Bowden, at Florida State.
His older brother, Tommy, was Clemson’s head from 1999 until 2008, when he was fired six games into the season and replaced by Swinney.
Terry Bowden has said that he wanted to return to head coaching and thought his experience at Clemson would help. But it turned out to be more than educational.
“It’s been one of the greatest experiences of my life,” Bowden told The State in Columbia, S.C., before last year’s College Football Playoff championship game. “Getting back to sitting in front of a camera and studying football again, with a bunch of great people and great analysts and being a small part, I’ve really enjoyed it. I think most of us who are fortunate enough to still be in this game at my age just enjoy it. They do a lot more for me probably than I’m doing for them, and I’m very thankful for that.”
